Hi everyone! For… I guess over a year now? I’ve been observing and trying out lots of software recommended by the privacy community and internet as a whole. With that time, I’ve been able to slowly put together a list of all the software I personally believe to be the best for their own various reasons. I finally have enough to be able to share it with all of you!
I’m also looking for feedback. I haven’t tried all the software on that list, and I’m sure there’s software I’ve never heard of that needs added. I’m looking for your feedback on what you think should be added, removed, or changed. That includes the list itself, if you think there are any design improvements.
Do note: Any software marked with a ⭐️ I am not looking for feedback on. This is software that I firmly believe is the best of the best in its category, and likely will not be changed. However, if there is a major issue with the software that you can provide direct proof of, then there is a chance it will be changed in the next release. There are no grantees.
The sections marked with ℹ️ are lacking, and can use your help! Some software there may not be the best one, or may have many software or sections missing. I am absolutely looking for help and feedback here, and would love your help!
My goal with this project is to help people find the best software from many standpoints, and to prove that there really are good open source alternatives for almost anything! I hope this helps someone, and I look forward to your feedback!
Thank you all for reading and taking the time to look through my list!
Edit: This project has moved to GitLab!
For instant messengers, I would also add Wire and Matrix/Element (Matrix is the protocol, Element is the messenger that uses the protocol).
https://wire.com/en
https://matrix.org/ - https://element.io/
Both good open source secure messengers. Matrix is made by a type of non-profit foundation made to guide the development of the core protocol, and Wire is a Swiss company staking their future on how secure their messenger is for Enterprise applications. They both have different philosophies on how their operations are ran, but they’re both open source and secure.
They’re not as privacy respecting as Briar or SimpleX, but they’re also more aimed at organizations and groups that plan on self-hosting and potentially not federating with the rest of the network to help silo their organizational data. Wire obviously aims towards Enterprise customers, but Matrix does as well, despite a different approach. Matrix has had growth with both German and French governments for various secure communications systems within their government bodies based on the matrix protocol. So good messengers, just aimed at a different group of people as Briar/SimpleX.
So maybe they could have their own “Enterprise Chat” section? I dunno, just my thoughts.
Hi! Thanks for the feedback!
The “Video Conferencing Tools” section is my aim at enterprise applications. My goal there was to find an app that is available for Online, Windows, macOS, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, and iOS that supports group chats, video calls, and screen sharing. I was only able to find Infomaniak kMeet, which I’m not even sure fits the bill. If you have any suggestions that meet these requirements, I would be happy to add them!
In the meantime, feel free to make an issue on the repo suggesting these services!
Element meets all of that criteria
To my knowledge, Element has no way to share the desktop/screen. If I am wrong about this, please let me know!
Using element everyday,it has feature of sharing screen.
1:1 calls, sharing is available through their WebRTC implementation. Group calls if they’re still using Jitsi are done through Jitsi, which has support for them
There is BigBlueButton. It’s more focused in educational usecases (online classes and the like) but it works just fine for everything else. You need to host it yourself, but there are hosted instances out there. I for example use senfcall.
But I think we are talking about different things here. What Chanuk was talking about (I think) is a ms-teams or slack alternative, not a zoom or oracle WebEx alternative. Basically Discord but for business. Sidenote: there is a open source Discord clone called revolt
Thank you. Was going to suggest matrix/elements. But you explained it better ;)
It has really improved the last years. Especially the e2e encryption key sharing, and verfication system vs what was before.