Generally, “open source” refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for use and/or modification from its original design. Open-source code is typically a collaborative effort where programmers improve upon the source code and share the changes within the community so that other members can help improve it further. Open source software is free. Some organizations have capitalized off of providing support and modification services for open source software such as RedHat, Inc.
Availability: Labs | Download
Comparable: yEd Graph Editor
Gephi is an open-source visualization and exploration software for graphs and networks. The software can be used for exploratory data analysis, link analysis, social network analysis, and biological network analysis. Users can interact with the representation and manipulate the structures, shapes, and colors to reveal patterns. View Gephi’s full features here.
SOFA Statistics is an open-source statistical package, with an emphasis on ease of use, learn as you go, and beautiful output. The name stands for Statistics Open For All. It has a graphical user interface and can connect directly to MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MS Access (mdb), Microsoft SQL Server, and CUBRID. Data can also be imported from CSV and Tab-Separated files or spreadsheets (Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice.org Calc, Gnumeric, Google Docs). The main statistical tests available are Independent and Paired t-tests, Wilcoxon signed ranks, Mann–Whitney U, Pearson’s chi squared, Kruskal Wallis H, one-way ANOVA, Spearman’s R, and Pearson’s R. Nested tables can be produced with row and column percentages, totals, sd, mean, median, lower and upper quartiles, and sum. Simple but dynamic bar charts (freq or means), clustered bar charts (freq or means), pie charts, single or multiple line charts (freq or means), area charts (freq or means), histograms, scatterplots, and box and whisker plots are available. It is also possible to create chart series.
Installation packages are available for several Operating Systems such as Microsoft Windows, Ubuntu,ArchLinux, Linux Mint, and Mac OS X (Leopard upwards).
SOFA Statistics is written in Python, and the widget toolkit used is wxPython. The statistical analyses are based on functions available through the Scipy stats module. Analysis and reporting can be automated using Python scripts – either exported directly from SOFA Statistics or manually written.
Availability: Free Download
Comparable: SAS, SPSS, Stata
Past is free software for scientific data analysis, with functions for data manipulation, plotting, univariate and multivariate statistics, ecological analysis, time series and spatial analysis, morphometrics and stratigraphy.
Past went through a complete redesign in 2013.
Past works under most versions of Windows, and a beta version for Mac is available below.