What is a good word processor download that is free?

Open Office

@SuperMouse I second that

Google docs. You don’t even have to download it. Just access thru a google account.

Why is Open Office free?

Open Office works good. Google documents is good if you are working on different computers and do not want to carry around discs or memory sticks.

@davidbetterman Yes, Open Office is free.

My question was why is it free.

@davidbetterman Open Office is free because it is open source. Hence the name ’’Open Office’

I understand that. Why do they offer it for free? Is it safe to download.

@davidbetterman Its very safe to download. The reason its free is because its open source as mentioned above, just like the various linux variants. Programmers work together for free to make good programs such as open office out of the good of their hearts. Free programs/open source programs are the future of computing.

I don’t want to give you a history lecture about open source software. Not intending to sound like a jerk there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software

And yes it is safe to download.

Thanks. I just finished reading up on the history lesson.

I love Open Office, you can find a lot of free templets to use with it.

Why are people suspicious of Open Source software?

Abiword is a lightweight alternative to Open Office.

NeoOffice is excellent open-source office software for you mac users.

I heart Open Office, but if you’re writing a novel specifically there are a number of dedicated programs for that. There’s an free program I’ve heard nice things about called yWriter. Another option is Storybook, which is open-source. I’m not a Windows user, so I don’t know the specifics of either, but they seem to be commonly used.

Dedicated novel-writing software ends up making life so much easier than just using Microsoft Word, honestly.

@kyanblue Now this is sounding more promising. Thanks!

Like @Ivan said, Abiword is a very nice and simple word processor. I highly recommend it.