Topic: Freely available and legal software.

[Nemesis]

Jack Morris posted in the Other Games Forum about a Wing Commander Privateer clone based on the Vega Strike engine.  Vega Strike is already on the list but Privateer isn't so here it is.

Privateer

What is Privateer Gemini Gold?

It is a freely available game, patterned after the original Wing Commander Privateer, and built using the open source Vegastrike engine.

What is the development status?

The game is playable but not very well balanced, the base computer interfaces are not final, some speech is missing, ship-to-ship communication lacks functionality however the Privateer and Righteous Fire campaign is already implemented.

What are the system requirements for running the game?

It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. Most common hardware purchased after 2000 should be able to run the game, 3d acceleration at the level of geForce2 or better is recommended.

[Jack Morris]

If anybody figures out how to run the files for Star Trek mod with Vegastrike, please inform me. I'm DYING to check out ST in a Privateer universe. 

Here is link for Privateer remake, it was simple, one DL and get in the game and fly! 

http://wcuniverse.sourceforge.net/

[Nemesis]

Google releases OCR program bought from HP.

Link to announcement article

Announcing Tesseract OCR
By Eric Case - 12:25 PM
Post by Luc Vincent, Uber Tech Lead

We wanted to let you all know that a few months ago we quietly released - or actually re-released - an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) engine into open source. You might wonder why Google is interested in OCR? In a nutshell, we are all about making information available to users, and when this information is in a paper document, OCR is the process by which we can convert the pages of this document into text that can then be used for indexing.

This particular OCR engine, called Tesseract, was in fact not originally developed at Google! It was developed at Hewlett Packard Laboratories between 1985 and 1995. In 1995 it was one of the top 3 performers at the OCR accuracy contest organized by University of Nevada in Las Vegas. However, shortly thereafter, HP decided to get out of the OCR business and Tesseract has been collecting dust in an HP warehouse ever since. Fortunately some of our esteemed HP colleagues realized a year or two ago that rather than sit on this engine, it would be better for the world if they brought it back to life by open sourcing it, with the help of the Information Science Research Institute at UNLV. UNLV was happy to oblige, but they in turn asked for our help in fixing a few bugs that had crept in since 1995 (ever heard of bit rot?)... We tracked down the most obvious ones and decided a couple of months ago that Tesseract OCR was stable enough to be re-released as open source.

Download Link

[Nemesis]

Link to site

FreeDOS 1.0 Yes, the FreeDOS Project has reached the "1.0" milestone. Please download the FreeDOS "1.0" distribution from ibiblio. If you prefer to purchase a CDROM rather than download the iso file, wait a few days for our online distributors to have their sites ready. We're partnering with at least two CD shops.

This is a very important day for FreeDOS. A lot of you have put in so much work over the years, helping to make everything perfect. Even if you didn't contribute code, you helped out the FreeDOS Project by submitting comments and bug reports. Thank you!

Its been listed before but I think hitting the 1.0 release is justifcation to list it again.

[Nemesis]

List update and modification has begun on the Master List.  Please be patient as it is a long list and as I update the list I am creating the new sublist posting at the same time.

If you should see any errors I have made or ways to improve the format please feel free to let me know either by posting here or by a PM if you prefer.

[Sirgod]

IT's looking good so far Bro. I would have mentioned it earlier, but the wife hate's any kind of Plant Life, and demanded I go outside and Mow them all down.

Stephen

[Nemesis]

Thanks for the feedback.   A second opinion is always nice to have.  It may take a few days to finish off.  If you spot any errors or omissions please point them out.  I have dropped a couple of items that aren't being developed any longer and fixed a couple of links that have been changed so there are errors to be fixed.  Even found a couple of spelling mistakes.  With all the links using the spell check function is out of the question.

I may leave the Operating System sublist until last, I haven't yet decided exactly how to handle the Linux and BSD variants that are on the list.  I may just put a note to see the sublist for links to those.  There are just too many variants of each to list them all.

[Nemesis]

I had to trim the Utilities post of some explanatory text as I was running up against the message size limits.  Nothing vital, but it does show that I may need to break some of the sublists down into sub sub lists.  .  The Operating System list may require that.

Update:  I hadn't noticed that I had yet to add your HP bootable USB drive utility to the list.  By adding it I had to split the utility sublist into two A - M and N - Z.  Web tools will likely need the same along with the OS list.

[Nemesis]

Wikipedia list of open source games.

[Sirgod]

I had to trim the Utilities post of some explanatory text as I was running up against the message size limits.  Nothing vital, but it does show that I may need to break some of the sublists down into sub sub lists.  .  The Operating System list may require that.

Update:  I hadn't noticed that I had yet to add your HP bootable USB drive utility to the list.  By adding it I had to split the utility sublist into two A - M and N - Z.  Web tools will likely need the same along with the OS list.

Nem, I think you should be applouded for all the work your doing. Your doing a great job man. I have to admit, You have alot more patience then I do.

Stephen

[Nemesis]

You have alot more patience then I do.

Stephen

We'll see just how patient once I start on the Web Page version of the list.   

So far I've been doing a little reading on the subject and keep running into the ideas that a/ you should use CSS (cascading style sheets - of which I know next to nothing) and b/ that you will need to do all sorts of hacks to make CSS display properly on IE.   Since I don't use IE the temptation is not to worry about the hacks for it.  It seems that IE is not very compliant to the CSS standards.  I've also learned how to do ftp uploads using my OpenSuSE Linux, which is crucial to actually setting the page up. 

I'm not planning any great work of art for the site just functional, easy to use and easy to update.

I'll be trying to find a good book on the subject of setting up web sites this weekend.  (Between attempts to get more SETI out of one of my machines, I think I can get ~+15% from that machine and I want it!)

It is tempting to try to set up a virtual machine copy of Windows so I don't really care if it gets attacked as its just for validating the web page.  But first to get a version up and complete that is standards compliant, at least then the Firefox, Safari (Mac) and Konquerer (KDE on Linux) users can access it.  After the compliant version is feature complete I'll at least consider the hacked IE compatible version.

[Nemesis]

I'm thinking of adding a section to the list for online tutorials rather than just software.  Computer related tutorials naturally.  Tutorials on using certain programs, setting up networks, setting up web sites or hacking CSS to display properly on IE for example.

Anyone know of any such tutorials?

I also have a bunch of new links on my PDA to add to the software connections we already have once I get the current list complete and I have the time to actually check these new links.  Which won't be until after I've recreated the contributors list.  (No I haven't forgotten that list).

[Nemesis]

The contributors list is now complete so I can stop feeling guilty about deleting it by accident.  If anyone is not on it who should be please let me know and I'll check out my error and correct it.

[Nemesis]

Only the Operating Systems sublist to do now.  Then adding more links that I found in a magazine over the last few days.

[Nemesis]

I have begun the Operating Systems sublist.  I decided to divide it into 3.  One section for BSD Unix variants (done) a 2nd for Linux and a 3rd for everything else.  Each will get their own posting.  Once I have done the 3 posts I'll edit links to them into the list of sublists and into the master list.  I'll also link the 3 together.

Linux variants added.  Now the "others" list still to go pluss updating links earlier in the thread to point to them correctly.

[Nemesis]

The whole list is now updated.  I think I deserve lunch before starting on adding some of my newly found links.

[Nemesis]

Some web utilities

CSS Validation Service

Welcome to the W3C CSS Validation Service; a free service that checks Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in (X)HTML documents or standalone for conformance to W3C recommendations.

Note: Not a program but an online utility.

Markup Validation Service

This is the W3C Markup Validation Service, a free service that checks Web documents in formats like HTML and XHTML for conformance to W3C Recommendations and other standards.

Note: Not a program but an online utility.

Link Checker
Note: Not a program but an online utility that checks links in a web page.

Democracy PlayerWatch Internet TV with Democracy Player

You've probably watched hundreds of tiny videos on websites. It's tedious. Democracy Player makes video on the internet way less frustrating and way more enjoyable. You can subscribe to channels of internet video, download videos, and watch them fullscreen, one after the other, all in one application. Internet video becomes internet TV. It's free and open for everyone to watch and to broadcast.

OS: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
Open Source

Broadcast Machine

Broadcast Machine is software you install on your website to easily publish video files and create internet TV channels (video blogs, video podcasts, video RSS feeds). Broadcast Machine gives you the option of using torrent technology to reduce or eliminate bandwidth costs, even when you are posting high quality video to thousands of people. It's free, open source software, and is designed for easy installation.

OS: Windows, Mac, Linux
Open Source

JAlbum

This gallery software makes web albums of your digital images. JAlbum aims to be the easiest to use and most powerful tool in this category - and free!

With JAlbum, no extra software is needed to view the albums, -just your web browser. Unlike "server side" album scripts, JAlbum albums can be served from a plain web server without scripting support and thanks to JAlbum's built in web server, you can even share your albums straight from JAlbum. You can also share your albums on CD-ROM.

OS: Win98 - Win XP
Open Source

Coppermine - Photo Gallery

Coppermine is an easily set-up, fast, feature-rich photo gallery script with mySQL database, user management, private galleries, automatic thumbnail creation, ecard feature and a template system for easy customization to match the rest of a site.

Open Source

CreaText - XHTML Text Editor

CreaText is an HTML text editor with some basic and advanced features.

CreaText has got many functions which make creating websites easier, e.g. Tag Coloring, easy access to the Mac browsers, the change of special characters into HTML entities in realtime, an Insert menu with rapid access to all usual HTML commands, an HTML color chooser, drag & drop, and the possibility to setup HTML parameters when creating a new document.

OS: Mac OS X
Open Source

Lynx - text based web browser.

Lynx is a World Wide Web browser, just like Internet Explorer and Netscape. What makes it different is that it is a text-only browser - it does not display the graphics on web pages.

OS: Windows, Unix
Open Source

Geeklog

What is Geeklog?

Geeklog is a PHP/MySQL based application for managing dynamic web content.

"Out of the box", it is a blog engine, or a CMS with support for comments, trackbacks, multiple syndication formats, spam protection, and all the other vital features of such a system.

Accessify.com

Tools, wizards, articles and tutorials on Web Accessibility for the conscientious web developer

Onlinetools.org

This is a collection of scripts, tools and software add-ons written by Christian Heilmann for you to use, enjoy and learn from.

All of the things here are free to use for personal web sites and free resources, however, if you want to use anything for commercial purposes, please contact me so that we can haggle (bring a beard).

You are not allowed to change or resell anything you find here without my written consent. This is not me being picky, I just don't want other people to harvest what I planted or even mess up and me getting the blame. Sorry, it has happened a lot in the past.

[Nemesis]

Security Utilities

Comodo Firewall - free firewall

Unfortunately, most firewalls leak. But Comodo's Firewall is unique in that it passes all known leak tests to ensure the integrity of data entering and exiting your system. Comodo has put our firewall through all kinds of sophisticated tests to ensure our firewall is powerful enough to ward off these attacks with default settings. No other firewall has had to work this hard. Take this test yourself.

OS: Win2000 - Win XP

SoftPerfect Personal Firewall - free firewall

The SoftPerfect Personal Firewall is a free network firewall designed to protect your PC against attacks from the Internet or via a local area network. SoftPerfect Personal Firewall offers customizable security using user-defined rules for packet filtering. It works at a low level and also allows you to create rules based on non-IP protocols such as ARP.

OS: Win95 - Win XP

iSafer Winsock Firewall - free firewall

iSafer firewall is used to protected your PC against spywares, spamwares. It is also a good example for software developers to understand the basic knowledge about firewall. NOTE: Visit http://winsockfirewall.sourceforge.net to see more...

OS: Win95 - Win XP
Open Source

[Nemesis]

Utility Software

GpsDrive

GpsDrive is a car (bike, ship, plane) navigation system. GpsDrive displays your position provided from your NMEA capable GPS receiver on a zoomable map, the map file is autoselected depending of the position and prefered scale. Speech output is supported if the "festival" software is running. The maps are autoselected for best resolution depending of your position and can be downloaded from Internet. All Garmin GPS reveiver with a serial output should be usable, also other GPS receiver which supports NMEA protocol.
GpsDrive is written in C with use of the GTK+ graphic toolkit and runs with Linux and FreeBSD.

OS: Linux
Open Source

NoteTab

NoteTab is a leading-edge text and HTML editor. Winner of software industry awards since 1998, this application does it all: it easily handles a stack of huge files; lets you format text to your heart's content; does system-wide searches, and multi-line global replacements. It even corrects your spelling mistakes.

OS: Win98 - Win XP

[Nemesis]

Websites with collections of software

[/color]

thefreecountry - Free Programmers', Webmasters' and Security Resources


Tutorialized.com

There are currently 10,113 Free Tutorials in 515 categories!

Download.com

Tucows

Newfreeware

Nonags

ZDNet

Freesticky

We are primarily a source of FREE and low cost content that anyone can use to increase the appeal, usefulness, traffic and eventually the stickiness of their website.

Programming

[/color]
WinMerge

WinMerge is an Open Source visual text file differencing and merging tool for Win32 platforms. It is highly useful for determing what has changed between project versions, and then merging changes between versions.

OS: Win98 - Win XP
Open Source

The GNU Scientific Library (GSL)

The subroutines in the GNU Scientific Library are “free software”; this means that everyone is free to use them, and to redistribute them in other free programs. The library is not in the public domain; it is copyrighted and there are conditions on its distribution. These conditions are designed to permit everything that a good cooperating citizen would want to do. What is not allowed is to try to prevent others from further sharing any version of the software that they might get from you.

Open Source

Crystal Space

Crystal Space is a free (LGPL) and portable 3D Game Development Kit written in C++. It supports: true six degrees of freedom, colored lighting, lightmapped and stencil based lighting, shader support (CG, vertex programs, fragment programs, ...), mipmapping, portals, mirrors, alpha transparency, reflective surfaces, 3D sprites (frame based or with skeletal animation using cal3d animation library), procedural textures, particle systems, halos, volumetric fog, scripting (using Python, Perl, Java, or potentially other languages), 16-bit and 32-bit display support, OpenGL, and software renderer, font support (also with freetype), hierarchical transformations, physics plugin based on ODE, ... See the extensive list of features for more details.

OS: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Unix,
Open Source

The Irrlicht Engine

The Irrlicht Engine is an open source high performance realtime 3D engine written and usable in C++ and also available for .NET languages. It is completely cross-platform, using D3D, OpenGL and its own software renderer, and has all of the state-of-the-art features which can be found in commercial 3d engines.

OS: Windows, Mac, Linux
Open Source

GLBasic

If you are searching for an easy to learn, fast to write, and flexible language for programming games, then GLBasic is what you need.
GLBasic is so good because we actively develop it every day. Thus, we fix bugs quickly, implement new features on a daily basis. We are also enthusiastic game developers, so we know what you need!

    * All you need to write high performance games
    * with the easiest, most intuitive, BASIC-like language available.
    * All the commands have been chosen carefully and feature consistent, logical high level syntax, which is also very easy to learn.
    * Write a game once, then compile for Windows, PocketPC and Linux without changing the source code at all.
    * Don't waste time that you don't have, concentrate on the essentials.
    * We've written a PONG game within 30 minutes.
    * A space shooter in 2 hours.
    * A Boulderdash clone in 60 minutes. (Including drawing all the game graphics!)

OS: Win98 - Win XP
Open Source

PLIB

I (and an ever increasing band of helpers) have been spending time to build a set of OpenSource (LGPL) libraries that will permit programmers to write games and other realtime interactive applications that are 100% portable across a wide range of hardware and operating systems.

PLIB includes sound effects, music, a complete 3D engine, font rendering, a simple Windowing library, a game scripting language, a GUI, networking, 3D math library and a collection of handy utility functions. All are 100% portable across nearly all modern computing platforms. What's more, it's all available on line - and completely free. Each library component is fairly independent of the others - so if you want to use SDL, GTK, GLUT, or FLTK instead of PLIB's 'PW' windowing library, you can.

OS: Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix
Open Source

ClanLib

ClanLib is a cross platform C++ framework. Essentially the library offers a series of different functionality under a streamlined API. Its primary focus is on games, although its not limited for that usage only.
Rough Overview of ClanLib Functionality

    * Supports Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X
    * Basic cross platform runtime (threading, file I/O, etc.)
    * Template based C++ signal library (type-safe callbacks / delegates)
    * Integrated resource management
    * Sound mixer supporting wav, mikmod formats (mod/s3m/xm/..), ogg vorbis
    * XML/DOM support
    * High-level 2D graphics API supporting OpenGL and SDL as render targets
    * Batch rendering engine giving maximum performance when rendering 2D with OpenGL
    * 2D collision detection
    * 2D sprite animation support
    * Highly customizable GUI framework
    * Network library with low-level to high-level interfaces
    * Cross platform OpenGL 2.0 wrapper (target Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X at the same time)
    * Full reference manual and many overviews which goes in detail on various topics in clanlib

OS:  Windows (OGL), Mac, Linux
Open Source