Introduction

What is Open-Source Software?

Open-Source Software is software created by a worldwide community of programmers, designers, testers, technical writers, artists and ideas people.  These communities put in large amounts of effort to provide software for everybody to use.  Why on earth would these people do this?  Well, there are several reasons.

Some projects get sponsored and are successful in getting a lot of donations, or sell parts of the project building-blocks to closed-source developers, so some people get the chance to work on their favourite software as a full-time job.

Other projects are motivated by a person who's goal in life it seems is to create their ultimate software package, and if that person kick-starts the project well enough, and is a good organiser, then the project can be successful in the continuous recruitment of more people to help.

There are projects which are inspired totally by the idea that a group of people can willingly take on and beat the commercial empires, who it is seen by that group over-charge for their software.  This idea is also propelled by the lack of openness of the commercial products - bugs and security holes exist in commercial software which we have no control over.  One of the fundamentals of an open-source project is that many eyes can be looking for bugs in the code continually, and anyone with the appropriate knowledge can contribute a software fix.

Open-source projects also exist for religion, self-help, as a kind of charity, as self-promotion (something to add to the resume), self-fulfilment, and maybe many other reasons.

The bottom-line of the open-source community is they are generally there to help.  The source code is seen as a base for people learning how to program, so they can see how a commercial style application might fit together and how it is managed.  Ever wanted to be an analyst/programmer or a technical writer?  Want to add those skills to your resume?  Well you can do those things in an open-source project.

What is Free Software?

Free, as in freeware software often differs from open-source software in-that freeware is created by maybe one or a few people.  Freeware is generally closed-source, although the source is sometimes available.  The distinction, even if the source is available is that it is still maintained by a closed group.  Anyone can join an open source group if they can prove that they can contribute anything of use to the project.  Sometimes freeware is licensed for non-commercial use only.

There is a pedantic difference between "free" software and "freeware", however this page is for the lay-people who wouldn't particularly care about the difference.  Because they're both "free".

Caveat Emptor

Before I start listing the open-source software I have found to be useful, don't necessarily believe everything on the net that people would have you believe when it comes to open-source software.  Don't throw your commercial software into the furnace or mass-convert all your business documents until you have tried and proven the open-source stuff.  On the outside open-source software looks great, but by-and-large they lack some feature-or-other that happens to be of great importance to some people, and those features are often what distinguishes commercial software from the rest, and is often a determining factor in why some commercial software is more successful than any other type of software, and will be for quite some time.  The best bet is to grab a feature list of each product and lay them side-by-side.  Firstly tick off what you really think is useful in the commercial stuff, then make sure all those features are in the open-source stuff.  Sometimes you will find a much needed feature in the open-source software that is not available in the commercial software!

Also, look at features in commercial software that require addins and separate products.  This is a major trap for users, because you might find the extras needed to make your purchase useful outweigh the initial purchase price by several times!  However, remember, it's those addins and extras that can distinguish the commercial products.  Some open-source projects lack the foresight of integration, and I for one often find integration to be an important factor.

So Gimme Free Software!

Let's cut to the chase and list some free and open-source software that can work as an alternative to commercial software.  Please don't be upset if your #1 ranking free product isn't listed here, the omission of any product does not imply that it is not worthy.  The things that are listed are either tested by me or have enough credibility to be listed.  Believe me, I test a lot of software, and much of it gets shift-deleted pretty quickly.  So I'm not going to list the latest spyware packed garbage, this stuff is the good stuff.  Contact me using the link at the bottom of the page if you have good suggestions to add to the list:

PC Software

Standalone, desktop software:

• ClamWin Antivirus - free, open source antivirus software that rivals commercial products.
• Open Office - a free open source complete office suite which is able to exchange documents in native and commercial formats.  This software is very good, but NOT fully compatible with Microsoft Office products as claimed.  You can create documents that are pretty good with compatibility, but reading and modifying existing Microsoft Office documents is a different story, so be careful.
• 7-Zip - free, open source; zip and unzip common archive types.  An excellent program.
• Outlook Duplicates Remover - a great program that removes all kinds of duplicates from Outlook 2002/2003.  This software comes at the price of a prayer.  It saved my day fixing duplicate calendar items from bad synchronisation with my Pocket PC.  Don't pay money for similar products.
• Google Reader - a free RSS feed program.  Google reader requires no installation, and in using your google account it will persist your favourite RSS feeds wherever you go.  Forget buying newspapers... what life did I have before I found RSS?
• Microsoft SQL Server Express - you need the power of SQL Server in a small scale application but don't want to spend thousands? Well I'm sure that 'free' sounds like a nice price.  I love having access to User Defined Functions, Stored Procedures, Triggers, and all the rest.
• Daemon Tools - keep your full CD's in a single ISO file on your hard disk and access it via a virtual CD ROM drive.  Daemon Tools has been around for quite a while and does a brilliant job.  Get much better performance from CD's you need to access constantly or administrators can make a software ISO archive so machines can be rebuilt without digging through mountains of CD's.  You can install software to "run from CD", and use an ISO. Use DoISO to create your own ISO's.
• DoISO - Daemon Tools needs ISO's; why use commercial software to create your ISO's when you can make them for free?
• IsoPuzzle - a brilliant program for making CD's and DVD's into ISO's.  What sets IsoPuzzle apart is its ability to recover scratched discs.  You obviously can't recover a disc that is practically mutilated, but you can recover most discs which report a bad read in other software.  It will create an ISO just as quickly as any other ISO creation program, it will only slow down if it needs to recover a hard to read block.
• ReplaceEm (AKA BK ReplaceEm) - This is a search & replace program that rocks!  I use this all the time, you can do complex "starts with", "ends with" searches that may span unlimited lines of text and the ability to span subfolders.  You can place rules in a sequence so that you can create a really complex search/replace strategy without having to be an expert!  Hint, use Advanced Edit, you can do common replace tasks without needing to know weird mnemonics.
• InfoRapid Search & Replace - powerful search & replace software.  Not as powerful as ReplaceEm for doing replacements, but very powerful for outright searching.  Certain binary files can be searched and the contents shown in the area of the search results.  The good thing about this program is it doesn't need to be able to index your drive to be able to search.  I generally use a combination of InfoRapid and ReplaceEm depending on my needs - they're both very useful.
• Google Desktop Search - yet another search utility... Well, I do in fact use a third search utility so you're probably starting to think I'm some kind of search nut.  This utility is great, it indexes your hard drive in the background, never taxing your resources while you're trying to work.  It indexes absolutely everything, including your email, so it's great for finding that long lost document, or all the emails on a particular subject.  Beware the index file size, I ended up with 5 1/2GB of index files.  It cannot index mapped drives, but it will map files that you open from a mapped location, so that's a limitation where I use InfoRapid instead.
• PDFCreator - create PDF files from any program you can print from - free, open source.
• FlashGet - awesome free download manager.  Do you tire of downloads that seem to crawl down the line at half your available bandwidth or less?  Or get to the last byte of that huge download only for the connection to drop and you have to start all over?  Well, FlashGet comes to the rescue.  It uses very clever technology to create multiple simultaneous connections to your download to force the download at the maximum available bandwidth.  You can pause a large download so that you can tend to other internet activities and resume again any time later!  Unexpected connection drops will frustrate your downloads no more because FlashGet always remembers where it's up to in a download and can resume.  Unlike other download managers you will not get a rude shock when trying to load large (>2GB) files, it will work!
• CDex - open-source CD ripper.  This program is great, it circumvents copy protections to give you a perfect backup copy of your CD's.  Forget spending good money buying rippers, this software will be your final stop.  I'm not encouraging anyone to pirate recordings they haven't bought, but people should be allowed to make personal backup copies of CD's they have bought.  Record companies are still trying to sue people for making personal backups, but that's lame.  They say you cannot make a personal backup of a CD you bought, but refuse to offer replacements for damaged CD's at cost.  They'll probably sue me for saying that ;).
• DVD Shrink - the ultimate DVD backup software.  Believe me, I have tried all the software and DVD Shrink wins hands down in ease of use and features.  Making a complete backup or stripping out the main movie is a piece of cake, as is the ease in which you can remove menus, foreign language audio, director's comments and subtitles.  If the resulting movie won't fit on one DVD, then no problem, it will compress the movie the exact amount it needs to fit while maintaining very high quality.  This software will decrypt encrypted DVD's and optionally remove restrictions such as region and macrovision.  For a straight-down-the-line guide, go to the Doom9 tutorial.  Just follow the links inside the tutorial to expand it in the direction of the type of backup you want to do.  It's simple to follow with good screenshots.
• DVD Decrypter - Project is dead but you can still find the software if you search.  This is still a great DVD decrypting program.  In the scheme of things, this software doesn't do any more than the decryption in DVD Shrink, so you might wonder why you would add this software for an extra, unnecessary step in backing up your DVD's?  Well, the simple answer is that when DVD Shrink has trouble reading a DVD, such as when there is a small scratch, sometimes DVD Decrypter comes to the rescue and will successfully read the disk.  It's a handy program to have for those occasions, however it won't save you from deep scratches.
• Audacity - free, open-source audio editing software.  Although I haven't played with this much, it seems like a nice, comprehensive piece of audio editing software.
• Jazz++ - free, open-source sequencing software.  I've yet to try this software, but a dedicated fork has recently emerged on sourceforge that promises to keep this software alive and add features.  I listened to some sample music and I must say I'm really impressed (don't download jazz++ from the sample music link, get it from this link).  In the past I enjoyed playing around with sequencing - as long as you can 'hear' a bad note you can fix it!  It's a tool anyone can get into their own original music with.
• VideoLan - free, open source, cross platform media player that plays most available formats.  This is a pretty handy program to have, even if you do use it as a second player because it solves having to have lots of various players for all the different formats.  The only major format it doesn't seem to support is Real.  It has playlists and is easy to use.  You can even use it as a streaming server.
• SciTE free, open source text/code editor.  This is my preferred editor.  It doesn't have as many features as something like PSPad, but SciTE loads fast; you can right-click a file, select edit with SciTE and have it open very quickly.  Conversely, PSPad will make you wait for its feature sets to load into memory which is painful when you want to make a few quick edits.  SciTE is a tabbed editor and supports colour-coding of sourcecode and known filetypes.  SciTE has all the features you need for editing files.  To get the tabbed interface working properly, download the alternative shell extension dll from here: http://www.spaceblue.com/codedetail.php?CodeID=9.  Note that you will need to close instances of windows explorer first to install the modified dll.  With the fixed tabbed interface, if you already have a file open in SciTE and you right-click another file and choose edit with SciTE from the context menu, it will open up in the existing instance and create another tab.  Also, edit scite's global properties (see SciTEGlobal.properties in scite's installation folder).  One property that's worth changing is caret.line.back - all you need to do is remove the comment and it will start highlighting the line the caret is positioned on.
• PSPad - free, open source text/code editor.  PSPad is the last stop of editors.  It has powerful code editing features, ftp support, and can even handle compilation.  The only critique I have with it is that with such a large feature set it takes too long to load.  It's for that reason that SciTE has won me over with its speedy loading.  However, PSPad is worth considering as a good code editor if you are working with open source compilers etc.
• X-Chat - free, open source multi-platform IRC client.  The windows build on the XChat is not free, it is shareware, but there are unofficial builds (legal under the GPL license) that you can get which should work just as well.  The unofficial windows build I recommend is by Vaidrius Petrauskas.  I must admit that I'm no IRC expert, and I guess that's one testament as to why I think X-Chat is so great.  I installed it, chose a server, joined a channel, and started chatting!  It is one of the few truly free IRC chat clients that is actually worth the wait to download.  For both experienced and new IRC users I highly recommend this program.
• JBidWatcher - This is an excellent sniping utility for ebay bidding.  It has a number of other great features too, such as comments display.

Graphics

Free software for touching up photos, creating original artwork, 3D modelling, vector graphics and diagramming.

2D

• The Gimp - a serious open source free image manipulation tool.  This is now my imaging tool of choice.  For top notch creativity tips, visit GimpGuru.org.  Keep your eyes out for Cinepaint (the 'Glasgow' build) - this is an offshoot of Gimp which has been used in hollywood movie production.
• Inkscape - free open source vector graphics editor.  This seems to be the pick of the bunch, with professional features and complying to the W3C SVG standards I'd have to say this is the premiere open source vector graphics software.  It has a large number of features, including text on paths, text overflow effects, bitmap tracing, the list goes on and on.
• OpenClipArt - now that you have some serious graphic design software, get yourself some free and open clipart.
• Dia - a free open source diagramming tool.  Has a number of technical diagram templates.
• VisioModeler - a free (and unsupported) database design tool using semantic modeling from Microsoft.
• Network Notepad - free network diagramming software.  Software specialises in network diagramming and appears to be very professional and complete.

3D

A (very generalised) note about the renderers:  Renderman renderers tend to be a lot faster than ray/radiosity tracers.  However, ray tracers tend to be able to render light extremely accurately.  Look at the gallery and screenshots for each product to get an idea of what you can do.

• Blender - a seriously full-featured 3D modeller and renderer.  Can import/export a number of formats, can be used for game scenario creation (with collision detection etc.) and create animations and videos.  A mind blowing array of features for free.  The features are daunting, so begin your readings with Blender 3D: Noob to Pro.
• Yafray - 'Yet Another Free Raytracer' - free, open source ray tracing program.  Yafray is the choice renderer for Blender, though not required for Blender.  Yafray opens up some sophisticated render features not available to blender.
• MakeHuman - free, open source humanoid modelling plugin for Blender.
• ArtOfIllusion - free, open source modeller/renderer.  This looks like a great product which allows you to perform some sophisticated modelling and animation.  Support for skinning and animation are an example of the powerful features.
• Pov-Ray - a free, open source rendering engine.  This software in itself doesn't have a built-in modeller, but existing modellers can export the Pov-Ray format.  Pov-Ray is a high precision renderer which is capable of renders which rival any commercial product available.  With an outstanding array of effects, texturing and mesh options, this package is unbeatable.  Combine it with your favourite modeller to get photo-realistic renderings.
• AQSIS - free renderman compliant photo-realistic renderer.
• Pixie - free, open source renderman renderer.
• AYAM - free, open source renderman modeller.
• Shaderman - free renderman model building tool.
• K-3D - free, open source renderman modeller.
• JPatch - free, open source spline-based 3D modeller.  Can output formats for renderman compliant renders, or Pov-Ray.
• PoseRay - import models from a number of different formats, and export to other formats.  Tweak the models with the in-build manipulation tools before exporting.  Very handy for converting model formats and texturing.
• jrMan - free, open source implementation of the REYES algorithm employed by Pixar's Renderman.
• Truespace 3 - was commercial, now free software (the latest version is commercial, only V3 is free).  This software has some high end animation and still rendering capabilities.
• PovLab - free, open source modeller for Pov-Ray.
• OpenFX - a serious 3D modelling, rendering and animation tool.  Free and open source.  Many plugins are available to produce special effects.

Other/Multimedia

• SSWF -  a free, open source flash scripting language.  This is a great project that allows you to make your own flash SWF files by writing script.
• Jahshaka - free, open source video editing (with effects) software.  Uses an OpenGL interface and includes OpenGL effects.  I have yet to use this software but it appears very promising.

Informational/Educational (Read and Explore)

Although a number of the software tools I have mentioned are quite relevant to education, there are utilities that students would find most useful in referencing during study.

• NASA Learning Technologies - breathtaking suite of free software which brings science to your home for entertainment or learning.  There are several programs available for download:
  • World Wind: spin a 3D representation of the earth around, and zoom into any location on the planet using real satellite imagery.  Several satellites can be used, and in most locations, details of landmarks are marked.  Maps are available for many areas.
  • NASA SVS: Scientific Visualisation Studio lets you visualise animated scientific data of earth while controlling a 3D representation of the planet.
  • Virtual Lab: you control a virtual electron microscope where you can select samples and pan & zoom up to 3,600X!  More samples are being added as the software is updated.
  • What's the Difference: solar system explorer that has detailed data on the composition of every planet in our solar system.  It is a compare and contrast tool for the planets, or a comprehensive reference tool.
• Celestia - free 3D space explorer.  Explore our solar system and beyond.  Extremely comprehensive, this tool is a great way to get to know the universe better.
• Google Earth - free satellite imagery.  this is one of the best services I have seen to-date on the net.  If you have a fast enough connection you could spend literally years looking through this interface - how long do you think it would take you to have a detailed look at the entire land surface area of the earth?  Although this software is very similar to NASA's World Wind software, poor under-resourced NASA is striving to provide a lot of detail, but it will take them a while to get there.  Google on the other hand purchased a well-established company (Keyhole) and proceeded to add content as fast as they can.  Basically you are presented with an outer space view of the earth which you can spin around using your mouse.  Once you centre the location of interest on the screen you can start zooming in - in many areas you can zoom to the point where you can make out cars and trees, and easily read airport runway markers.  You can follow roads, and where supported you can actually have map overlays.  One of the most amazing features I've seen with Google Earth is the elevation data.  Once you zoom in on a location you can actually tilt it up until you are looking along the ground so that you can see surrounding hills and valleys.  Go into the Grand Canyon and you can literally follow the bottom with the walls of the canyon towering up either side.  You have to see it to believe it.
• CIA World Fact Book - free downloadable/online world reference.  Developed by the CIA for the CIA, you can find out just about anything on every country, including maps, GDP, birth rates, death rates, the list goes on and on and on!
• Start Natural Language Question Answering System - search for facts in plain english.  This is the smartest, most thorough fact searching utility I have ever seen (if someone finds a smarter one I'd love to know!).  Ask a question like "what is the largest body of water in the world?" and you will get the answer: "With an area of 152,239 square miles, Caspian Sea is the largest lake in the world." along with references and links.  You can ask "what does an African elephant look like?" and Start will give you hyperlinks to pictures of African elephants.  Try an obscure question like "how far is it from rockhampton australia to new york?" and you will be presented a correct answer.  All facts from the CIA factbook have been fed into Start, and many reference sites from the web have also been added as information resources to expand the knowledge base.  It has to be tried to be believed.
• WikiPedia - an encyclopedia by the people, for the people.  With over 500,000 articles in english, along with references for a number of other languages make this a truly huge project.  Anyone can enter a new fact on anything, or modify an incorrect entry.  This lead to criticism that WikiPedia entries can't all be correct, so someone tried an experiment where they changed some obscure facts to be incorrect to see if anyone would notice with so much information to look after.  Within 2 hours correct facts had been placed over the incorrect ones.  I'd say based on that, most facts will indeed be correct enough to reference.
• NASA Celestia Exploration Activity - good for students, this is a guide through the planets of our solar system.

Version Control

I find this needs a section of its own because it fits into both desktop software and programming.  You can use version control to manage document versions, as well as source code versioning:

• KDiff3 - free, open source diff/merge program.  This is probably the pick of the bunch.
• WinMerge - free, open source file difference program.
• Subversion - the self-proclaimed successor to CVS.  Subversion is a terrific version control solution which handles text-based and binary files, both distributed and local, with support for UNC paths and levels of security.  It can run with or without a server, but if you're going distributed, you'll need the server.  This is a truly powerful version control solution that can't be overlooked.  It does not enforce versions with locking - rather it assists to merge various modifications.  Because I like this software so much I am now in charge of the win32 installer releases for Subversion.
• TortoiseSVN - the desktop companion for Subversion.  It integrates nicely into windows explorer, allowing you to manage your version control with a click of a couple of buttons.  For example, to update files from a repository, you normally go to a command prompt, go to the right folder, then type in the command "svn update".  That's simple enough, but with TortoiseSVN, you just right-click the folder and select the 'SVN Update' command.  Most Subversion features are available from the shortcut menu.

.Net Programming Tools, Controls, Classes and Add-Ins

Tools you need to construct professional quality software in .Net:

• SharpDevelop - a free open source .Net development IDE.  Where possible, this is my primary development tool.
• NUnit - free, open source unit testing tool for .Net.  NUnit supports all .Net languages and it is fantastic.  If you don't know what unit testing is, learn today!  Basically it allows you to write small test methods for your class methods and test return results.  This is far easier than writing separate test applications or running the debugger everytime you make a code change.  It also retains all your tests so that when you make numerous modifications you just run the unit tests and it tests all your methods with your preset conditions.
• TestDriven.Net - free unit testing add-in for Visual Studio .Net.  When looking for integrated solutions I had never heard of this product, but once I installed it I haven't looked back, it is great!  You can write unit testing code and test it on-the-fly in the IDE - and you have full right-click control over what you test.  You can right-click on a single test sub and choose to run that test on its own, right-click on the head of a test class and have all the test methods run, right-click on a source file and have all contained test classes run, or right-click on a project and have all tests in the test project run.  That is the most flexibility you will ever need - I find it excellent for testing single methods until I get them right - it decreases the amount of time you need to be using the debugger exponentially.  TestDriven works in Visual Studio .Net 2003 & 2005.  It is slightly unstable, but it won't affect the IDE itself.  If you need to continue testing, but TestDriven ceases to operate properly, just close the IDE and reopen.
• Web Matrix - a full-featured free IDE for creating ASP.NET applications.  Has some limitations such as the lack of the ability to create classes, however you can get around these limitations.
• MyGeneration - free code generator and O/R (object relations) mapping tool.  This is a comprehensive, extensible tool for generating code.  I have yet to explore this tool but it looks very professional.
• Magic Control Library - very nice library consisting of Docking, Menus, Tabbed Groups, TabControl, Wizard.  The linked version is the last source release.  The new commercial version can be found at http://www.dotnetmagic.com/.
• DockPanel Suite - awesome open source docking.
• VB Commenter (my preferred documenter) - a good XML commenter if you need something that integrates into Visual Studio .Net.
• VB.DOC - open source VB.Net documentation system, works both standalone or with Visual Studio .Net or as a NAnt task.  It creates C# style XML documentation from your comments.  Use NDoc to compile your documentation.
• NDoc - open source; document your programming work in style: "generates class library documentation from .NET assemblies and the XML documentation files generated by the C# compiler (or with an add-on tool for VB.Net)".  The output formats supported are terrific, including the MSDN-style HTML Help format (.chm), the Visual Studio .Net help format (HTML Help 2) and MSDN-online style web pages.
• Custom Help Builder - builds help from your XML comments output to integrate into Visual Studio .Net 2003, including context-sensitive help for your own documented objects!
• Razor - open source plugin application framework.  This is a great base framework for any project.  It takes care of many of the common tasks you must take care of in the creation of just about every new project.  Start with the tutorial here: http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/RazorPt1.asp.

General Software Development Tools

Tools for general software development:

• WiX - an open source toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code.  This is a project released to open source by Microsoft!  Some of my software is packaged with WiX.  SharpDevelop has a WiX editor built-in for easier WiX XML file creation.
• NSIS - another open source installer toolset.
• HM NIS Edit - a free, open source editor for NSIS.
• DocBook XML - DTD for making those help files.  Also see DocBooK SGML.
• Mantis - free, open source online bug tracking software.  This is what I use.

Games

Free computer games:

• Americas Army - the U.S. army produced a game to try and increase their recruiting drive.  I'm not sure how successful it is in getting new recruits but it is a top class first person shooter.  Pitch your warfare skills against players from all over the world on a variety of maps.
• Utopia - free online strategy game.  This is a text-based medieval war game where you have your own 'province' in a 'kingdom'.  Your kingdom comprises of 25 provinces (which are people scattered all around the world), and you all work as a democracy to pitch the strength of your kingdom against other kingdoms in hostile, war, and even without any official declarations.  Don't be put off by the text-only thing; this is a real game of courage, strategy, mateship, deception, diplomacy, revenge, spite and outright evil ;).  The only downside of this game is you find yourself waking up in a cold sweat at 3:00am wondering if that big guy in the other kingdom has 'hit' you yet.  This is a great game to make new friends, I was playing this for a long time - I actually stayed in the same team for 3 years!  The only reason I stopped playing was because I wanted to channel my spare time into other stuff.

Webmaster Resources

Tools to manage and make your website better:

• FileZilla - free, open source ftp client/server.  I haven't tried this as a server, but as an FTP client it is great.  It's as good as the commercial products but you don't need to pay a cent.
• Wikka - free, open source wiki.  This is a simple to install, simple to use full featured wiki.
• phpBB - a free, open source bulletin board (forum).  I visit a lot of sites, and many have some kind of forum available.  I must say though that when I do visit forums, those which use phpBB always provide the most friendly interface with the fullest set of features you would want to use.  You can have your own avatar (depending on whether the webmaster allows it), get email notification on replies to your posts, get personal messages (with email notification), comprehensive search, and much more.  Check out my own phpBB forum to see the features (and maybe drop a comment while you're at it ;) ).
• Greentop Forum Operator program - many people with their own site don't have access to more sophisticated technology that allows you to host your own phpBB, or it may seem a bit of an overwhelming task to install it yourself and maintain the database behind it.  Well, my friends at Greentop can help you out.  They have free phpBB hosting with a generous size allowance, a big set of features and friendly, efficient support.  I briefly hosted my own forum there before I got everything sorted to be able to host my own.  Checkout their other services as well, free forum hosting is only a part of what they do.

Any size donation will help me cover the costs of this site and justify its existence.  The costs of running this site and software development are entirely supported by the voluntary support of visitors.  Please donate if you like my software and want to help my development efforts :).

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