To software geeks, the arrival of summer can only mean one thing: Google’s Summer of Code returns. Now in its fourth year, Google is expecting more than 1,100 students and 175 open source projects to take part in the festivities. In today’s edition of the Free Line, we cover four projects that are choosing to spend their summer with Google.

Anyone who has taken a high school journalism class is familiar with the desktop publishing app QuarkXpress. It’s versatile, it’s powerful… and it’s as easy to use as…a Boeing 737. For an easier alternative, try Scribus. While it contains most of the tools that QuarkXpress does, Scribus is one thing the name brand competition is not: user friendly. Scribus is available for most major operating systems — and it’s free.

As many loyal viewers of the Free Line know, OpenOffice is a great alternative to the big name word processing suites produced by Microsoft and Apple. But what if you want an alternative to the alternative? If this is the case, then AbiWord is for you. AbiWord does one thing – word processing – but it does it well. Small, lightweight and very easy to use, AbiWord is a good choice for those who dislike OpenOffice, but loathe the competition even more. And by the way, AbiWord was used in the creation of today’s Free Line Report.

Being creative is great and all, but what if you just want to leave the house? Don’t worry. Open source programmers have that covered as well. OpenStreetMap is is kind of like Google Maps, and operates under a Creative Commons license. This guide is actually created by its users. Armed with everything from GPS devices to pen and paper, participants in the project track, photograph, and write about everything they come across. These journeys, in turn, are added to the OpenStreetMap database.

And finally, if you like the idea of unwinding and have a few of those old LucasArts point-and-click adventure games lying around, then ScummVM is certainly for you. Created by uTorrent creator Ludvig Strigeus, ScummVM is intended to breathe new life into the forgotten classics like Day of the Tentacle and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Perhaps the best part is that it will run on most anything, from Windows XP to the iPhone. But before you run off to play Monkey Island 3, a word of warning: while the emulator might be free, most of the games are not. Go to ScummVM for a world class emulator, but go to thrift stores or eBay for the games themselves.