One way to offset the start-up cost of your niche blog business is to search for and use free software.  In today’s fast-paced environment, it’s crucial to have your blog run on auto pilot that is, set up systems that will allow your computer to be your second employee in the early stages to maximize your output as well as your input.

In the world of free software, there are several thousand free, legal Windows and DOS progams that date back to the early 1980s available for use in your business.  Today, there are free software directory - free software foundation whose aim is to make free software a matter of liberty, not price.

In this context, free is seen in much the same way that “free speech” is viewed, not as in “free beer”.  It is a matter of the users’ freedom to run a program, copy, distribute copies so you can help your friends, study how the program works, change and improve the software and release your improvements to the public so that the community at large can benefit.

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For a new business, free software developers or access to open source code is a precondition to being able to improve or adapt the software to suit your business needs and this can come be accomplished at a relatively low cost.

There is a widely held view that free software is making rapid progress at infiltrating the territory that is currently dominated by Microsoft. Free software like Linux and Firefox have become two main challengers to the Microsoft’s empire.  To coin a CNN phrase, it’s keeping them honest.

Some major personalities in free software include Richard Stallman founder of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project, Linus Torvalds, initial author and top maintainer of Linux kernel, Larry Wall, author of the popular Perl language, Eric Raymond, author of the famous paper The Cathedral and the Bazaar, responsible for the popularization of the name Open Source amongst others.