Show HN: A directory of open source alternatives to proprietary software

piotrkulpinski · 2024-03-08T09:21:15.000Z

Hi, Piotr hereI was collecting nice open-source companies for quite some time now. Mostly to take some inspiration and learn from their code.Last week, I though it would be fun to learn this Astro thing everyone's talking about. So I thought building a directory website out of this collection was pretty good idea.After 2 days of building, OpenAlternative was born. It's a community driven list of open source alternatives to proprietary software and applications.Enjoy and thank you for your support!

gottoupvote 2 years ago |

There's also https://alternativeto.net/, tagged with licencing model

blooalien 2 years ago | |

Great site! That one's been my "go-to" site for this need for many years now. Was especially helpful back when I was new to Linux.

npteljes 2 years ago | |

This was my jam when I switched to Linux, many years ago.

I love it that they updated with pro-contra comments. As software are usually not drop-in replacements to one another, you can learn a lot about the differences before switching. I like it that they also include descriptions, general comments, license and screenshots.

KomoD 2 years ago | |

Personally don't like this one. I don't like the design of the site.

If I'm at a page listing the alternatives, such as https://alternativeto.net/software/mtr

It doesn't have direct links to the alternatives, if you hover over an alternative it shows a "copy link" icon, but that just goes to the same page you are already on, instead you have to press into the alternative's page and scroll until you see a "official links" section

andix 2 years ago |

A lot of the software on this list is "freemium" open source. For example Strapi and SuperTokens are open source. But require a paid plan/license when growing the application to a bigger scale, because you are going to need their paid features at some point.

JonChesterfield 2 years ago | |

Would "freemium" mean "currently trying to leverage free labour from external developers while gaining traction, at which point we'll switch to closed source with an abandonware 'free' version in order to extort companies who have found themselves with vendor lock into what they thought was free software but actually isn't"?

andix 2 years ago | | |

That's very often the path forward. The community usually doesn't invest a lot into those projects, so they rarely get forked into a community driven version. Some projects like that are also a minefield, because they mix code with different licenses in one repository.

piotrkulpinski 2 years ago | |

Exactly! That was kind of the point of this to pick freemium software which gives me more confidence of the future of the project in oppose to free open-source without a proper business model.

andix 2 years ago | | |

I don't agree that this model of open source software has a positive impact on the quality and future of the open source core. Usually the open source part gets less and less usable and lacks more and more documentation. It also scares off external contributors.

piotrkulpinski 2 years ago | | |

I think both models have some space in the open source community. You can still learn and get value from a commercial product even if they only share the source code.

irusensei 2 years ago |

I like this. Sadly most alternative sites are a cesspool of intrusive ads and popups while the actual information seems suspiciously shallow and canned. Human curated information would be the best.

JonChesterfield 2 years ago | |

I'm still looking for a "search", but have already found the link to add my adverts to the site via email, with nice form set up with subject "Advertise on OpenAlternative". So I'd say that's probably the game plan here.

colesantiago 2 years ago | | |

That's unfortunate, so it looks like OpenAlternative will also succumb to the same fate of other alternative software sites.

More ads.

chrismarlow9 2 years ago | | |

Do you have an alternative source of revenue to suggest? It might be good to catch the site owner early while it's still small to get your suggestion in.

I mean if they're making direct deals with other businesses instead of just throwing up AdSense I don't really see the problem.

JonChesterfield 2 years ago | | |

What's the running cost of a static html page? If it's below $10 for the life of the site, maybe it doesn't need a revenue stream.

nindalf 2 years ago | | |

Honestly, a static site that accepted pull requests would cost nothing. Free code hosting on GitHub and page hosting on GitHub Pages or Cloudflare Pages. Literally $0, forever.

It does take time and effort to review pull requests, but there are no $ costs involved.

squarefoot 2 years ago | | |

Making advertising very specific, small, essential and not obtrusive, for example restricting ads on each products only to businesses offering services related to that product, I mean not a similar product but that exact one. Imagine searching for a software or library that does X, then on the product/project page there's a small area showing someone/some company offering services (install, customization, maintenance, etc) for the very same product: one per line, no unnecessary graphics or animation, just plain old links, complete with verified customers feedback. I'm sure, albeit not perfect, this would reassure many potential users, including companies, concerned abut the bus factor or other similar problems that sometime discourage the use of Open Source software.

colesantiago 2 years ago | | |

Many sites like Open Alternative do just well with asking for donations and patreon.

abass 2 years ago | |

Totally, seeing that heavily for sites like G2, Capterra and others. Have been trying to build something more meaningful (going more deep on information) although it's just taking years to build out. It's definitely a grind, but it stems from just loving software: https://efficient.app + https://stacks.efficient.app

fermigier 2 years ago |

Also https://github.com/sfermigier/awesome-foss-alternatives (made by me).

disambiguation 2 years ago | |

another great resource similar to your list: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

Ennea 2 years ago | |

You should add Zim [1] to the "Personal Knowledge Management" section :)

[1] https://zim-wiki.org

mtillman 2 years ago | |

It’s the one I use. Thanks

hjgraca 2 years ago |

There is already https://www.opensourcealternative.to/, what is the value proposition of your site?

piotrkulpinski 2 years ago | |

Yes, indeed. I didn't know this site until I launched mine, but it seems to me they're just listing all of the popular open source projects.

I've tried to mostly curate the projects that are actively maintained, and have some sort of hosted, paid alternative. This gives you more confidence, that the app will be maintained as they're making money out of it.

JonChesterfield 2 years ago | | |

You consider it a good sign that the project is charging money for its use. Others consider that a sign that it's going to become increasingly customer hostile on a short enough timeframe that you don't want to go anywhere near it.

Kye 2 years ago | | |

Ardour charges for Windows builds and has for a long time. It's also the only open source DAW I consider remotely comparable to proprietary options.

sloowm 2 years ago | |

It looks like this page is further along indeed. First mistake I see on this page is that Home Assistant is called "Core" which is just the name of the core repo.

The thing both projects do that I don't think is useful is state that the project is open source in each description and push out the actual description of what the project does.

In general if I'm looking for open source alternatives I'm mostly interested in projects that are well maintained and are big enough to stay that way. If there is a website that is able to somewhat make this distinction it can have real value.

piotrkulpinski 2 years ago | | |

That's what I was trying to achieve. You can find information like latest commit date which can indicate that the projects is actively maintained. Plus, I picked mostly hosted, freemium applications which have incentives to keep the software up to date and maintained.

As pre your comment about descriptions, I took them directly from the repositories where most of them brag about being "open source". That could be a good idea to modify that to me more informative.

nonrandomstring 2 years ago |

Good work.

I collect and recommend catalogues like this to clients because an angle some people miss is how alternatives help security. They fall at the first hurdle by thinking that Microsoft, Google or whatever are the only solutions. Or thinking that popularity tracks security. But lack of maneuverability is a key weakness in any defensive position and diversity is a hugely overlooked factor in resilience and security engineering.

xmeadow 2 years ago |

Lots of perfect examples on this page why OpenSource on its own is no benefit for the customer.

rglullis 2 years ago | |

"On its own", your argument is a tired dismissal made by people can not see beyond their most immediate own needs.

bun_terminator 2 years ago |

I'm having an "am I getting old?" moment by barely knowing anything on that list, and not finding Photoshop for example.

piotrkulpinski 2 years ago | |

Is Photoshop open source?

lazyasciiart 2 years ago | | |

No, but people don’t generally want to browse for "an open source tool that is an alternative to some random thing", they want to find "an alternative to Photoshop". As far as I can tell there's no search at all, maybe that's just on mobile?

worksonmine 2 years ago | | |

No search on desktop either. I also found this a very strange list, but it's short and probably limited to what the author uses for now. No Gimp, no Inkscape, no Blender. But Discord of all things is there, you're not even allowed to use third party-software like WeeChat to connect. Nothing open about that platform. And where's Mutt or Thunderbird?

ryanackley 2 years ago |

Cool. It would be more useful if it was organized by the tool the visitor is trying to replace

corobo 2 years ago | |

In the footer there's a link to this page which seems to do that

Could probably do with being the default view, aye

https://openalternative.co/alternatives/

sn0wtrooper 2 years ago |

Suggestion: it would be great if I typed the software I was looking for a replacement, and the OSS alternative was returned as result.

piotrkulpinski 2 years ago | |

Great suggestion! I plan to add search functionality soon.

maxboone 2 years ago |

A lot of these applications have either an SSO tax or BSL licensing, i'd recommend adding tags for that.

piotrkulpinski 2 years ago | |

Thanks! Will do.

diffeomorphism 2 years ago | | |

If you do, you may want to change your descriptions or use clearer labeling. BSL is kinda neat but not open, e.g. hashicorp describes it as "an alternative to closed source or open source licensing models". So listing it under "open source alternatives" calls into question the accuracy of other entries.

Note: paid and open is very much encouraged.

CatchSwitch 2 years ago |

Gotta wonder if the people at PostHog workshopped the name at all before launching...

knob 2 years ago |

Nice!

I would suggest Nextcloud for google drive slash microsoft onedrive alternative.

I have been using in production for years, and it has been awesome.

Note sure about licensing.

Another is Proxmox. It is freemium, yet solid.

_lars 2 years ago |

Neat, thanks for sharing this, will definitely be a good back pocket list.

MK2k 2 years ago |

Trying to submit something, you are bound to a fixed list of categories and alternatives.

If what you want to submit doesn't fit the fixed values in there, you are blocked.

7thaccount 2 years ago |

I think categories would be helpful. So you could have a category of mathematical optimization solvers and have Highs, Coin-OR, SCIP...etc in that category.

Mortiffer 2 years ago |

firefox https certificate error "PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR"

piotrkulpinski 2 years ago | |

Works fine for me. Could you check again?

zelphirkalt 2 years ago |

Another good one is the "awesome self hosted" list.