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GNUmedia/Software Libre

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Computer technology was born out of a community of collaboration and knowledge sharing. In the early 1980s the practice of sharing efforts and ideas was losing momentum. Richard Stallman, taking the initiative to restore the culture he endeared, founded the GNU Project and Free Software Foundation.

GNU and FSF are cornerstones of modern Copyleft. Copyleft intends to remind persons of freedoms which Copyright takes away and allow them to share these liberties with others. Software Libre is so named to remind us of the distinction between financially free (gratis) and freedoms, which are granted (libre.)

License Choice

Most software users receive comes packaged under various EULAs [End-User License Agreements.] All of these applications are released under the GNU's Not Unix General Public License. The GNU GPL is a liberating license designed [and recently re-designed] to promote software freedom. The freedoms at stake are individuals' ability to access software, examine its structure, modify the structure to suit one's needs and give a copy of [or redistribute] the software to a friend or person in need.

It is a principal of GNUmedia to promote, first and foremost, licenses which preserve the freedoms which they allow.

Those of you familiar with OSS [Open Source Software] and OSS licenses might wonder why GNUmedia is not promoting software, on this page, which is released under other licenses - even GPL compatible licenses.

Further reading:

The following tools are protected by the gnu_gpl.

Animation and Illustration

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Name Short Description Linux Macintosh Windows
Apophysis Fractal design and animation interface.
Blender3D 3D content creation suite.
Inkscape Vector Illustration with Jabber integration.
Pencil Sketching Design software including software GUI design.
Synfig Film-Quality 2D Vector Animation.

Audio

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Name Short Description Linux Macintosh Windows
Aldrin Modular music sequencer/tracker.
Ardour Digital Audio Workstation
Audacity Multi-Track Recording.
GNU Solfege Smarten your ears.
Hydrogen Advanced beat sequencer.
LilyPond Sheet music layout(ASCII input.)
LMMS Linux MultiMedia Studio
OpenMPT Tracker interface music sequencing.
Psycle Modular music creation studio with tracker interface.
Rosegarden Audio/MIDI sequencer.
ZynAddSubFX Software synthesizer capable of making a countless number of instruments.

Photography

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Name Short Description Linux Macintosh Windows
digiKam Photo organizer/tagger.
Eye of Gnome Photo browser/viewer.
The GIMP GNU Image Manipulation Program.
Hugin Panoramic photo stitcher.

Video

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Name Short Description Linux Macintosh Windows
Avidemux Video cutting, filtering and encoding tasks.
Gephex Modular multimedia synthesis and manipulation.
Cinelerra CV Non-linear video editing.
Jashaka Hardware accelerate editing and effects system.
Kdenlive Open Source video for GNU/Linux.
Kino Non-Linear Digital Video Editor.
LiVES Live Video Mixing Application.
WinFF Video conversion tool.

Document Layout

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Name Short Description Linux Macintosh Windows
Scribus Design precisely the layout you want for your document.
Lyx What You See Is What You Mean document processor.

Communications

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Name Short Description Linux Macintosh Windows
Coccinella A chat application with whiteboard.
Ekiga VoIP and video conferencing application.
Pidgin Instant messaging client that supports many commonly used instant messaging protocols.
Twinkle VoIP and instant messaging communications using the Session Initiation Protocol.
OpenWengo A softphone which allows you to make free PC to PC video and voice calls, and to integrate all your IM contacts in one place.

Media Players

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Name Short Description Linux Macintosh Windows
Elisa Media center solution.
VLC media player Highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats.

Utilities

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Name Short Description Linux Macintosh Windows
Agave Color scheme creator.
eXe SCORM/e-learning content creation.
Gobby Collaborative text editor. Syntax highlighting.
Purrr Bulk file re-namer.
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Name Short Description Linux Macintosh Windows
GpsDrive A car (bike, ship, plane) navigation system.
RoadMap Car navigation system.
Roadnav open source street navigation solution.