Throughout this course, we will attempt to use, where possible, Free
and Open Source software. Free or Open Source (the terms are
often used interchangeably) software is software that is distributed
under a specific license that allows others to examine, modify, and
distribute without having to ask additional permission of the original
author. This keeps any one company from controlling the software,
and allows huge communities of participants to work together, adding
important features that make the software useful for themselves and
others. Because this software is open to the community, it is
also almost always distributed without monetary cost. All the
free software used in this course can be freely downloaded from various
websites.
That said, this course is primarily about the multimedia aspects,
not the software aspects. As such, we will also be covering the
use of non-free (proprietary) tools. The general method used in
this course is to learn the basics of each topic using the open source
tools, then once a basic understanding of the topic is had, the course
will briefly spend time learning how to apply those concepts in the
proprietary tools for that topic.
Open Source tools we'll be using. Hover over the Icon to read
a short description, click the icon to go to the tool's website.
In addition, for some of this class, we will be running computers that use the Ubuntu Operating System, instead of Microsoft Windows. Ubuntu is an open source replacement for Microsoft Windows. However, it also does much more than Windows, as it comes by default with much more software, such as many of the tools above, and almost all Free/Open Source software can be installed in it simply by searching in the "Software Center" and clicking install.
Other interesting open source tools:
More can be found online about free/open source software:
Open Source Initiative - http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd
Free Software Foundation - http://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software
Wikipedia Free Software - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
Wikipedia Open Source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source