Dead broke and not a dime to buy software?

I have heard several students comment on how nice it would be to have Creative Suites at home. But for many of broke students getting the $600 for the student version of CS or the $1800 for the professional version of CS is only a dream. The price of books, tuition and gas for the car takes up their ready cash reserve. So what can a student do? While you are saving your pennies for that day you can purchase your own version of CS you may want to consider Open Source software.

What if you could create vector graphics with software like Illustrator at home for free! What if you could create raster graphics with software like PhotoShop at home for free! How about pagination at home with software like InDesign for free! How about audio production and video production at home for free! Too good to be true? No, it is possible!

It is possible with Open Source software. It's available Now. It's Free and there is no catch to use it. In fact you can even give away copies to your friends!

Recently, in the Intro to Computer Graphics Course I have adapted open source software where students will have hands-on assignments and work concurrently with Creative Suites. Students create artwork with both sets of software. So if you have overheard a VCM students talking about InkScape, Gimp and Scribus and you don't know what they are talking about, here is a heads up!

Free download

You might think about downloading these software titles to your home computer. All you need to do is click on the links below and you can visit the software websites where you will find training and the free download page. But if you are unsure and want to try the software first, you can try open source software in VCM Lab Room 202. Just go to the start menu /programs menu, then look for a menu item Open Source. I would like you to try three software titles Gimp, InkScape and Scribus.

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. Yes you guessed it, a lot like PhotoShop.


Inkscape has many of the capabilities of Illustrator and supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.). Great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more.


Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout. Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.

What is open source software?

So what is "open source software"? Paraphrasing from Wikipedia), OSS or open source software began as a marketing campaign for free software or software libre. OSS can be used, studied, and modified without restriction. It can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things. In other words it must stay free!

In practice, for software to be distributed as free software, the human-readable form of the program must be made available to the recipient along with a notice granting the above permissions. Such a notice is a free software license.

The free software movement was conceived in 1983 by Richard Stallman to make these freedoms available to every computer user. Free software is distinct from "freeware" which is proprietary software available free of charge. Users usually cannot study, modify, or redistribute freeware as you can with OSS.

Since free software (OSS) may be freely redistributed, it generally is available at no cost, and it's OK to give the OSS software to your friends or other students. Free software business models are usually based on adding value such as support, training, customization, integration, or certification. So you might download some OSS, and find that you can buy a super deluxe Pro version of the same software for a bit more money.

So do people using this free software think it is any good?

Well to answer that question a report by the Standish Group says that adoption of OSS has caused a drop in revenue to the proprietary software industry by about $60 billion per year. So people are definitely taking advantage of free software!

But to give you an idea of what open source software is available, one of my favorite websites is SourceForge.NET . You will find it all here free - downloads of database software, enterprise software, games and multimedia software to name a few.