Programming today can be a hard game to play, especially when on the table are open systems, heterogeneous hardware and little money. This paper attempts to explore what can free technology bring to the world of distributed computing, exposing the recent developments around Tcl and Python. Complete programming solutions capable of facing the challenges associated with modern applications (platform independent GUI, distributed processing, Web interface, network objects, architecture neutral code) are identified and briefly discussed.
The paper focuses on technologies built around or associated with Tcl and Python, as these are the only mature languages/environments currently available with a free licensing policy. Other solutions which can be used to some extent for free but do not have a free license, including Sun's Java and Lucent's Limbo, are also referenced.