Yes, Open Source is Great for Educators

Open Source is free software that anyone can download for free. But, it's more--it involves giving away code and a community that works, edits, preserves and constantly improves on the project. Wikipedia notes that open source software has to have the following requirements:
the freedom to run the program, for any purpose; the freedom to study how the program works; and modify it (access to the source code is a precondition for this); the freedom to redistribute copies; the freedom to improve the program, and release the improvements to the public. One of my favorite sites to find open source software is:
http://opensourcemac.org which lists the best stuff for Mac. I've never used Juice before, but I'm eager to try it for podcasting. Of course, Firefox is amazing as is Cyberduck for FTPing files. I haven't looked at this site for about six months, but I can see that they've added a whole section on Education which features Moodle among others. If you don't want to purchase expensive software for a classroom or district, the best way to go is open source. I like the above site the best because it has simple downloadable instructions, clear graphics and easy-to-understand categories of what the software is and does. For students, I could see downloading any of the word processing programs as well as Audacity-a sound recording tool or Freemind which looks like Evernote for taking notes. There are also editing clients, wifi finders, protecting your laptop with an alarm and much more. While this page shows you open source projects that are stable, it is clear that the website is updated frequently by open source developers to showcase their wares. To quote the opensourcemac.org page, "Note to software creators: first of all, thanks so much for making free, open-source software-- we love you."