this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
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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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[–] [email protected] 99 points 2 months ago

I just want you to know how much I appreciate the fact that you typed out the list of repos mentioned in the video, since you know many people are not going to watch the video but still want the information.

I mean this. Thank you. You are awesome and deserve cake.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Paying for software is not inherently stupid. Bad and misleading title.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Agreed, you are paying for it to be someone else's problem to fix.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

One if the reasons why I avoid YouTube completely.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

The headline completely misses the point of Free Software as well. It's about free as in freedom, not beer.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (5 children)

I agree. Now I'll go back to watching youtube videos on my payed Grayjay.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Not triggered by this emotional outrage bait

it either costs your time or money or both. There is no situation where anything is free.

I'm currently fixing, not mine, repos. I have the skill level to fix other coders design issues. One at a time.

This is costing me time. Not just in doing the work, but all the time leading up to gaining the skillset to be at this level.

Put a price tag on that. (i'm not boasting; actually having to do this grind)

[–] [email protected] 65 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I think software developers deserve to be paid for their work. What an odd title.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Donate to FOSS developers if you find the software useful, but don't give a cent to big tech companies.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

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.

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[–] Grandwolf319 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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

[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

That’s fair! I agree with that.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago (4 children)

FOSS developers should be paid.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I have a Jetbrains license – am I stupid?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Maybe, did you use crayons to write in your email?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Hmm might be better... What color was it?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

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?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I’ll drop JetBrains the moment something smarter comes out, but so far nothing has reached that level of code analysis.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I prefer FOSS as much as possible and didn't read all comments on YouTube but ... desktop applications are not SAAS. eg LibreOffice and Adobe apps. But I guess it only requires a different title as the list itself is useful

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

These apps aren't SaaS, but their alternatives are in at least some cases. LibreOffice competes with Microsoft Office, for example, and Microsoft wants people to pay a subscription for it, although I think you can still buy it outright. Pretty sure I've heard similar for Adobe products. Not super familiar with all the options, so can't say if it's true for all of them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

SAAS isn't about subscription perse although they have them of course. Its about "not needing to take care of". It's software on "someone else's computer" just as with public cloud. In a SAAS construct a provider does the hosting, computing, connection, install, configuration and maintenance. Absolving clients from that burden.

Comparing proprietary desktop applications (even with a subscription) with FOSS alternatives is useful, it's just not SAAS.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So it seems like if you're using Office on desktop, not SaaS, but they do offer it in a browser, so would that count? Technically, if it's in JavaScript or something like that, computing is handled locally, but it still feels close enough to count.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

My understanding is roughly, for example:

  • Microsoft Word desktop application: not SAAS.
  • Microsoft Word online: SAAS (just like any other service accessible by browser but not a "localhost")
  • Onedrive: SAAS, storage with local explorer integration.
  • Exchange server on prem: not SAAS, increasingly diffucult to do.
  • Exchange server by MS: SAAS
  • Microsoft Outlook Classic for desktop: not SAAS.
  • Microsoft Teams for desktop: SAAS although local install but its just another frontend instead of browser.
  • Office365: SAAS but really a container for every tool in the MS online toolbox together.

Some caveats: Word handles spellchecker in their cloud and clippy 2024 (Copilot) integration blurs the line.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

Mattermost is only source-available due to their dual licensing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

that thumbnail is fucking insane

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Ahem..

Qgis? (err well, qfield/ qcloud..)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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).

[–] fitgse 2 points 2 months ago

How does ERPnext compare to dolibarr?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

3 minutes in before its revealed its actually a sponsored video to advertise daily.dev

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