Finding freeware and open source software is not difficult, however, finding safe, reliable and useful freeware and open source software is a little harder.

What is Freeware ?

Freeware is software that is free you may think. This is simply not true, there is no such thing as a free lunch and to think anything is free is naive and potentially dangerous for your PC ! You have to be very careful when downloading and installing Freeware software!. What you need to do before deciding on any Freeware software that is labelled as FREE is find out what the author/publisher is going to get out of it.

There are several reasons that authors/publishers produce freeware software:-

• Advertising
• To get you purchase the FULL product
• To upload viruses, trojans and other malware onto your computer without you knowing.

Its the last item that we are trying to avoid. The best freeware software to get is where it offers limited functionality that is useful in its free form. Sure, you can purchase the full version later if you decided that this is the software for you, but you can truly obtain FREE software if you only need to use the basic functionality.

Listed below are a few source where you can find some very good Freeware software along with reviews and assessments of freeware software's.

Recommended Freeware Resources

• TechSupport
• Freeware Genius
• Open source Freeware
• Freeware Mission

What is Open Source Software ?

Open source software  refers to a program in which the source code is available to the general public for use and/or modification from its original design free of charge, i.e., open. Open source code is typically created as a collaborative effort in which programmers improve upon the code and share the changes within the community. Software that uses open source is often free and is a collaborative effort by enthusiasts. A good example of open source software is Linux, this is the FREE alternative operating system to Windows and is gaining more and more favour as an alternative to Microsoft Windows. A common Linux derived system is called Ubuntu.