Some FOSS programs, due to being mantained by hobbyists vs a massive megacorporation with millions in funding, don’t have as many features and aren’t as polished as their proprietary counterparts. However, there are some FOSS programs that simply have more functionality and QoL features compared to proprietary offerings.
What are some FOSS programs that are objectively better than their non-FOSS alternatives? Maybe we can discover useful new programs together :D
I’ll start, I think Joplin is a great note-taking app that works offline + can sync between desktop and mobile really well. Also, working with Markdown is really nice compared with rich text editors that only work with the specific program that supports it. Joplin even has a bunch of plugins to extend functionality!
Notion, Evernote, Google Keep, etc. either don’t have desktop apps, doesn’t work offline, does not support Markdown, or a combination of those three.
What are some other really nice FOSS programs?
edit: woah that’s a whole load of cool FOSS software I have to try out! So far my experiences have been great (ShareX in particular is AWESOME as a screenshot tool, it’s what snip and sketch wishes it could be and mostly replaces OBS for my use case and a whole lot more)
some proprietary apps have more functionality, are more stable, are easier to use, etc. because it’s very hard for a community of hobbyists to compete with the likes of multibillion corporations. Honestly, I really respect the FOSS projects that ARE really good, competing with these huge companies with pretty much only donations and their determination.
Some good examples of proprietary software I think that are functionally better include a bunch of apps used in professional workflows (though there are many FOSS apps used professionally like Blender!) and Unity/Unreal Engine (Godot is amazing for what 90% of most people need and is a lot lighter too, and is catching up in terms of 3D graphics/lighting. Unreal/Unity and Godot both have pros and cons)
If everything was FOSS and received the kind of funding proprietary apps get, the world would be very different indeed.
I mean the best big tech “products” are FOSS as well. But I guess it depends on which definition of FOSS that you use.
Usually, nowadays, proprietary software is built on 95% FOSS and then you maybe have a thin layer with your own stuff (which will become FOSS in a year or two when there’s someting better that can replace your own hack). The rest is content and marketing.
Proprietary software which doesn’t have an objectively better FOSS counterpart (that I can come up with right now):
Many people bring up proprietary CAD and graphics software. Though I suspect that’s a more subjective opinion. My experience is that proprietary CAD apps and the Adobe suite are buggy as hell. My experience is also that the people who use these softwares have learned how to cope with the legacy crap and they refuse to learn new and better ways.
I had to integrate Photoshop into a project a few years ago. The whole software just smelled huge legacy bad quality code base. Buggy as hell. But good marketing and/or user lockin I guess.
I don’t consider anything from Apple to be good in an objective way. Unless you count social status symbols as an objective quality. I do consider price to be an objective quality though.
The only good things that has come out of Microsoft are open source. VS Code, dotnet core and Lean. Same goes for Google.
Proprietary CAD/design software is very subjective. I’ve seen many people saying that the proprietary stuff is more “professional” and that FOSS software isn’t. I don’t work in thise kind of workflows so I can’t comment on that, but my personal experience with things like kdenlive and inkscape have been AWESOME