Could we add alternativeto.net to the sidebar?

onlinepersona@programming.dev to Open Source@lemmy.ml – 165 points –
alternativeto.net

It's a great place to find alternatives (including opensource alternatives) to services and software.

26

Very good suggestion. Alternativeto.net is a great resource that I return to often. Eased the transition greatly when I originally left the "mainstream apps".

Before we jump to this, does anyone know the license of the content on alternativeto?

They have also had some pretty restrictive use of cloudflare that made their content inaccessible to privacy users in the past.

If you have an alternative to alternativeto, do share.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

AlternativeTo lists open source alternatives to AlternativeTo.

Looking at that list, no option seems particularly good at the moment.

https://opensource.builders/ looks nice, but has the code on github and the DB is a single JSON file. Editing requires running the thing locally and then creating a PR.

https://switching.software/ is a single page that lists all the software. Upside is that the code is codeberg, not github.

https://prism-break.org/en/ is focused on privacy, very out of date and code is on github.

Privacy Guides is also all about privacy, so it won't be a generic alternative finder.

I stopped looking after that.

Up to the mods which one they want to pick, but honestly, a link to alternatives might cut down on the "I'm looking for a recommendation for an alternative" posts.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

https://directory.fsf.org seems pretty good, actually. I've been lurking at electronics modeling software for a few years now and just found ones I've never heard of there but also the usual suspects. Maybe a better FOSS browsing tool, but still pretty cool.

license doesnt matter if you just link to it

Of course it matters.We dont want to support or contribute content to a service that could go down one day and all the data is lost because we can't fork it.

It would be very desirable. AlternativeTo is perhaps the best and most complete service to find Software and services, for any OS and license. It shouldn't be missing from anyone's bookmarks, even so, a shortcut in Lemmy wouldn't be bad. Community driven, most with user reviews and ratings, warnings if a soft or service is discontinued, with Malware or Bundleware, all links to the corresponding Homepages for use or download.

The sidebar?

In Eternity (the app I use to browse Lemmy), the sidebar is equivalent to the "About" tab of a community.

I'm on Eternity too... Is the sidebar the swipe-able tab in a community?

Fun tidbit, DuckDuckGo has a bang for it, I use it all the time.

!a2

A2 has been changing a lot over the years. I have found it’s UX to be going in the wrong direction and it feels like it’s on a path towards too much ad monetization and spoiled trust. For now it seems fine still but it does list alternatives to itself which could use some love and support along the way as A2 grows.