A few weeks ago, the Mozilla Foundation released Mozilla Firefox 1.0. For those of you unfamiliar with Firefox, it is the lightweight version of Mozilla, which is a free and complete replacement for the Internet Explorer Web browser. It is just one of many pieces of free software available today.

Iowa State should take note. With university funding constantly on the decline, departments should be investigating as many ways as possible to cut costs — especially those that don’t also cut service.

Enter free software produced by the “open source” community. One relatively simple place to start, for many departments, would be replacing Internet Explorer with Mozilla or Firefox. But why, if they are both free? Anyone who has seriously worked with computers knows that Microsoft products are pitifully insecure. In other words, running them is a financial liability. Moving to Mozilla or Firefox would save departments money down the road when the next Internet Explorer worm causes downtime and data losses for its users.

Of course, price isn’t the only factor in determining the best piece of software for a particular purpose. One also has to take into account features, stability and the needs of the users. Fortunately, Mozilla (and its sidekick, Firefox) perform very well and are easy to use. Both browsers have a few nice features of their own, giving them another edge over Internet Explorer.

First, Mozilla has a brilliant feature called tabbed browsing, which enables the user to have many different Web pages open in just one browser window. The Web pages are neatly kept separate in tabs intuitively located underneath the URL bar. These tabs are given the titles of their respective Web pages, making navigation among them easy. Simply put, tabbed browsing is a very clean and intuitive way to organize multiple windows.

Another great feature is Mozilla’s built-in popup blocker. Imagine having a telemarketer call your house whenever you want to view a Web page. What a joke! That is how Internet Explorer operates, but not Mozilla — it blocks pop-ups automatically.

Otherwise, it’s a pretty solid browser all around. It certainly beats Internet Explorer, and most departments should have no reason to stick with Microsoft’s liability-ware. Both alternatives can be freely downloaded from mozilla.org.

Another great piece of free software is called The GIMP. It doesn’t do everything that its expensive competitor Adobe Photoshop does, but, for practical purposes, the two are functionally equivalent. Academic Information Technology sells the latest version of Photoshop to departments for $137, which is well below Adobe’s standard price, but still $137 more than it is worth for most people. If departments with multiple copies of Photoshop moved to The GIMP, the money saved could be put toward other expenses without sacrificing functionality.

There is a lot of free software for the desktop, but there is infinitely more — and of even higher quality — for the servers that power the ISU network.

According to Netcraft, which is the most authoritative voice on Web server marketshare, the 12 most reliable Web servers at Iowa State all run freely downloadable software. Why are any departments actually paying money for this stuff? Some of them will invariably need a particular commercial package, but the vast majority don’t. If free software is the most reliable, the choice is easy.

People responsible for making software purchases should make it a priority to research free alternatives to costly pieces of software that needlessly drain available funds.

They owe it to taxpayers, to employees and, most of all, to students.