Microsoft is probably the richest software corporation in the world. They make money on selling software plus they also make money when you need help with one of their software products by charging you for support. I remember when Microsoft released DOS 6.0 and millions of computers around the world crashed because the software had a lot of bugs. You would think then that a company would have to fix this problem free of charge but not Microsoft, they charged you for the upgrade to DOS 6.2 which fixed the problem in the product DOS 6.0.

Over the past decade I have spent a fortune on all sorts of different software products but those days are over. I have found a great solution where the software is free, you just either make a donation or pay for support. Now with this type of software, besides being relatively inexpensive, you a free to use it as is or if you are a programmer you can modify it. Most of this software will either run as a stand alone product or software like a Content Manager you install it to the host where you have web hosting and you can just run it in a browser like IE.

I used to use Dreamweaver to design all my websites but we're talking at least several hundred dollars just for the Dreamweaver and if you want the complete suite which is Macromedia studio then you're looking at spending over a thousand dollars. Now with this package the only support that is included is the stuff that is in the manuals that comes with the package. If you want support in plain english then you are going to have to pay for additional support.

Nowadays I am using an Open Source product called VNU which has a Windows version but it also has a version for the Macintosh and for Linux which I'm thinking about converting over to. Rather than paying for a package like Microsoft office I am using OpenOffice which is a free open source solution. OpenOffice has a lot more features than the standard Microsoft Office, it incorporates Adobe acrobat by letting you create PDF documents.

I just upgraded my computer and gave my old one to my younger brother. Now this old computer has windows on it but knowing my brother if he ever gets a virus he will not be able to handle it. Knowing this I am thinking about converting my brother over to Linux because all he uses now is Dreamweaver and MS office and I think he would be perfectly happy with open source software. Plus if there are 10 viruses that can hit Windows then there would only be less than one virus for the Linux operating system.

In the old days Linux like Unix was all done at command prompt but nowadays they have a graphical interface which looks like a Windows clone. Over the years I have bought a lot of software that I later discovered somebody had obtained as open source and then modified it. If you want to make money as a designer of software then rather then starting from ground zero you can get an open source application and just add a few modifications. This will greatly reduce the time it takes for designing a new software app...

Now another kind of software that is practically free is what is called freeware. The difference between open source and freeware is that the Freeware application has already been compiled and you are not able to modify it or even replicate the coding. I, myself, when looking for software have mainly just been looking for applications that I can use. Usually I will see an advertisement for a product with a lot of features that I would find useful. I then look for either a Freeware or open source package that has the same features. This is one way that I save money.

If you want more information on what you can do with open source software they all follow a general license which if you do a search on a site like Google you will be able to find many references regarding this open license.