Open yourself to open-source software.

 

For most computing tasks, you can probably find three or four programs, many of them free, to do the job. So how do you choose only one? Simplicity and features matter, but it’s also worth looking to see which programs are “open source”--that is, anybody can download, read and rewrite the source code that makes them tick. (The software’s Web site or its license will usually state these rights upfront.) You don’t have to be a programmer to benefit from that freedom: Open-source programs often get security fixes and other improvements faster than their commercial counterparts--compare, for instance, the progress of Mozilla Firefox versus Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. And while companies may shelve programs that don’t meet sales goals, an open-source program can stay alive as long as enough developers find it a sufficiently interesting project.

-- Rob Pegoraro, Consumer Technology Columnist