FOSS SOHO

One thing I have been keeping my eye on is the Open Source software for small and home businesses.
Lately some really great projects have surfaced. To start off my list I would like to introduce you to OpenProj. It is a free open source desktop project management software. Comparable to some high dollar proprietary project management software. This is a great application for the up and coming SOHO. It has received some great reviews and has a good list of professional businesses who use it.

When it comes to finance, there are a couple of great applications that come to mind. There is only one that I will mention right now and that would be GnuCash. This software has been around for a while and has really great functionality. With the ability to import data files from it's expensive proprietary counterparts. This is my choice for finance software in my personal business.

My all-time favorite when it comes to spreadsheets has been Gnumeric. This little application has the ability to open and save to proprietary formats. Such as the ones we are all familiar with in most businesses. It is nice and lite and easy on your computer resources.

Word processing. The one application that anyone with a computer has used once or twice.
I have found a good selection of great open source word processors, but I think I am only going to only mention Abiword right now. Since this is an application that is found most on any computer, I was looking for one that could save files to many different formats. Formats such as .doc, .rtf, .pdf, .txt, .html. Not only does this application save to these formats, but many other obscure formats also.

During my days of working in small businesses, there have been days that I wished this program was available. What I am talking about is PDFedit. The name pretty much says it all. Many times I could of used this to fill out online forms and applications I had to work with a few years back. At the time no one had a free version of this type of editor, so when I had seen this release I was very pleased.

There are numerous open source applications available for almost any type of project. Many I would of liked to name here too, but as anyone knows in this day of age, time is money. Which ironically enough is more expensive than this software. So to end this chapter in my open quest, I invite you to give these applications a try. Sometimes Free is better...

If you have any questions about my post feel free to drop me a line..

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