Good Services and Software
Since the birth of the internet, we've now got a lot of software and services available for people (or "consumers") to conveniently access and use, that improves their quality of life.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of crap available as well and with the ever-increasing enshittification of lots of services that use to be useful, it's difficult to find what is good... or believe that there is good stuff left.
I've aware of a few things that are still good and will probably continue to be good and not succumb to enshittification, in my opinion, and so I've decided this good stuff below.
What is good?
Good in this case means "happily recommendable by me", and I'll be basing my recommendations mostly on the following factors:
- 🪙 Fair priced. Ideally, free to use and supported through donations or other sustainable and reasonable funding mechanism, but could require a small one-off payment or a fair subscription payment.
- 🔐 Little-to-no data collection. Does not gather data on their users (or you can easily turn off all data gathering), but may gather anonymous / anonymised data for the developer's use to help inform development decisions.
- 🔕 Ad-free - so there is no temptation to gather data, nor is there annoying/dangerous advertisements shown to users.
- 🏛️ Properly-incentivised owner. Is developed by a non-profit / not-for-profit / for-public-good organisation - to ensure that "increase profit" is not the goal, but instead the goal is "maintain and improve the software or service".
- 💅 Decent user experience. Some websites, services and apps are free and useful, but they're a pain to use, or they just look and feel outdated. That makes it hard to recommend for people to use, because people are picky about these things in our modern, convenience-filled world (justifiably or not).
- 🛠️ Well-maintained. The most useful software in the world is great until it breaks, or a user has an issue with it, or a security vulnerability is found and it never gets patched (or it gets patched, but it's never released).
- 🔍 Open source. - The code that makes the software and service work should be open source (at least the main component).
- 🌱 Sustainable. - Environmentally, Socially and Economically. For example: It can't rely on the constant production of "stuff" or have Generative AI features that the environment, the software/service and organisation/developer can't be contributing to social issues (racism, transphobia etc.), and the continuing funding of the software/service should not require or contribute to endless, unsustainable economic growth.
- 🙇 Respect the user. - Is having an account really a requirement for using the software / service? Probably not. Is being online a requirement? Probably not for many features. Does the user actually want the newsletter / advertising? Probably not. Is the documentation and help information easily accessible? It should be. Do those Generative AI features need to be there? No.
The good stuff
| Software / Service | Summary |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | Online encyclopaedia. |
| Wiktionary | Online dictionary. |
| Other Wikimedia Foundation projects. | Online wiki services. |
| Signal | End-to-end encrypted messaging app. |
| AntennaPod | Podcast listening app. |
| Lichess | Chess app. |
| LibreOffice | Office suite (e.g. Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Presentations) - successor to OpenOffice. |
| Firefox | Beb browser. |
| Thunderbird | Email client. |
| VLC | Media player. |
| Tor Browser | Web browser that routes your browsing through the Tor network. |
| Home Assistant | Home automation software. |
| Manjaro or Linux Mint | Linux operating systems. |
| GNOME or KDE or XFCE or Cinnamon | Desktop Environments & software for Linux. |
| Transmission | BitTorrent client. |
| OBS Studio (Open Broadcaster Software) | Video recording and live streaming. |
| GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) | Photo editing and digital art creation. |
| Blender | 3D modelling and animation creation. |
| Inkscape | Vector graphics illustration. |
| Celestia | 3D visualisation / simulation of outer space. |
| Jellyfin | Home Media System (Audio/Video, Server & Clients) |
| Godot | Game engine. |
| Trelby | Screen writing software. |
TODO: Make this table contain more info on how it fulfils being "good"
TODO: Add Browser Extensions / Add-ons.
TODO: Add Ladybird browser, if it actually ends up being usable.
If there are things that you think should be on this list, let me know!
Nearly good stuff
Stuff that is pretty good, but not quite there, but still mostly recommendable:
| Software / Service | Summary | Issue? |
|---|---|---|
| Livio's Dictionary apps | Offline dictionary apps, where dictionary information is sourced from Wiktionary. | Not open source? |
| Knots 3D | Informational app about knots, with 3D visuals. | Not open source? |
| Private Internet Access (PIA) | VPN service. | Not non-profit? |
| Bluesky | Social media app. | Social impact is debatable (goes for all social media). |
| Audacity | Audio editing. | Not non-profit owned - Owned by Muse Group, who've enshittified MuseScore and UltimateGuitar, in my opinion. |
| DuckDuckGo | Search engine service. | Not non-profit owned - Owned by DuckDuckGo Inc. Some parts are open source but the core is not. Also has generative AI features, but can be turned off. |
| Mailspring | Email client. | Not non-profit owned - Owned by Foundry 376. |
| GnuCash | Accounting software. | Not so modern / friendly UI. |
| Bitwarden | Password Manager | Not non-profit owned - Owned by Bitwarden Inc. |
| Ubuntu | Linux operating system. | Not non-profit owned - Developed by Canonical Ltd., mostly. |
| Focus Friend | Mobile app to help focus | Not non-profit owned - Developed by Honey B Games, seems to be part of B-Tech Consulting Group LLC. Not open source. |
TODO: Make this table contain more info on how it fulfils being "good"
Engineering and Organisational good-ish stuff
Software is often needed by engineers & organisations too. I touch upon lots of things over in my Software Engineering section of this website, but here's a short list of neat things:
- The Linux Foundation's projects, software & services.
- The Apache Software Foundation's projects, software and services.
- FreeDesktop.org hosted software.
- Rocket.Chat - Open source communication system. Not non-profit owned. Owned by Rocket.Chat.
- GitLab - Open source Software Development system. Not non-profit owned. Owned by GitLab Inc.
- Nextcloud - Open source cloud platform. Not non-profit owned. Owned by Nextcloud GmbH.
- Odoo - Open source ERP and CRM systems. Not non-profit owned. Owned by Odoo S.A.
- Matrix - Open source decentralised communication systems.
- Discourse - Open source forum software. Not non-profit owned. Owned by Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc.