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At the end of every year I always like to donate some small amount of money to the open source projects I spend the most time using. If everyone donated even 1/10th of the money free software saved them each year to the projects that they use, I have no doubt that a lot more open source software would exist today.



Last week was thanksgiving in the United States, so it feels like an appropriate time to talk about some of the open source projects that I am thankful for this year that I am likely to contribute to.

Open Broadcast Software (OBS)

A lot of my work recently has been producing pre-recorded video content as well as streaming it live to Twitch.tv. Open Broadcast Software allows me to easily do both of these things. OBS is one of the first fully featured alternatives to the closed source XSplit software which costs around 60 USD / year to license. In addition to being open source, OBS also supports OSX and Linux in addition to Windows, while XSplit only supports Windows.

Pinta Image Editor

Pinta is a simple image editor. While it has less features than something like GIMP or Photoshop, this is by design. Less is more sometimes. Many of the features those more advanced tools offer I personally have no need for. Pinta is supported on Linux, Windows, OSX, and even BSD variants.

Openshot Video Editor

I have not spent a lot of time working with closed source video editors, so I cannot make direct comparisons – but I do know Openshot does everything I need from a video editor. Clipping up video segments, adding on screen text, adding / removing audio, and smooth transitions are all things I have used Openshot to do this year. The current version of Openshot only supports Linux, but the 2.0 version will feature OSX and Windows support as well.

Glipper Clipboard Manager

A clipboard manager is a tool that once you get used to using you cannot live without. Essentially what a clipboard manager does is keep track of the last 20~ or so lines of text you have copied, so you can easily jump back to one previously selected. For someone like myself who does a lot of writing that includes in line context links, a tool like this is a great time saver. Glipper is a Linux only tool that will function on any desktop that supports a systray spec. The function I like most about it is that you can easily call it up with a defined hotkey.

Wrapping Up

While I use a number of different open source tools every month, these are a few of the one I use almost daily. If there are any open source projects that help make your life easier I would encourage you to contribute at least some small amount to them. Even something as little as 5 USD would go a long way if everyone who uses a project contributes that much.

Cheers,

~Jeff Hoogland