title: Are there free, low cost, or open source tools for matching name/address data?
body: <p>This question is related to <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46007/tools-for-matching-name-address-data">Tools for matching name/address data</a>. There is a number commercial tools provided by SAS, Oracle, Microsoft, etc., that allow to de-duplicate or merging names of individuals or companies coming from multiple sources.</p>
  
  <p>However, after reading the answers to the question mentioned before, I wondered why a seemingly interesting problem didn't receive any answers mentioning open source projects that could tackle the problem. </p>
  
  <p>Are you aware of any open source projects or algorithms to implement the so called "record linking", "record merging", or "clustering"?</p>