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Show HN: Open-source alternatives to tools You pay for (osssoftware.org)

245 points by johnrushx ↗ HN
hey makers, I've spent the whole night to compile this list out of > winners of Product Hunt > best dev tools on DevHunt > recently active on GitHub > most internet backlinks > most mentions as "alternative to .."

Let me know if I should add anything there.

96 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 160 ms ] thread
smeej
It's not really clear to me how to use this. There are a lot of categories, but not any rhyme or reason to them that I can see. Some are languages. Others are platforms or use cases? Maybe consider having these under "filter by" multi-select drop-down menus instead of just all listed out?
squeaky-clean
Yeah I clicked C# expecting it to be about alternative software to use in a C# tool chain. But it's actually all just software that is written in C#. That would be useful if I were looking for C# projects to contribute to, but I'm not, and that doesn't seem to be the intention of the website.
johnrushx
to be honest, categories are really difficult to get right. try the "alternatives", it's better.

But I will improve categories, I'm working on it

blueferret
Impressive work here! Layout's nice & responsive.

Now and then I like looking for alternatives to the apps I use...see if someone's built something better. Happy to add another resource when I do it.

Only thing I'd request to add would be tools for documentation. You have Docusaurus already, but more options exist. I'm sure I could rustle up an idea or two if needed.

steanne
> Open-source alternatives to tools you pay for

this seems like an odd choice of phrasing. those two things are not orthagonal.

drekipus
This, I'm kinda struggling with it.

Open source doesn't mean slavery for free. We should look to encourage money for open source

tmtvl
Yes we should. Though I kinda find the "slavery" comment a bit hyperbole, I don't think there are many people who are forced under duress to work on OSS.
drekipus
My bad, I meant voluntary slavery, I don't know what the proper term is.
moron4hire
This is a good example of the sort of intentional naivete of open source developers. Most people see "free" and think "gratis", not "libre". You can argue "that's not what it means" until you're blue in the face. It doesn't matter when that's how most people treat it.
skwashd
During a quick scan of the catalog I found a few issues.

Sentry isn't open source, even after their most recent license change. The Business Source License and variants are source available, not open source.

FireCMS is built on top of Firebase, rather than being an alternative to it. It's a similar story with the Jira CLI. They're open source, but they're useless without the backend to talk to.

Plausible Analytics and Papermark are both listed twice. Rustdesk is also listed twice, once as Rustdeck.

The GIMP isn't listed under photoshop. This was a surprise omission.

Many of these projects have commercial backers who offer a paid SaaS offering. Given this is the case I'm not sure linking to SaaS product site when claiming your site offers "Open-source alternatives to tools You pay for" is the expected behaviour. I was expecting it to link to the open source code.

cqqxo4zV46cp
I’d bet a fair bit on most realistic users of this website benefiting from Sentry’s inclusion, rather than being hindered by it.

I suppose that maybe this website could be re-labelled ‘source-available’ to appease purists that actually care about this. But practically everyone won’t be affected by the fact that Sentry’s license prohibits creating a direct competitor to Sentry’s hosted service, certainly the intended audience.

toenail
> I suppose that maybe this website could be re-labelled ‘source-available’ to appease purists that actually care about this.

Huh, maybe? Words have meaning. It's not about "appeasing purists", it's about not spreading misinformation.

creesch
Bit of a tone deaf response to be honest. Not to mention that you are only responding to a very specific bit of the feedback.
SparkyMcUnicorn
> The GIMP isn't listed under photoshop. This was a surprise omission.

Photopea is listed and is not open source. To my knowledge it's not even source available.

mkesper
Llama is not open source, either, despite Meta calling it that.
andy99
Also, llama (a link to Meta's site which is effectively a roundabout way to get the model weights) is proposed as an alternative to OpenAI. Open AI offers a full API, chatgpt, etc, llama(2) is some weights, they're not really parallel alternatives. HF would be a better link, you can pay them to serve open source models I believe.
johnrushx
do you know good open source LLMs I can add?
andy99
A better name would be "Free (gratis) alternatives". The point here seems to be finding software you don't have to pay for rather than anything specifically about open source.
pydry
There is zero practical difference between "free and source available" and "open source" for 99.99% of users.

I do wonder sometimes why some people get so particular about drawing this specific distinction because it happens on so many threads. Is the freedom to run a competitor to sentry's saas using the code they wrote that coveted a freedom?

I can see why Bezos wants this, perhaps. And by extension wealthy big tech shareholders eating that profit too.... but who else?

Moreover, "Source available" (a suggested alternative) implies the software is potentially or even likely to be paid which is material difference for those 99.9% of users but is definitely not the case.

I get the sense that there is an underlying political ax being ground by gatekeeping this particular definition. I dont buy that this is about "just calling things by their name" when for non-bezos users the distinction is inconsequential.

vitiral
The difference is the freedom to modify, fix, and even fork for yourself if the need arises.
pydry
That is not the difference. You can do all of that with sentry.
ezekg
You obviously know nothing of the licenses you're discussing. It's so frustrating to see this fallacy repeated over and over. SSPL, ELv2, BUSL, and FSL are all forkable. Most even more so than GPL!
vitiral
I was referring to no license. I was referring to this statement

> There is zero practical difference between "free and source available" and "open source" for 99.99% of users.

"Free and source available" is not a license. Without a license it is copyrighted.

pydry
"Open source" is not a license either.

"Free and source available" describes a group of licenses including sentry's.

vitiral
Okay, but "open source" implies you can change and fork the code. "Free and source available" does not, even if you can in some cases.

That's literally all I said.

pydry
It sounds like you are agreeing with me that if you can do that then it's not misleading to call those licenses open source.
johnrushx
thx a lot, you've done an impressive scan. I will fix the data
tbm57
I think compiling lists of open source tools is always a nice idea, but there's some parts of this site that are a little confusing for me. What would be the open source alternative for PHP, for example, which is already open source? In general, I think it's rare that someone would be looking for an open source alternative for any programming language

I think the list of tools is valuable, it's just that it's in need of a different organization here

yewenjie
Typescript is not open source and something you pay for? And Joplin is an alternative?

Someone really knowledgeable should review and editorialize the options.

donatj
Drone is listed under CI. Drone hasn’t been truly “open source” in years. There’s an extremely limited open source core you have to compile yourself to use. Otherwise you have source-available highly restricted code.
the_common_man
Woodpecker is great
donatj
I started... Pecking at it... Before my company decreed we all move to GitHib Actions due to some deal they got
pitah1
I also had a similar idea when I built tech-diff (https://tech-diff.com/) but rather than being just a catalog of items, it shows what the feature differences are. This is what I would argue is more important when investigating alternatives.

But, this comes at the cost of the data being harder to obtain as it is usually deep within documentation or code. Maybe we can reach a feature specification of technologies sometime in the future.

bruce511
The problem with comparing two software programs is that it's less "feature check list" and more "everything subjective".

For example, say you compare a Ferrari to a Toyota. They overlap in pretty much all features. (Steering wheel, gets you from A to B, and so on.) But of course you don't choose between a ferrari and a Toyota based on a feature list.

So "here a list of cars for those who can't afford a ferrari" would be somewhat useless.

Its easy to compare say Windows to Linux from a featurelist point if view. It's much harder to quantify the non tangibles.

So sure, a list that says "x for those using y" is a useful starting point. But it's very much the tip of the iceberg. Expect to do a LOT of research, and a lot of time experimenting before you can determine if "x can replace y for my situation."

But the list is a start...

adr1an
I fully second this sentiment, but seems more like a dream... And to make the matters far more difficult, there are updates that add new features! Also, some apps claim to do something but only provide a half-working solution. Ultimately, sometimes it all boils down to install (ideally, using distrobox) and try yourself some of the top candidates. And repeat with some frequency that correlate to how important such software piece is to you...
johnrushx
good idea, I actually have one idea on how to implement this (using AI and the docs)
cognomano
Would be useful to be able to filter by multiple concepts: Charts and Javascript.
johnrushx
good idea. my main concern is that UX gets broken then. Because users forget and click another tag expecting it to switch, and suddenly see no results at all. i will think of a good UX solution for this
asymmetric
The last S in OSS already stands for software.
zenapollo
Classic RAS syndrome
smcnally
“RAS syndrome” is a good PIN number.
moron4hire
Maybe I can use it for my CAC card access.
jenoer
Atom is 6th in the (default filter) list but it is no longer maintained since 1 year (minus six days). Not sure if this should be listed as a viable alternative option.
herbst
I'd pay for atom whatever they want, vscode is a horrible alternative.
h4ch1
Could you list your gripes with VSCode vs Atom?
globular-toast
The real alternative (and what all these editors are based on) is Emacs. Take the plunge. You won't regret it.
vitiral
Or if you do regret it, try Vim :)

Both great tools

globular-toast
The only vim implementation I would use now is evil-mode for Emacs. You should try it too.
vitiral
Oh I have! Was very very nice. Got into lisp a bit, then gave it all up when something in the tower of babel broke in a subtle way and I realized I didn't need all the complexity.

Was super fun though. The experience is probably part of the reason I'm writing my own editor (in Lua).

globular-toast
Isn't there a community maintained version? I don't see how a truly open source project could disappear overnight. It's a text editor. It's not trying to keep up with ever-changing standards so it's not going to just break.
axelthegerman
It has almost 1000 open issues and dozens of dependcy update PRs.

It's true that some small software projects can easily live on without much maintenance for a long time, a text editor is no small feat.

"Not going to just break" is a pretty low bar for most things, especially software.

Now, maintenance doesn't necessarily mean lots of code changes but at least some attention and oversight seems critical for anything of the slightest significance

JCharante
> I don't see how a truly open source project could disappear overnight.

well it was developed mainly by Github so all it takes is reallocating devs away from the project and the progress just halts

johnrushx
thx for mentioning it. What would be a good replacement, you know any?
osener
Looks like it is full of VC funded “open” SaaS/tools that are often very hard to self host and the company doesn’t respond to contributions.

Such lists should focus on projects with more open governance and that have open source in their culture instead of just license of some of their modules IMO.

goodpoint
I think you are looking for Free Software.
intelVISA
Those VC funded "open" SaaS tools are the ultimate grift.
johnrushx
I don't disagree. Can you list better tools?

I've descrived the process of picking the tools. If you know a better one, pls tell me

ezekg
"It sucks that open source isn't funded! Maintainers need to be compensated for their hard work!"

"No, not like that!"

Dx5IQ
Are the stars on the website just made up?

I also find the phrasing rather odd. The open source movement is about "free as in speech, not beer".

Maybe it's meant to list "free alternatives" which is completely valid thing to do.

bregma
The Free Software movement is about "free as in speech, not as in beer" and control by the end user. The Open Source Software movement is about value leveraging in the marketplace for the profit of the vendor or distributor.

This list is about stuff you can get without paying for it ("free as in beer").

BaudouinVH
Was something wrong with https://free-for.dev ?
tarellel
IMO it looks like a lot of the tools listed under free-for are SaSS products with free demos or free limited accounts. Rather than full on OpenSource Alternatives.

An example of this is under issue tracking basecamp is listed. Or under CMS there’s DatoCMS.

JonChesterfield
Open source software software doesn't list open source software, so that's a bit weird.

Semi-unrelated, it's curious how many projects listed in the sibling comments used to be open source and now aren't. Almost like people are routinely using open source to establish market share then changing to proprietary to try to exploit said market share.

johnrushx
unfortunately many use OSS as a marketing trick. If you see any tool from the list that's not OSS anymore, let me know
zakokor
Add Keycloak in Authentication category
KomoD
The list has duplicates, like Plausible is in there twice.
fullstackchris
visual studio is open source: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode

i remember using their monaco editor as well (https://github.com/microsoft/monaco-editor), a really powerful editor & the very same used by VS Code (i think you can even get at the AST for TypeScript, for example, in the browser if you poke around deep enough)

crazy cool stuff, and most definitely OSS!!!

tmtvl
Visual Studio /= VS Code, VSC may be (partially?) OSS, but I don't think VS is.
m3nu
Open source also needs a business model to be sustainable. So I'm not a fan of doing price comparisons with some similar commercial SaaS. Competing on control, transparency, community, flexibility and support will be better long-term.

At least that's my vision for http://pikapods.com, which allows for convenient FOSS hosting, while sharing revenue with the original project and avoiding any lock-in.

axelthegerman
Great project!

Unfortunately pikapods itself doesn't seem to be open source?

I'd love to be able to throw it on my own VPS but appreciate the hosted option as well - very smooth experience when I tried it

JCharante
Atom is on this list... You might not want to include discontinued projects on this sleep
SergeAx
This is a fantastic project. Thank you for your effort!

From the comments here, I see one of the ways to improve it: currently, new projects are supposed to be added by their authors. Please consider allowing more community input on the next iteration: the ability to add projects, propose changes, etc.

The greatness of FOSS lies in its community.

I myself can recommend Outline[1] as an excellent self-hosted alternative to Notion and BaseRow as an alternative to AirTable.