FreeMind is a free mind mapping software, licenced under GPL - GNU General Public License written in Java. It is a high productivity tool for Windows / Linux / BSD / Mac OS X which can be used for software development and prototyping also.
You are free to use FreeMind to whatever you want without paying for that, but any code derived from current FreeMind's code must also be licenced under GPL. FreeMind is also an open source software. The recent development has hopefully turned it into a high productivity tool, with faster operation and navigation than MindManager because of one-click "fold / unfold" and "follow link" operations.
Some uses of FreeMind
Current users of FreeMind can keep track of projects, including subtasks, state of subtasks and time recording. They can create a project workplace, including links to necessary files, executables, source of information and of course information, or create a workplace for internet research using Google or other sources.
Collect small or middle sized notes with links on some area which expands as needed. Such a collection of notes is sometimes called knowledge base. Use FreeMind for essay writing and brainstorming, using colors to show which essays are open, completed, not yet started etc, using size of nodes to indicate size of essays. Now you can have one map for all essays and move parts of some essays to other when it seems appropriate.
Apart from other things, FreeMind supports fully functional following of HTML links stored in the nodes, folding which is its essential property, fast one click navigation, undo, smart Drag'n Drop, smart copying and pasting into, including pasting of links from HTML or structuring the pasted content on the basis of the number of leading spaces in a line; pasting of lists of selected files. Smart copying and pasting from, including plain text and RTF (MS Wordpad, MS Word, MS Outlook messages).
It can export of map to HTML, with folding (see example here) and supports LATEX via HotEqn. See more details in Freemind development tree.
FreeMind runs fine under Windows/Linux/BSD/Mac OS X.
- For a windows portable installation, download "freemind-bin-max-0.9.0_RC_6.zip" and extract it into a folder of your choice. Then run "FreeMind.exe".
- For installation info on Linux / Mac OS X please check out our related links above.