Open Source and Free Software

The Digital Media Center is actively involved in promoting the use of open source software and involving the Hopkins community in the development of open source software. In short, we like free things that work well. Many of these programs are currently in use in our lab.

The following is a short list of open source programs, what they do, and where you can download them from. Please note than the Digital Media Center, and thus Johns Hopkins University, does not officially endorse these development efforts or favor them over any other. This is simply a basic reference. If you know of any projects that would make our list more complete, please contact us and let us know. As with any open source software, the user assumes all risk. The Digital Media Center is not responsible for any damage caused to your computer by any of these programs.

• Audio:

• Sequencing/Editing

• Audacity: Audacity is a nice, rather bare bones audio editor. For Windows, Mac, and Unix. Be sure to check out the Nyquist and Lame plugins for more functionality.

• Ardour: Similar to Cubase. Very nice sequencer. Mac and Unix. Check out the LADPSA plugins for more functionality.


• Rose Garden: Similar in feel to Cubase. Mac and Unix

• Jokosher: Garageband style sequencer. Unix

• Processing
• Spear: Spectral Domain Editor. Windows and Mac.

• SoundHack: All-around sound processing tool. Mac.

• Csound: The computer music application. Windows, Mac, and Unix.

• Jade: Sound processing tool created by Timothy Place. Windows, Mac.

• Pratt: Computer phonetics. Windows, Mac, and Unix.

• Interactive Multimedia
• Pure Data: PD is a graphical programming language particularly nice when working with interactive multimedia. Windows, Mac, and Unix.

• SuperCollider: Code-based interactive programming language. Windows, Mac, and Unix.
  

• Useful Audio Utilities and Apps
• Soundflower: Reroute sound inside of OS X. Mac.

• Jack: Audio server to connect multiple applications to a single audio hardware device. Mac and Unix.
  

• Audio Unit Manager: Manage audio unit and host configurations. Mac.

• MIDI Patchbay: Pass MIDI data between both hardware and software interfaces. Mac.

• Midi Monitor: Visualize MIDI data. Mac.

• MIDI Pipe: Tool for pipelining MIDI data. Mac.

• SysEx Librarian: Communicate with MIDI devices using System Exclusive messages. Mac.

• iMIDI: Send MIDI data via Ethernet. Mac.

• Graphics/Video:

• 2D: Photo and Image Manipulation
• Gimp: The open source equivalent of Photoshop. Windows, Mac, Unix.
  

• Inkscape: A vector graphics creation and manipulation program, the open source equivalent of Illustrator. Windows, Mac, and Unix.
  

• Scribus: A desktop publish and page layout program, the open source equivalent of InDesign. Windows, Mac, and Unix.

• 3D: Animation
• Blender: A powerful 3D modeling and animation program, the open source equivalent of 3DStudioMax. Windows, Mac, and Unix.

• Video
• Vixy: An open source online video transcoding service. Convert YouTube and other Flash videos into another video format. Windows, Mac, and Unix.
• Jahshaka: A video effects processor similar to Adobe After Effects. Windows, Mac, and Unix.

• Word Processing

• OpenOffice.org: The popular open source equivalent to Microsoft's Office suite. Windows, Mac, and Unix.

• NeoOffice J: A fork of OpenOffice specifically built for Mac.

• Internet Utilities

• Browsing
• Firefox: Mozilla's popular web browser used by millions of people everyday. Windows, Mac, and Unix.
• Camino: A Mozilla web browser very similar to Firefox built specifically for Mac.
• Flock: A social networking web browser built on top of the Firefox engine. Windows, Mac, and Unix.
• Seamonkey: An all-in-one web browser, e-mail and newsgroup client, IRC chat client, and HTML editor. Based on Mozilla code. Windows, Mac, and Unix.
• Shiira: WebKit-based browser written in Cocoa. Mac.

• Email
• Thunderbird: Firefox's sister email client. Windows, Mac, and Unix.

• FTP
• FUGU: Open source secure FTP program. Mac.
• WinSCP: SFTP, FTP, and SCP client for Windows with an interface very similar to Explorer.
  

• Web Authoring
• NVU: WYSIWYG web authoring tool, an open source alternative to Dreamweaver. Windows, Mac, and Unix.
  

• Miscellaneous

• Bitpim: Manage data on CDMA phones from LG, Samsung, Sanyo and others. Windows, Mac, and Unix.