Free Mind
FreeMind by Jörg Müller and a team of contributors is an open source mind mapping tool written in Java. It is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
The package makes Buzan style mind maps with some repositioning of nodes and a variety of symbols. You can ‘fold’ nodes with a mouse click and insert a new node at the currently selected node by pressing the Ins button on the keyboard. FreeMind 0.8.1 (the current Windows release) can add notes to nodes. The only format that seems to export notes with the nodes is the OpenOffice Writer export format, and this produces an .sxw file. The resulting file gives an error when importing into OpenOffice 3.1, however the map does load as an outline view with the notes in place.
Because FreeMind is written in Java, I’m hoping I can get a copy to run off a USB stick on IT room student computers at College. That way, we can have students producing mind maps.