Open Source Alternatives To Proprietary Software

Replace proprietary software products with open source alternatives.

BidWix

BidWix is not a marketplace. It does not handle payments. It does not write contracts. It does not take a cut. It does one thing only: it helps two people land on a price, quickly, without stress, and with a result that feels balanced.

Instead of negotiating out loud, both parties enter a private limit price, once.

[Buyers enter their maximum offer, sellers enter their minimum ask. The numbers stay secret. There is no 'counter offer' or back-and-forth: it's one shot.]

[If a freelancer wouldn't accept less than 100 for a small task and a client could stretch to 900 if they had to, BidWix would suggest the geometric mean of 300, which is three times higher than the freelancer’s minimum, and three times lower than the client’s maximum. Both sides win by the same factor.]

Unit

Unit is a general purpose visual programming system built for the future of interactivity

Polarized Words

Enter 2 or more words to see their relative distances to the concepts of "good" and "evil".

based on language model embeddings which capture the semantics associated with the words in humanity's collective consciousness.

Nokiafied

Convert your videos into super low-quality Nokia phone style videos for memes. Upload any video and it'll be degraded to that classic early 2000s Nokia aesthetic.

Cyd - Claw back your data from Big Tech

Backup and delete all of your tweets, and migrate them to Bluesky.

Save a searchable copy of your data from tech platforms locally on your computer.

Migrate your tweets from closed platforms like X into open platforms like Bluesky.

Cyd runs directly on your computer, not on our servers. We don't have access to any of your accounts, or to any of the data in them.

Franz

Open-source alternative to Beeper which makes much code available but not their main client.

[supports] Slack, WhatsApp, WeChat, Messenger, Telegram, Google Hangouts, Skype, Zendesk

Feed me up, Scotty!

RSS feeds for arbitrary websites, using CSS selectors.

Daily Bread

Visual diary of what kids eat in different parts of the world.

Entropy Piano Tuner

David Braid told me he uses this open-source software to tune pianos in the following way:

1. Play each note to calibrate.
2. Let the software analyze and then you can preview with MIDI.
3. Adjust each string until the feedback shows a positive result.

is it really FOSS?

[Seeing whether projects are as open-source as advertised.]

List of Patterns

This project is an abridged, hyper-textual, and copyleft manifestation of the 1977 architecture classic A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander.

Clew

[Search engine for independent creators that detects ads and page size.]

One Pot Pony

A lazy person's guide to delicious meal prep

This is the power of Combinatorial Cooking. From a seemingly limited set of base ingredients, there is a whole universe of food options you can prepare quickly and easily.

The wok lets you boil, saute, stir-fry, and simmer. The spaghetti spoon lets you stir, mix, scrape, and mash. They're both incredibly versatile and easy to clean. It's all you need to make any Combinatorial Cooking recipe. Plus, using a wok makes you look and feel like a real chef, that's just science.

Untools

Thinking tools and frameworks to help you solve problems, make decisions and understand systems.

masterWiki

Classes stolen from MasterClass, republished as wikiHow articles.

Jan

[Run AI LLMs locally on your computer]

HuggingChat

ChatGPT interface without signup.

STAR Voting

[Instead of voting yes or no, rate all options on a scale of 0 through 5 and calculate multiple rounds in one session.]

Web Skills

A visual overview of useful skills to learn as a web developer.

Reminds me of the trees from DuoLingo.

About Feeds

[Friendly explainer and guide to getting started with RSS feeds.]

About Ideas Now

Find people to talk to or collaborate with by searching across the /about, /ideas and /now pages of 6692 personal websites.

32-Bit Cafe

You've just made a website, but now you're unsure where to go from here. Here are some ideas for things to add and techniques to learn.

RsS iS dEaD LOL

Nice way to discover RSS feeds from your fediverse friends and neighbours.

NearbyWiki

Wikipedia places nearby you on a map.

[DRAFT] FAST Accessibility Checklist

[Look for these cues to ensure accessibility: visual content (like images, video); changeable color; input controls; interaction features; audio content; time limits; text-only input.]

Spec review i18n checklist

[Look for these cues to handle underlying localization: natural language text for humans (in error messages, UI text, JSON strings, etc…); interactions with text through a keyboard or cursor; searching, matching, sorting text; capturing user input; represents time; deals with names, addresses, time formats, etc…; references any cultural norms.]

Hugo Testing

Each branch of Joe's hugo-testing git repository is a scratchpad where he has over 750 attempted 'solutions' to help different people on the Hugo forum. Seems like discovery requires starting at a specific topic (as opposed to searching for the problem or solution), but it's quite organized the way it is. How might being this prolific in helping others impact one's own skills?

I've been to the Hackerspace Wiki before to find local places while travelling. I didn't know they had hackerspace apps listing, software wishlists.

Their design patterns library includes The Community Pattern:

set up a mailing list, a wiki, and an IRC channel. You will need all three. Think about a platform for discussion, storage for documentation and real-time communication.

The Critical Mass Pattern:

[You need at least two people to start an idea and two more to get work done. It's easy to recruit once you have four people, and best to get started with ten.]

The Infrastructure Pattern:

[Infrastructure first or projects first? By making everything infrastructure-driven, people will come up with contributions you would have never thought about.]

World map of 24x365 average temperature fingerprints

The temperature fingerprints cover every day of the year horizontally, and every hour of the day vertically

The Cheap Web

The "cheap" web is a solarpunk philosophy of web design.

cheap ≠ free

cheap ≠ sleek

cheap ≠ creep

cheap ≠ deep

cheap ≠ dark

cheap = cheap

[cheap to maintain: should work indefinitely without falling over].

[cheap to access: should be compatible with screen readers and various devices.]

[cheap to explore: should be pleasant on low power devices.]

[cheap to contribute: creating and hosting websites should be easier than scrapbooking.]

Life in Weeks

Visualize a life compressed into blocks of one week and grouped be decade. The simple data file is written in YAML. This could be useful to help write one's autobiography.

OLLOS

Most items appear in the timeline at the time they were created.

If an item attribute can be updated, such as by completing a to-do, a small update line appears at that time in the timeline.

If an item is scheduled for a future date or time, it appears there instead, and a simple update line appears at the time it was created and / or scheduled.

I see updates appear in my timeline when she schedules something. This is a very helpful transaction or record; I now know she set up an appointment for something I’m going to with her, or that she set up a meeting in the future, without any kind of extra “notification” feature, and without having to check future dates regularly for updates.

The more you hit “review later”, the longer it takes for the item to return, allowing items you’re less interested in to “float away” from you without requiring more destructive or detailed actions.

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you can’t edit an existing note. Instead, you build on past notes using replies: you can reply to any past note with a new one that goes into your timeline now, forming a thread.

Much easier to compile buckets for ideas when you don't need to label them—this is why people can write so much on micro-blogging platforms.

NIOSH Sound Level Meter

Monitor for the room volume level made by the CDC.

in search of a new tab

[Each new tab feels like a choice: how do I want to spend my time?]

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What a 'new tab page' this is! I prefer queries (via keystroke launchers like Quicksilver or 'Command-K') over big lists, but this is beautifully personal and makes me drool; stable options can leverage muscle memory and reduce distractions. 👍🏽

Provokes me to wonder about social patterns and 'formats' like /now or 'daily note', ways of organizing that many people can practice and share so that we can all learn from each other.

The Signals: A Guided Primer

[Welcome:

1. Does everyone feel invited to participate?
2. Does the space guarantee users a safe experience?
3. Does the space encourage the humanization of others?
4. Can people express themselves without compromising their identity and data?

Connect:

5. Does the space cultivate a sense of belonging?
6. Does the space encourage fruitful connections between groups that aren’t naturally alike?
7. Does the space strengthen emotional, structural, and participative ties to geographically local communities?
8. Does the space make it possible for people to be heard by those in positions of power?

Understand:

9. Does the space allow for shared concerns to be raised for broad attention by society at large?
10. Is the information being elevated and shared reliable, factual, and true?
11. Does the space build civic competence and encourage democratic participation?
12. Does the space promote thoughtful conversation and room for respectful disagreements?

Act:

13. Does this space boost a community’s resilience in the face of significant stress or adversity?
14. Does this space facilitate our ability to participate in each others’ lives and shape society?]

open-funding

This document aims to be an open guide to funding of open source projects.

[Grants, Notable Projects, Other Organisations, Crowdfunding]

Awesome OSS Funding

A curated list of awesome resources for funding open source projects and authors.

[Products, Donations, Bounties, Licensing, Articles, Organizations]

A handy guide to financial support for open source

This document aims to provide an exhaustive list of all the ways that people get paid for open source work.

[Donation button; Bounties; Sponsorware; Crowdfunding (one-time); Crowdfunding (recurring); Books and merchandise; Advertising & sponsorships; Get hired by a company to work on project; Start a project while currently employed; Grants; Consulting; Paid support; SaaS; Copyleft + paid license; Open core; Foundations & consortiums; Venture capital; Restricted license]

Embark - Dynamic documents for making plans

Travel-certified trip planning demo combining end-user programming and customization, spreadsheet-like formulas, text as super app.

FFmpeg.app

Search for human friendly intents and run the resulting commands in the browser.

LocalCan™ - HTTPS domains for localhost and wi-fi network

Develop your apps locally with .local domains and HTTPS using LocalCan™ app for macOS

Nicer than my current setup of editing /etc/hosts, adding 127.0.0.1 loc.whatever, entering my password… But I hesitate to have an experience too difference from another person who would run my apps.

Like the concept of Changelog as with Ghost and others. Not sure yet if this pattern would fit somewhere in my universe.

Open Box Computers & Electronics

Was able to find an iPhone mini here not available anywhere else. 'New' here means brand new sealed in box. Claimed over the phone they resell returned items from Costco.

FAQs – All the Music LLC

[We generated and wrote to disk all mathematically possible melodies, then dedicated them to the public domain.]

Hear - Advanced Listening

An app that listens to your environment, adds filters, plays it back to you via headphones in real time. Filters include ‘relax’ (drone in the background higher frequencies turn into water dripping), 'happy’ (as if raining and everything is echoed with long decay), 'sleep’ (combination of waterfall or white noise and echoes the environment); each filter has various levels that can be customized. Fun to play with, regardless of whether it actually helps you chill out or doze off—I’m curious to try them with more intention.

Whitepaper | Circles UBI | Handbook:

[Everyone has their own currency operating by a shared set of rules, culminating to form a kind of monetary fabric.]

[Each personal currency mints new coins for the associated person every minute, and the quantity inflates each year.]

[To mitigate the risk of any account turning into a sybil, trust can be revoked, which allows the revoker to continue spending the revokee's coins but not receive new coins from them.]

[If Carol and Bob are strangers (not yet established mutual trust) but both extend trust to Alice, they can send each other money by transacting in AliceCoin; through transitive chains of trust Carol and Bob receive BobCoin and CarolCoin, respectively.]

[If a trusted person creates a Fake account, other people cannot receive FakeCoin until they trust it, and that person can only spend it if other people trust it.]

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faq – Circles UBI:

[People receive CRC unconditionally and the supply is constantly increasing, which incentivizes spending (flowing) over hoarding.]

[The current dominant monetary system is like agricultural monoculture, which devitalizes the soil and requires pesticides to protect. Circles is more diverse:] if you lose your strawberry fields, you will still have your roses and potatoes and cannabis.

[Being careless with trust in Circles mostly hurts you personally and not the whole system.]

[Trust limits are the percentage of your Circles that you are willing to hold in a given person's coin (50% by default, but may be lowered or cancelled eventually); they prevent you from losing all your tokens through transitive transactions.]

[You can start your own local Circles community without three trust connections by sending 0.1–0.2 xDAI to your account, but this will only be useful if you invite your network to exchange products and services with you.]

["Shared wallets" do not issue UBI or receive trust, but they can be opened and shared by anyone in a group or organization. Businesses should not use personal wallets because taxes are complicated.]

[UBI stops if you don't log into your wallet for 90 days, thus incentivizes meaningful usage. To receive UBI after that you need to create a new wallet and transfer over your old CRC.]

[Circles is not on any crypto exchange as it is meant for spending, not for getting rich. You might convince someone to give you other currencies for your tokens, but the peer-to-peer nature of Circles makes it hard to give liquidity to the whole network.]

[The co-op covers transaction costs on the xDAI chain so that buyers and sellers can use the marketplace for free.]

Interface In Game

collection of video games UI interfaces, screenshots and videos.

Brian Lovin

This personal portfolio has some affordances to make it interactive like a web app, and participatory like a social network: people can ask anything, comment on writing or bookmarks, say which apps they use. There are also some ‘evergreen’ resources like this digital security checklist and app dissection blog.

Demonstrates that we can construct spaces for community within a context that’s often highly individual, and without asking people to create accounts (sign in with Twitter, data stored on Firebase); like a purpose-built room with specific and relevant activities.

Hosting one’s own ‘Ask me Anything’ reminds me of Pat Metheny’s Question and Answer.

Would be nice to have RSS feeds for each ‘type’ as opposed to for writing only. The list presentation is unfortunately Designed to disappear.

See the source code for how it’s made.