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These days when people think about open source software, there's a belief that it's best suited for Linux, and to a lesser degree, Windows. What people making this assumption forget is that Apple's OS X is based on BSD (which is open source itself), and it has a number of fantastic open source apps that will run great with it out of the box.

In this piece, I will highlight some of my personal favorites, and who knows, you might find yourself making some discoveries along the way as well.

Camino

I think that most OS X users either think of using Safari or Firefox on their platform of choice. Or they're considering the use of Google Chrome, once it is released in a stable version. But did you know that there is yet another option for browsing the web that uses open source technology? Enter Camino, a browser built on Mozilla technology but in many cases, better designed for the kind of feel a Mac user is looking for. Camino is generally best known for its UI, more than being seen as significantly different than Firefox. That said, there are subtle differences that are best experienced through use rather than written explanation. In the end, it's one fantastic OS X-powered web browser.

Miro

I have been a Miro user for many years. Since the days when it was known simply as the Democracy Player, Miro has been providing a seriously superior way to enjoy video media and video delivered from multiple sources by subscription with tremendous ease. Today's Miro application brings the best visual experience to the OS X user while even making it possible to subscribe to your favorite video content. From bittorrent to direct downloads, Miro is able to make subscribing and watching a repetitively simple process. Create playlists, share your favorite video podcasts with others; in the end, Miro is generally unmatched in any of these areas. Best of all, it is totally open source.

Burn

While most people simply opt to use iTunes for burning music to their CDs, others would like to have something available that's a bit more robust for burning ISO files to disc or even just backing up files to a CD/DVD. And while not the only solution, Burn for OS X is amongst the best of them. Burn is great for creating data backups, burning ISO files for stuff such as Linux distros to CD, or even just making backups for existing discs.

Vienna

Like so other operating systems, there are a multitude of ways to subscribe to your favorite RSS feeds. This being said, not all of them are created equal. Vienna, one of my favorite open source RSS readers for OS X, provides a stellar UI, built-in browser access using the OS X Safari engine, and smart folders.

What all of this translates into is being able to easily subscribe to, manage, and sort through your RSS feeds without anything holding you back. I also like the fact that there is out of the box recognition of media enclosures. This means podcasts can be played right from iTunes as Vienna browsers the enclosures themselves. Overall, Vienna is actually the best RSS reader I have ever used on any OS, open source or otherwise.

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