True on both counts. Freemind is strictly a mindmap implementation program, and mindmaps only have one parent per child. To complement for this, they have associations among items in different areas of the map, i.e. 'cousins'. As far as I know in Freemind such items can't be identical, i.e. clones of each other, in which case they would in fact have multiple parents.

The most versatile program I can think of in these terms is Personal Brain. Inspiration is another popular program that supports concept maps as well (along with Cmap Tools which was already suggested) that have no such limitations.

The main reason for suggesting that you don't focus on Xmind is popularity and accessibility. MindManager is certainly expensive but it's also the most popular, judging by the available third party add-ins. Freemind is completely free, so no one would mind installing it if the don't have it. Xmind is a recent entry in a market full of lesser known contenders. See the links at left in http://mindmapping.typepad.com/ to get an idea of what I am talking about.

Pierre Paul Landry wrote:

>Does anyone know if FreeMind supports multiple parents ?
>Does FreeMind have as many map types as XMind ?

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I do not believe
FreeMind supports multiple parents, and as far as I am aware FM supports only one type
of map. While I admire FreeMind, it doesn't compare to XMind in terms of functions.

Cheers
alx