Independence from Proprietary Publishing Systems?

On July 4th, Journal Register Company declared independence from proprietary publishing systems by publishing and distributing its 18 daily newspapers, both online and in print, using only free web-based tools. The company started the Ben Franklin Project that “not only proves that websites and newspapers can be freed from the restraints of legacy, proprietary publishing systems, but also heralds the potential of an open and transparent news gathering process.” I really like the list of free tools on the project site. It’s worth checking out. I’m adding them to my own list of free tools collected over the years.