|
|
|
|
|
Thursday, August 09, 2007 12:04 PM/EST
Click the image to see the list
"You get what you pay for." It's an old saying, one that typically means that if something is free, then it probably isn't worth much.
But in the world of technology, the exact opposite is often the case. Over the last 20 years many of the most innovative and useful products and technologies that we've seen are those that users and businesses could take advantage of for no upfront cost whatsoever.
And while there are some people out there who disparage free and open-source products and technologies as being copycats of commercial products (not that those don't exist), in many cases it is the free and open-source products that are breaking new ground and setting the course for other free and commercial products to follow.
With that in mind, I've put together this list of 20 free products and technologies that proved to be innovative and that ended up changing the future of technology. Some were open source, some were freeware, and some started out free, flirted with commercial models and then returned to free status. But in all cases, users of these technologies got quite a bit of value from them. In fact, they got quite a bit more than what they paid for, even if they had paid a lot more than nothing.
So take a look at my list of the Most Innovative Free Technologies, and comment below to let me know what technologies and products would make your list.
|
TrackBack
http://etech.eweek.com/cgi-bin/mte/mt-tb.cgi/11497
|
SEARCH
Review: Several new and interesting projects have been added to Google Labs.
WEB TECHNOLOGY
Review: Firefox 3 has new capabilities that will change the way that the Web is used.
|
Comments (5)
Jim- You have compiled a good list.. would be great, if you could please include some products or services on artificial Intelligence and decision making?
Posted by market research company | August 15, 2007 5:00 AM
Where is the Fidonet, and BBS in your list of free innovations, those ubiquitous starting points
that led to people talking to people with their computers and eventually became the usenet by osmosis.
They were the stepping stones to the web concept before mozzila, netscape or explorer came to be.
While I am at it, what no mention of the original pre-web application AOL's use of Geoworks as a browser interface from Dos and Apple changing from text to iconography the visual appearance of long distance computing.
Posted by john metzger | August 19, 2007 2:23 PM
I was surprised to see your inclusion of the ZIP format, but you know what, it makes sense. And it's not just a compression format, it's actually become a document/container format. Java .jar files are basically .zip files under another name (and with some additional rules on their contents); so are OpenOffice documents.
Posted by Lawrence D'Oliveiro | August 20, 2007 3:42 AM
John, great point about Fidonet. Definitely a good candidate.
Posted by Jim Rapoza | August 20, 2007 1:51 PM
I agree with the folks who added FidoNet to the list of essentails and I'll add IRC as a chat technology that is still widely used and often essential in development, support and discovery of open source, Windows, Apple and countless other things.
Posted by John Wilson | January 8, 2008 9:19 PM