open new terminal tab in the same directory with the active tab In GNOME Terminal of Ubuntu when you open a new tab the new shell will automatically start you in the current working directory of the active tab shell.

E.g. if in the active tab shell I am on ~/myproject and I open a new tab, the new shell will start on ~/myproject too.

As you can guess, this is very convenient when you work deep in the directory hierarchy.

Can I configure the OSX terminal to have this behaviour? 

If not, is there any free (cocoa) terminal that does this?
You may use iTerm2 and just select in preferences to "reuse previous tab's directory"