I have been using free (as in "freedom") software for over a decade. It has become a primary means for me and for many of my students. Apart from its low/no cost, it tends to provide unique functionality and, through source code availability, unrivaled (unrivalable?) flexibility for the user. There are now thousands of high-quality software tools available. Indeed, the free software movement is now a force of nature. In the future, there will likely be nothing else. The days of shrink-wrapped boxes with 4 DVD's are coming to an end as networks create new models of sharing and distribultion and the enforcement of the ownership of ideas becomes both futile and unproductive (as well as socially self-destructive).

Of the many thousands of available tools, several stand out for my own work. Below is a list of these programs, included as a resource for other composers as well as a public display of gratitude to their authors. Without their hard work and skill I would not be making music with computers. This list is by no means complete, just the highlights:

GNU/Linux operating system (Fedora, Ubuntu, and Mandriva, in particular)

PlanetCCRMA (the best audio distribution on the "planet")

PureData (PD) by Miller Puckette

Csound and Cecilia graphical front end

Score11 (Csound event generator) by Alec Brinkman

Cecilia Csound front end and uber-app

Audacity soundfile editor

AudioMove high-quality audio conversion

Ardour Digital Audio Workstation by Paul Davis (and many others)

JACK audio connection kit by Paul Davis (and many others)

JACK ultils (jack.*) by Rohan Drape

SuperCollider by James McCartney

PVC phase vocoder programs by Paul Koonce

Sndtools from the Princeton Soundlab

Praat spectral analysis and high-resolution display/printing

GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)

Inkscape SVG graphics, Illustrator/Freehand replacement

Drupal CMS by Dries Buytaert (and many others)

FFMpeg/Mplayer audio/video encoder/converter

Mplayer video and audio player

VLC video player and streaming

Handbrake DVD conversion and compression