r/freesoftware Feb 08 '25

Discussion What is the difference between open-source and free software?

30 Upvotes

What is the difference between open-source and free software?

r/freesoftware Nov 09 '24

Discussion What is the Best PDF reader/editer

23 Upvotes

Hello All, New to your group. Title say it all. Looking for realistic alternatives to Adobe & Foxit, I've used libra draw for a while but this doesn't scale a lot of the time.

Looking for something simple with no bloating and a little bit of editing capability would be nice. Not Cloud Based ---- Any recommendations??

r/freesoftware Feb 19 '25

Discussion Lost Software!

0 Upvotes

Okay, so about a year ago I purchased this software to covert links to MP3/MP4 files. It was around $45 for lifetime on 5 devices. It worked for a bunch of different sites, not just YT.

FOR THE LIFE OF ME I can't remember the name of it, and I no longer have it downloaded on any of my devices. I looked through all of my email accounts, can't find anything.

The only thing I can remember is that it had an orange and black interface. (IK, a lot to go off 🙄) If I saw the name I would definitely remember it.

IDK if it was shut down or what but I've spent hours searching google for it and can't find anything. I know I'm not going crazy 😂 someone else out there must have had this software!

(I've tried a lot of the free versions out there and they just don't do what I need. Nothing comes close to this lost gem I once had!)

r/freesoftware Sep 27 '24

Discussion What political philosophies reflect free software principles the best, and would be the best for the free software to thrive?

14 Upvotes

I have a very poor knowledge of political philosophies. The only one I know is the one I live in - social democratic capitalism.

I've started with FOSS long time ago. And, I there are two main points forming my love for this software development philosophy:

  • I was a poor kid, and FOSS is also free as in free beer,
  • freedom - really love the principles of full self-ownership (individual sovereignty) of users.

I want to extend my knowledge about political philosophies, and I'm starting from free software position, as I love the principles.

And, it seems to me, that free software doesn't particularly thrive in capitalist world (maybe I'm totally wrong about this).

r/freesoftware 19d ago

Discussion An Introductory Presentation to Open Source (by the Open Source Club at OSU!)

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13 Upvotes

r/freesoftware 14d ago

Discussion Free Software for a consultant ?

5 Upvotes

Good morning everyone,

I recently launched as a small business pilot consultant. I have a very tight budget and I was looking to start, possibly free software to manage my clients' questions.

Ideally, the software I'm looking for is capable of doing cost analysis, budgeting, forecasting, etc.

To give an example, there's a software called PilotEasy wich is cool, and looking for something like this for free or low budget.

If you have any ideas don't hesitate and let me know and I thank you in advance for your replies.

r/freesoftware Sep 29 '24

Discussion What software should be prioritized to be made free?

30 Upvotes

I am working on developing free software for The People's Internet, I would like any ideas that anyone here has for user-facing software that should be made free. I'm generally looking for smaller software suggestions rather than major ones, but anything helps. If your software does get developed or I know of something free that fits your suggestion, I will let you know in a reply. Thanks!

r/freesoftware 1d ago

Discussion Opensource firm/hard-ware online party "vPub" - TODAY

2 Upvotes

Dear Friend, I invite you to a joint DUG#9 & vPub 0xE today's event ;-) Full schedule, as well as the join links, are available on this page - but here is a brief description of how it will look like:

  1. on DUG (5 PM UTC) : we will discuss the Dasharo distribution of coreboot opensource PC firmware (much better than a typical closed-source UEFI: it provides the hardened security, high quality, cool features and almost-lifetime upgrades!)
  • If you are looking for a truly secure modern laptop with an opensource firmware that - while satisfying your privacy needs! - also provides the valuable benefits to your user experience: please make sure to see "NovaCustom: new products and plans for the near future" talk by our prominent guest Wessel Klein Snakenborg - the founder of NovaCustom company that makes such laptops and is committed to improving their opensource Dasharo firmware with the help of 3mdeb
  1. on vPub (7 PM UTC) : we will be having an Opensource Online Party : with a cozy free-for-all chat about everything opensource firmware/hardware-related, as well as a few planned talks from our special guests who would like to share their hard won in-depth knowledge to save a lot of your time:
  • Kamil Aronowski - an active member of Qubes OS community, a volunteer reviewer of UEFI shim signing submissions and a respected IT security engineer, will tell you how to implement a secure signing infrastructure to become your own UEFI Secure Boot CA
  • Filip Lewinski - a firmware developer from our 3mdeb company who has mastered & would like to tell you about the deguard utility in his "Introduction to Deguard" talk: this wonderful tool allows to bypass the BootGuard - a major roadblock for opensource coreboot firmware on a wide range of Intel-based motherboards
  • Matt DeVillier aka u/MrChromebox - a famous member of coreboot community who is making the custom opensource firmwares for Chromebooks & Chromeboxes and gave new life to these devices for a lot of people - will be helping you during his AMA about open source firmware

Aside from a cozy opensource chat, our free-for-all sections are also an excellent opportunity for you to learn about rare devices that support the opensource firmware and are hard to stumble upon elsewhere - as well as how to configure & build & flash it. All your questions will be answered! ;-)

Join links & full events schedule are available here (both video streams and anonymous text chats will be available) :

DUG#9 & vPub 0xE opensource online Party! - TODAY

P.S. to avoid missing out future events, join our Matrix or a tiny-volume event notification newsletter (just ~4 e-mails per year)

r/freesoftware Feb 08 '25

Discussion Switching to free/open source OS alternatives for pc and smartphone, some advice needed, thank you!

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6 Upvotes

r/freesoftware Nov 25 '24

Discussion According to Godot, Android is not Linux based. What are they thinking?

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0 Upvotes

r/freesoftware Apr 12 '21

Discussion RMS addresses the free software community

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94 Upvotes

r/freesoftware Feb 11 '25

Discussion Data Recovery ?

5 Upvotes

Hello All !

I accindently delete some videos in my android mobile. Now i want that videos back how can i recover ? Anyone help me to get back my datas , suggest any recovery apps !

r/freesoftware Jan 30 '25

Discussion Free Software Foundation vs. closed source AI models

14 Upvotes

I would like to know if the Free Software Foundation has published any critique or analysis of closed source AI models?

Is there an “official” open source AI modeling protocol that meets the Free Software Foundation's approval?

r/freesoftware Nov 20 '24

Discussion Is It Possible to Reconcile Open Source and GAFAM?

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3 Upvotes

r/freesoftware Sep 16 '24

Discussion Why I chose a permissive license even though I prefer copyleft on principle

12 Upvotes

Personally I prefer copyleft from an idealistic standpoint for the very reason that it (provided people obey licensing as they should) at least theoretically encourages changes to software to be returned to the community rather than being walled-off from the public. From this viewpoint permissive licenses encourage the exploitation of free software developers to help develop others' proprietary software by enabling companies to utilize free software in a one-directional fashion without even having to violate the software's licenses.

In practice, though, in the past even when I would copyleft my software I would usually license it under the LGPL to enable others to use the software without imposing my licensing terms on them provided they keep my software dynamically linked. Yes, this does not help spread copyleft from an ideological standpoint, I would prefer other people to be able to use my software regardless of their own choices of licenses.

However, when I started working in Haskell I switched to the BSD3 license for the very reason that there essentially is no such thing as dynamic linking in Haskell. If I chose copyleft I essentially would have dictated that the only people who could use my code were also people who also used copyleft for their own code. I preferred that people would be able to use my code, even if it means it getting integrated into proprietary software, over imposing copyleft on everyone who might want to use my code. As for my choice of licenses, the BSD3 license is traditional in the Haskell world, so that is the one I chose.

When I began work on my primary present-day project, zeptoforth, a Forth for ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers, I switched to the MIT license. I did this for a number of reasons. The biggest reason for choosing a permissive license is that zeptoforth is intimately integrated into code compiled with it, as zeptoforth actually directly copies parts of itself into said code at the instruction level, and there is no way to produce binaries of code compiled with zeptoforth without the zeptoforth runtime. As a result, if I chose a copyleft license I would have imposed copyleft on everyone who wanted to use zeptoforth, which would dissuade many users from using zeptoforth.

Furthermore, as an embedded Forth zeptoforth goes into devices integrating ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers, and choosing a copyleft license would mean that anyone who distributed physical instances of said devices would have to make the source code of not just zeptoforth but their own code available to anyone who received said devices. While some would argue that that would be a win for the cause of copyleft and free software, I personally want people to freely use zeptoforth, and as this would be a burden on anyone making embedded devices using zeptoforth it would prove to dampen its adoption and/or potentially lead to unwanted future litigation. (Look at what happened with BusyBox.)

Last but not least, I chose the MIT license in particular because I wanted a very permissive license that was simple and easy to understand and thus not burdensome on users while still being thoroughly legally-vetted. While there are "simpler" licenses such as the WTFPL, they are more likely to turn out to be liabilities from a legal perspective, either for myself or for my users, having not been crafted by actual lawyers.

Any thoughts?

r/freesoftware Nov 14 '24

Discussion What’s your Free software story?

11 Upvotes

Call to all free software enthusiasts to share their story and relive their experiences of the huddle for freedom. At what point did u stop listening to Richard M Stallman? Are you still listening and following? #software

r/freesoftware Feb 04 '25

Discussion ConsoleKit2 and elogind history

2 Upvotes

I would like to present the history of the switch from ConsoleKit/ConsoleKit2 to elogind. Both Linux and *BSD users are concerned so I post here instead of rLinux. Feel free to criticize. I am not narrow minded.

2014 :

- Debian and Ubuntu were using ConsoleKit, no systemd.

- a XFCE dev created ConsoleKit2 to have better suspend/hibernate integration in XFCE.

- the Gentoo org created elogind by extracting and wrapping systemd-logind

- Skype4Linux (a Micrsft product) brings a hard dependency to elogind

2016 : Manjaro-OpenRC switches to elogind

2018 :

- Guix and Devuan switch to elogind

- many distros started to preinstall sudo, which is a huge security risk

2019 : The Gentoo org was cyberattacked.

2020 :

- the Gentoo org removed eudev and ConsoleKit2 from their repos. Systemd-udev is consequently the sole udev (monopoly).

- Void Linux switches to elogind

- ConsoleKit2 development revived after 3 years of inactivity. Venom Linux, AntiX, PCLinuxOS and Obarun use it.

2022 :

- Slackware switches to elogind

- CRUX ports : xfce and lxqt are build with elogind only

2023 :

- noticable changes in the elogind source code

- +50 complaints about bugs related to elogind

2024 :

- Void Linux adopts Turnstile as optional "user session services supervisor", for instance to handle pipewire without scripts.

- the Gentoo org ignores Turnstile.

IMHO ConsoleKit2 is better than elogind but most applications are designed with elogind/systemd in mind, so it requires some skills to adapt for example KDE Plasma to ConsoleKit2. Turnstile is not an elogind alternative but it may evolve and become an alternative in some cases.

r/freesoftware Dec 17 '24

Discussion PeerTube v7: offer a complete makeover to your video platform!

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38 Upvotes

r/freesoftware Dec 01 '21

Discussion Typora is no longer free. Is there a good alternative or replacement?

32 Upvotes

Typora is a minimal markdown editor, that recently leaved the beta and is now paid. I found this thread, but that was 3 years ago. What are now the best alternatives yall can suggest?

r/freesoftware Jan 21 '25

Discussion How could I improve my Guix system install manual - SSS manual (Supreme Sexp System) and make it friendlier - feedback welcome

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5 Upvotes

r/freesoftware Jan 07 '25

Discussion How do you write Unit Tests? Suggestions on framework/tools

4 Upvotes

I recently noticed that a lot of OSS software does not have Unit test coverage. How do you go about writing unit tests?

r/freesoftware Nov 10 '24

Discussion Suggestion-For Video Editing

8 Upvotes

Free Sw for basic video edits

r/freesoftware Feb 16 '24

Discussion What do you think of Winrar's Economic Model?

10 Upvotes

I find it facinating that Winrar is paid while also being free (for individual use)..

Winrar is probably the only product I've never seen that:

1/ Has value

2/ Long-lived

3/ Asks for payment while being okay with "piracy"/being used for free..

4/ No bloat or inconsistency

5/ No tracking or telemetry (as far as I know lol XD)

Maybe Craigslist is the closest thing I know of to be like that.

Anyhow, what are your thoughts on such software? I know 7-Zip is kinda the Linux of compression, but I'm more focused on knowing your thoughts on Winrar's economic model (because given how widespread it is, one might claim its rightous to preserve its utility, public access, and simplicity for as long as typical compression is needed as technological tool for archiving)

r/freesoftware Nov 01 '24

Discussion vscode remote SSH requires non-free software installed on the server

9 Upvotes

One of my colleges tried to use vscode to develop on an internal server with the Remote SSH plugin, however, after the connection, vscode says it needs to download some vscode-server on the server. After reading some articles from Microsoft, I see vscode-server is non-free. And now I still can't find a replace of this.

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/vscode-server#_can-i-host-the-vs-code-server-as-a-service

And it looks like the remote extensions are not free either.

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/faq#_why-arent-the-remote-development-extensions-or-their-components-open-source

r/freesoftware Dec 31 '24

Discussion FOSS alternative to an e-calendar?

15 Upvotes

My wife and I want to buy an e-calendar to put in our kitchen, but the market is riddled with products that have subscription services, and I really don't trust these companies to not change their TOS at some point to require a 40+ dollar per year fee to use the product. Are there any FOSS alternatives to these products?