by Swati Bansal

The market is flooded with several products and it does gonna really difficult for all of us to select best from the wide choice available now days. There is no as such monopoly in any domain and each and every manufacturer has been trying to gain larger market share as compared with others. Customers always look forward for the functionality to customize software that suit their specific needs and requirements. That’s why open source software’s have become a big hit in the market. Open source software’s provide the user complete control over the software and anyone who has about an average knowledge in programming can write and implement this code. Lots of websites and posts have been there, where users share their codes. This is enough evident that open source software’s are highly popular among crowd. I have also studied a lot on same and prepared a list of most famous open source tools, widely recommended by programmers, they are:

1. Eclipse – It is a Java based software that comes with Java Development Tools and a compiler. Its efficiency can be raised by integrating plug-ins and is widely used with development toolkits for other programming languages.
2. Aptana – It is also a Java based, cross platform development tool used to design Ajax applications. It can also be used to debug codes in JavaScript, HTML and CSS languages.
3. Quanta Plus – It renders the user with a very rich web development environment to design the best architectural foundations. In addition, it is mainly used to create designs that are efficient and provide the user with maximum extensibility.
4. MagicDraw – It is especially designed for business analysts, software analysts, programmers, documentation writers and QA engineers. It provides teamwork support and is best suited for analysis and design of Object Oriented systems. It is also the best code engineering scheme available and is also used for database modeling.
5. JEdit – It is a professional programmer’s text editor available with several plug-ins that come handy for various applications. It is compatible with major operating systems such as Windows, Mac OS X, OS/2, UNIX and VMS.
6. GIMP – It is an image manipulation program that serves as a replacement for Photoshop. Though the functionality of GIMP is lesser than Photoshop, it is the best free software available. It generally comes installed in many Linux distros and is also available in Windows.
7. Amaya – It is web editor software, which grants you to directly update documents online. They are equipped with remote access and editing features and were initially used as a HTML+CSS style sheet editor. Newer versions are adapted to support XTML applications such as XHTML family, MathML and SVG.
8. Artweaver – It is an open source application that is used for creative painting. It offers the user with all the artistic effects which you will need. It can be used to create sketches from photos and allows the user to experiment.
9. WinSCP – It is an open source file transfer application that is used to transfer files in a secure fashion between a local and a remote computer. Also, it serves as an open source SFTP and FTP client for Windows and offers basic file handling facility.
10. CyberDuck – It is an open source File Transfer Protocol and SSH Secure File Transfer Protocol browser which comes with an open source license and is easy to use. It is integrated with several external editors and provides support for MAC OS X technologies such as Spotlight, Bonjour, the Keychain and AppleScript.
11. DBDesigner 4 – It is a visual database design system that integrates functions such as design, modeling, creation and maintenance into a single platform. It is simple to use and comes with several professional features to help you design the database efficiently.
12. Clay – It is usually used as a plug-in in the eclipse environment and has an intuitive user interface which helps create database models graphically. It also provides the user with the facility to create a database model by reverse engineering an existing database.
13. Paint.net – It is simpler and can give Photoshop a run for its money. It comes with many layers, special effects and all the standard features that any image manipulation application should have. The file is small and hence is very efficient.
14. Dia – It is a tool, which helps you in creating illustrations for formal and informal purposes. You can create flow charts, network diagrams, relationship diagrams etc and is inspired by the Windows commercial program Visio.
15. ImageMagick - It is less widely known image manipulation software that is all you need for image processing. It provides the user with the facility to create, edit and compose bitmap images. It can also decipher different formats and can be used for converting into different formats. It also has features such as image flip, rotate, scale, shear, adjust image colors etc.
16. Fontstruct – It is a tool, which creates font out of geometrical shapes. The font appears is made up of a pile of geometrical shapes and is compatible with Windows or Mac.
17. Scrumy – It is one of the most intuitive and effective ways to handle a Scrum management project. It offers the users several features such as multiple sprints, burn down charts and daily snapshots.
18. ColorJack – It is used to create newer colors. It’s an online color generation scheme that is widely used by graphic designers, architects and interior designers.
19. Whats its color – It is an image analysis tool that provides you with the primary and secondary dominant colors that are present in the image. It also provides you with a list of the top ten colors that are present in the image.

All across the online world, open source codes are easily available and their ease of attainment made them so popular amongst users. If you also have good programming skills, you too can be a part of open source community and contribute, share with other users.