Remember, for every paid SaaS, there is a free open-source self-hosted alternative. Let’s take a look at 10 FOSS tools designed to replace popular tools like MS Office, Notion, Heroku, Vercel, Zoom, Adobe, and more.
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⭐ Repos mentioned
Remember, for every paid SaaS, there is a free open-source self-hosted alternative
CAD. Free solutions compared to commercial ones (SolidWorks, Inventor, Fusion360, Onshape) are like comparing Photoshop to an open source Paint clone.
It’s very misleading to say “paying for software is stupid” and not consider the total cost of ownership. TCO includes things like infrastructure and maintenance. As an exec, I am constantly faced with two choices: free software that might do what I want or paid software that sort of does what I want. At face value, you would immediately tell me to get the free stuff. That’s where you miss TCO.
(Read the last paragraph if you think the business lens is bullshit)
Every FOSS solution I run requires me to deploy and maintain it. I only have so many hours in the day so at some threshold I have to hire more and more people to deploy and maintain. Integrating? That’s on me too because I’m using free software so now I need a resource to glue things together. My “free” option actually costs a portion of my engineering resources. I’m also on the hook for failures. Running my own ERP? I need to have support staff on-call to handle outages.
Every paid solution I run costs can require some of those things. Let’s ignore paid licenses and just focus on things I can completely outsource. This means I’m no longer on the hook for deployment and maintenance, so if I can show the cost of the paid software is less than my TCO, it’s a better deal. If I have a good relationship with the vendor, I might be able to delegate my integration needs to their product pipeline. I might be able to purchase a support contract that’s cheaper than running my own.
At some point every company will outgrow certain software. It’s a constant reevaluation of the costs of paid vs TCO of free and when I need to spend resources making it do something it doesn’t. A managed telemetry stack like Sumo or New Relic allows me to scale quickly but cheaply until I have the revenue to build an in-house team to instrument fucking everything.
The exact same logic applies to my time. I could run free everything. That comes with a higher TCO (usually). I say this as someone who has rebuilt dot files repos on the dot every three years and been running Linux since you could get it in a book at B Dalton at the indoor shopping mall so my tolerance for personal TCO is very high. However, I don’t change my own oil. It’s free! I could do it myself! I don’t want to. I buy certain things, like software, in my personal life because the TCO of FOSS is higher than I want to pay. I have outgrown Windows and Mac so I have some level required cost in Linux. I pay for some things like storage and routing solutions even though I could build and deploy and maintain all of that myself. Sometimes I just want my shit to work and not have to do it myself.
An important component of the cost to consider is how long we expect a company to support a piece of software, and how much it would cost to migrate everything when they drop support. FOSS wins in this regard, especially if you can get a support contact with the devs.
Neither wins here. I cannot tell you how many libraries I have had to replace because FOSS devs move on. It’s probably greater than the number of products I’ve had to abandon for lack of support but I’m not sure what that is at a percentage level. In the DevOps world everything burns constantly, paid and free.
It wins in the sense that you still have access to the software and code, and you have the option to either hire someone new to maintain it or switch to something else. Closed source proprietary software only leaves you with the latter choice.
This is a great perspective to voice. Sometimes those of us who are staunch FOSS advocates can lose sight of the big picture. If one’s goal is to be, for example, an eCommerce software vendor, it probably doesn’t make sense to build and maintain your own DB stack or Internet infrastructure even though it is technically feasible. The money and resources needed to maintain that stuff will take away from the ability to improve and maintain the eConmerce application.
One revenue source for FOSS projects is providing enterprise support, allowing you to outsource support.
And that’s been a very successful one. Not every component has such a model, however.
I have a Jetbrains license – am I stupid?
Maybe, did you use crayons to write in your email?
I ran out of chalk.
Hmm might be better… What color was it?
This is a trick question. There is one color for writing. The rest is for eating. We, all of us 4 years old or similiar mental maturity, already know this
You see I think the red one is for eating but I’ve seen a child go for the green. I got into a debate… Who’s right?
Thank you for your service, Marine.
I’ll drop JetBrains the moment something smarter comes out, but so far nothing has reached that level of code analysis.
I don’t like statements like “paying for software is stupid”. Developers for Free software have this long standing issue that many people don’t want to pay them. Paying and using closed source proprietary software is stupid, especially if there is good free and open source libre alternatives.
We need to figure out a monetization plan how to make people want to pay for free software. This will not only incentivize doing Free software, it also makes it possible for people making a living out of it. Everyone benefits from it!
Maybe it’s time to start funding software infrastructure the way we fund physical infrastructure - with tax dollars.
Or euros
aGPLv3 is a good business model. If companies are using your kit in their closed source projects, they need to pay you
donationware is abandonware. We brand it Apache2.0 or MIT
3 minutes in before its revealed its actually a sponsored video to advertise daily.dev
Paying for software is not inherently stupid. Bad and misleading title.
Agreed, you are paying for it to be someone else’s problem to fix.
I support them adding ads and commercials into their products like pop ups and stuff or they can sell my information
It’s just clickbait, which is unavoidable on youtube if you want your video to be seen by more than 5 people. I don’t blame the creator for it tbh, especially because this title is not really misleading, just an opinion.
One if the reasons why I avoid YouTube completely.
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I agree. Now I’ll go back to watching youtube videos on my payed Grayjay.
What’s Grayjay?
An alternative video client. Mostly known for pulling add free youtube. But you can have several sources like patreon or nebula. The app is free and open source but they ask you to buy a license if you like it. It’s made/supportes by futo
If you’re wondering, no Appflowy cannot be used to replace Notion. It’s in their claim but you would have a pretty bad time doing it. Anytype might one day get there, Appflowy is another thing.
FOSS developers should be paid.
They should put ads in their stuff
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Only if they’re willing and able to fork it and compile their own version on all platforms they run.
I don’t mind paying for software and I regularly donate to open source projects. The problem is that most corporate software is closed and I don’t have the freedom to use it as I wish.
Ahem…
Qgis? (err well, qfield/ qcloud…)
Mattermost is only source-available due to their dual licensing.
I am a huge fan/proponent of FLOSS where possible.
That being said, for enterprise solutions with large teams, I have yet to see a FLOSS solution that is as intuitive or ubiquitous as the major players.
For instance, I fucking hate zoom. Basically everything about it. But I also can’t possibly suggest other platforms for remote recording participants because I deal with people across the computer literacy spectrum. They all understand zoom, regardless of generation or experience with a computer. When they don’t understand it, it’s easy to guide them. I hate it but it’s reality and it’s a major cost when you abandon popular platforms.
It is a tall ask when folks want me to be the trendsetter who makes my company break from the major platforms to their own detriment in the hopes that others will follow suit all to save a few thousand dollars a year and to advocate for an ideal.
Signal has a desktop video call option that’s quite simple.
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that thumbnail is fucking insane
Paying for software is okay, except when it keeps trying to milk you even after paying for it, especially if it’s a subscription. This can come in the form of ads, the sale of personal information, or some other crap (such as binding arbitration).
I think software developers deserve to be paid for their work. What an odd title.
Software being free and devs getting paid are separate things. Software could be something that just costs money to make but free to use, like country infrastructure.
If I made a script and you copied it, I didn’t lose anything, the GDP of the entire world just went up cause now you have my tool as well.
I’m a dev btw
Donate to FOSS developers if you find the software useful, but don’t give a cent to big tech companies.
I had a similar change of heart years ago, watching a docu-series on PBS and realizing I wanted more of that content in the world. Even though you can stream PBS for about $5 a month, I canceled Netflix so I could pay PBS $20 a month to start making up for all the time my money was flowing in the wrong direction.
We’re likely to get more of the things we invest in, and less of the things we don’t. That investment includes attention in ad-driven market, not only money.
I know I’m not the first person on lemmy to have this realization, it’s one of the many reasons I like it here.
Depends. If the big tech company is actively supporting and developing Open Source and Free Software, then supporting by buying their stuff makes sense. I’m thinking of Valve/Steam, with their support and development in Proton, Linux Kernel, various other software, SteamOS and so on.
