r/foss Nov 01 '19

Welcome to FOSS!

76 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I'm a big fan of using Free and Open Source software, and wanted to share my love of it on reddit. I want to get this sub up and running, with the goal that it becomes a hub for discussing FOSS, looking for suggestions of what to use, promoting your projects, posting news related to FOSS, etc.

I personally have very little experience moderating, let alone on reddit so please pardon me while I bump around the controls. :) My near-term goal right now is to put up a list of subs that share FOSS principles (in the sidebar, or wiki?) then maybe another list of FOSS-related resources that I'm aware of. I'd appreciate suggestions too!

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you'll be a part of the FOSS community.


r/foss 4h ago

Someone open sourced a native file manager (A fast, monochrome, GPU-accelerated desktop file manager built in Rust with GPUI) with Rust + GPUI (Zed's UI framework)

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5 Upvotes

r/foss 4h ago

I built Grayslate, a free and open-source developer scratchpad for JSON, CSV, text and large files

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2 Upvotes

Hi r/foss,

I have been building Grayslate, a free and open-source scratchpad for developers.

I wanted a simple app where I can paste an API response, open a large JSON or CSV file, search logs, save commands, write temporary notes, or keep code snippets without opening a full IDE.

Grayslate works fully on your device. There is no account, no cloud upload, and no tracking.

Some features:

  • Available on Linux, Windows and macOS
  • Built with Tauri, Rust, Svelte 5 and CodeMirror
  • Supports JSON, CSV, Markdown, logs and many programming languages
  • Can handle large text, JSON and CSV files
  • Automatic save and file name suggestions for scratch files
  • Search across file names and saved content
  • CSV table view
  • Markdown preview
  • JSON tools to copy keys, values and full paths
  • Multiline find and replace
  • 80+ local transformations for text and data
  • Opening and editing external files

The app is not meant to replace VS Code, Sublime Text or IntelliJ. It is for quick work where I want something simple, fast and distraction-free.

The project is still new, and I am actively fixing bugs and adding features based on user feedback.

GitHub: https://github.com/shriram-ethiraj/grayslate

Website: https://grayslate.app

I would really appreciate feedback, especially about Linux support, privacy, packaging, accessibility, or anything that can make the project better.


r/foss 1d ago

I built a zero-knowledge pastebin because I didn't want to trust paste sites with my data

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227 Upvotes

I wanted a simple way to share sensitive text without trusting the server with it.

So I built binthere.

Everything is encrypted in your browser with AES-256-GCM before it's uploaded. The server only stores encrypted data, so it can't read your notes.

There's also a CLI if you prefer sharing directly from the terminal.

I'd love to hear what you'd improve or add.

GitHub: https: https://github.com/nxfu/binthere


r/foss 17h ago

IStanPdf - Offline foss app to revolt against freemium pdf and docx operations

12 Upvotes

Hi everyone, I'm Ramakanth! A while ago, I shared IStanPdf - an app I built as a 1st-year CS student because I was tired of paywalls, file-size limits, and privacy concerns on sites like iLovePDF and Smallpdf.

The goal was simple: bring common PDF and DOCX operations entirely offline, right on your device. The initial response from this community was amazing, and thanks to your support, we officially just crossed 100 stars on GitHub! 🎉

I've spent the last few weeks acting on your feedback - optimizing the UI design, improving core functionality, and heavily reducing the APK size for a much smoother experience.

What you get: • Fully offline processing - your files stay securely on your device • Faster than most online-based PDF and DOCX websites • PDF and DOCX operations combined in a single app • DOCX processing powered by custom LibreOffice binaries

GitHub: https://github.com/vasuki-re/IStanPdf

My goal is to help as many people as possible permanently ditch freemium, privacy-invasive document websites. If you're tired of being forced to upload your personal files to random servers or hitting arbitrary daily limits, I'd love for you to download the app and give it a try!

Feedback is always welcome. If you run into bugs, have feature requests, or want to contribute, feel free to open an issue or submit a PR.

And if you find the project useful, consider giving it a ⭐ on GitHub - it really helps get the app in front of more users so we can keep growing this community!


r/foss 3h ago

I've built an open-source cold email & warmup alternative

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0 Upvotes

r/foss 8h ago

Reef: Instant Keyboard-First Search for Any Website

2 Upvotes

Meet https://reef.js.org — a fast, keyboard-first search palette for websites.

Press Ctrl/⌘ + K, type what you’re looking for, and jump straight to the right page, heading, file, link, form field, or even an on-page action. Reef indexes your site directly in the browser, caches the index locally, and works without a backend, account, or complicated setup.

It’s built for docs sites, blogs, portfolios, GitHub Pages, and any site that has outgrown browser find features. It's a direct competitor to many paid services such as Algolia, etc.

Highlights:

  • Fuzzy and ranked search
  • Sitemap-based indexing
  • Local IndexedDB caching
  • Searchable pages, files, links, media, and structured data
  • Keyboard-first, accessible UI
  • Shadow DOM styling isolation
  • Optional headless API and agent workflows
  • Configurable themes, hotkeys, crawl limits, and action safety modes
  • No search queries leave the browser by default

Add one script tag, and your static site gets a command palette with a memory.

Feedback, feature ideas, and issues are needed!

__________________________________________

Github - https://github.com/somalip/Reef


r/foss 2h ago

SmeggTuner - an open-source accordion tuner app for multiple systems, FOSS alternative to Dirk's Accordion Tuner

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0 Upvotes

r/foss 12h ago

Danube v0.15.1: open-source messaging platform in Rust now exports streaming data to Apache Iceberg tables

1 Upvotes

Danube is an open-source pub/sub and streaming platform built in Rust. It ships as a single self-contained binary with embedded Raft consensus (no ZooKeeper, no etcd), runs standalone for development, scales to a multi-node cluster for production, or deploys as a lightweight MQTT edge gateway for IoT ingestion. It supports JSON Schema and Avro via a built-in schema registry.

What's new in v0.15.1: This release introduces danube-iceberg, a sidecar that bridges real-time messaging and batch analytics. It continuously reads sealed WAL segments from object storage, resolves schemas from the Danube Schema Registry to produce typed Parquet columns, and commits them to an Iceberg catalog (REST, Glue, S3 Tables, or SQL-backed). The streaming topics become SQL-queryable tables accessible by Spark, Trino, DuckDB, Snowflake, and any Iceberg-compatible engine, with zero ETL pipelines to build or maintain.

A full Docker Compose demo with IoT simulator, edge broker, 3-node cluster, Iceberg, and Spark SQL (Jupyter) is included in the repo.


r/foss 21h ago

Using Okular to sign documents with handwritten signatures

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4 Upvotes

r/foss 1d ago

JumpStart: one control panel for every local project on your computer

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7 Upvotes

Problem

If you run several projects locally, every morning is the same grind. You cd into a few folders, run the same start commands, guess which app grabbed which port, and later hunt down a process that will not die. JumpStart puts every project in one native window. You add a folder once, it auto-detects the runnable parts (Node, Go, Python, Ruby, PHP, Rust, Java/Maven, Gradle, Docker Compose, including nested monorepos), and then you start or stop them individually or all at once. You get live PID, exit code, logs, CPU, and memory per process, plus auto-detected ports shown as clickable localhost badges.

Comparison

  • Overmind and Hivemind: those are terminal only and need a Procfile you maintain by hand. JumpStart needs no Procfile, detects your stack automatically, and gives you a real GUI with live CPU and memory and clickable ports.
  • Docker Desktop and OrbStack: those manage containers. JumpStart manages the whole project, native processes and Docker Compose side by side, and adds a per-project Kanban board with a local Ollama assistant, so nothing leaves your machine.

Pricing

Free and open-sourced forever. Download at: https://jumpstart.workvar.com

Disclosure

I built JumpStart. Happy to answer anything about the auto-detection or process handling. Jumpstart website has a privacy policy and terms of use.


r/foss 22h ago

Open-sourced my Windows file manager and would love some feedback

1 Upvotes

Hi!

I recently open-sourced a personal project of mine called PowerDesk.

I had some free time and always felt that the default Windows File Explorer was a bit limiting for everyday use, so I decided to build a modern alternative focused on speed and workflow.

Some of the current features include:

• Fast global search

• Multi-tab interface

• Dual-pane mode

• Folder analysis

• File preview support

• Favorites

• Tags

• Workspace management

This is my first public open-source desktop application, so I'm mainly looking for honest feedback on the usability, UI/UX, and overall direction of the project.

You can try it here:

PowerDesk Github Release

I'd really appreciate any feedback, suggestions, or criticism. Thanks!


r/foss 1d ago

Building Rice - a minimal scripting language for Golang

2 Upvotes

I have been building Rice - a minimal embeddable scripting language for Go applications.

Here are its features:

  • Dynamic-typing
  • Functional programming support
  • Lightweight standard library
  • Single-threaded execution
  • Built-in profiler
  • Verbose error-reporting
  • An officially-made LLM prompts attachable to AI agents

Rice currently runs as an interpreter, with a bytecode virtual machine planned for a future release.

You can try Rice at https://rice-playground.vercel.app/

Check out the repository at https://github.com/anhcraft/rice

I am looking for feedbacks and stars xD


r/foss 1d ago

Do developers trust open-source libraries for implementing security-critical features?

2 Upvotes

I have developed two open-source Node.js libraries with my team: one for authentication management and another for secure token management. Both libraries follow OWASP guidelines, so developers who use them automatically align their authentication and token management flows with OWASP security best practices.

When it comes to security, do developers generally prefer using open-source libraries instead of building everything from scratch? My thinking is that if a library follows well-known security standards, saves development time, and the full source code is publicly available for anyone to see, there should be less concern about trusting these libraries to use them for their project. What do you think?

My long-term goal is to continue developing these packages, expand them to other technology stacks, and build more security libraries for areas such as rate limiting, session management, and other common security needs.

Do you think developers would adopt a project like this on a large scale once it has built enough trust and community support? I can see downloads on npm, but I'd really like to hear the genuine opinions of developers who make these decisions.

You can find the libraries here: www.restingowl.com

I'd really appreciate any feedback, suggestions, or constructive criticism.


r/foss 1d ago

I made a webcam-based auto-brightness tool for Linux

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1 Upvotes

r/foss 1d ago

modyra/modyra: A framework-agnostic, type-safe form engine

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0 Upvotes

r/foss 2d ago

Announcing MJ PDF 3.0: an open-source PDF reader that now competes with anything on the market

46 Upvotes

Hey everyone! This is Mudlej, the creator of MJ PDF, the open-source PDF reader for Android. (License is GPLv3)

Back in 2022, I shared the first version of MJ PDF on Reddit. It was a small, fast PDF reader that I had originally made for myself. I decided to share it with the community as a way of giving back to the open-source ecosystem I've always loved and relied on for its incredible tools.

Today, MJ PDF has 40K - 50K active users and more than 150,000 downloads, much of that growth came from communities like this one. Thank you to everyone who has used the app, shared it, reported bugs, or suggested improvements.

Here we are four years after I first shared MJ PDF here, MJ PDF v 3.0.0 is now available, and it is by far the biggest update the app has had. With this release, I believe MJ PDF can stand alongside any PDF reader on the market in both performance and features.

Through all of it, MJ PDF stays what it has always been:

  • Small (8.5 MB)
  • Fast (actually faster)
  • Simple to use
  • Private, and free of ads or tracking.

For a thorough walkthrough and screenshots check out the MJ PDF 3.0 release page.

Some of the main highlights:

  • Home page with recent files, library, progress, covers, and folder browsing
  • Highlights, notes, quote sharing, translation, and an offline dictionary
  • PDF forms, document signing, and incognito mode
  • Hide Margins, dual-page view, and an e-reader-style text mode
  • Backup and restore for history, bookmarks, and settings
  • Faster rendering, Material You design, and support for 15 languages

I tried to as much as I can to preserve the app’s familiar look and feel, so it still feels like the same simple MJ PDF that people already know and enjoy.

Links

Let me know what you think!


r/foss 1d ago

I realized people's souls leave their body the moment a terminal opens... so I built my own Claude Code. 😮‍💨

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0 Upvotes

r/foss 1d ago

CypherGate: An open-source VPNGate client that removes the manual setup

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2 Upvotes

VPNGate is a fantastic free VPN service, but using it on Linux usually means downloading OpenVPN configs, fixing outdated ciphers, and manually connecting through the terminal.

CypherGate is a GPL-3.0, Linux-first desktop client that automates the entire workflow.

The goal is simple:

No manual config editing. No fixing broken ciphers. No hunting for working servers.

What it does

  • Fetches live VPNGate servers
  • Automatically patches outdated OpenVPN configurations
  • Supports one-click connection, manual server selection, and fastest-server mode
  • Runs a dedicated systemd daemon for privileged networking operations
  • Integrates with the desktop through notifications and a system tray
  • Supports connection cancellation and automatic connection timeouts
  • Verifies official releases using GPG signatures
  • Caches server lists for offline browsing

Built with Python + Qt6

Licensed under GPL-3.0

Linux-first (Arch is the primary target, but Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora are supported through the installer.)

GitHub: CypherGate source code

Documentation: CypherGate documentation

I'd genuinely appreciate feedback, feature suggestions, or bug reports.


r/foss 1d ago

I got sick of uploading sensitive email templates to random web converters, so I open-sourced a 100% local CLI/Web toolkit.

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0 Upvotes

r/foss 2d ago

The Last MPEG-4 Visual Patent Has Expired

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58 Upvotes

r/foss 1d ago

I realized people's souls leave their body the moment a terminal opens... so I built my own `Claude Code`. 😮‍💨 Spoiler

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0 Upvotes

So, my family kept asking me to "make the computer do the thing" and every time I'd go "just open the terminal and..." well... 🥲

Claude Code, OpenClaw are genuinely incredible tools. Also genuinely built by and for people who are fine staring at a blinking cursor. My mom is not that person. Most people are not that person.

So, I built Operon. Same idea, an AI agent that reads/writes files, runs shell commands, browses the web, does multi-step tasks on its own, can be connected to WhatsApp, Telegram, etc., except you just... type in a chat box.

I also wanted it to feel like a native desktop app instead of a browser pretending to be one. So it's Rust + Slint (no Electron, no Chromium tab riding along), idles around 70MB RAM, and the app itself launches in under 50ms. First time I measured it I assumed I'd benchmarked it wrong.

Also gave it a "who's allowed to do what" system, because the second you let this thing live on WhatsApp or Telegram so people can message it, you realize randoms on the internet should probably not have the same permissions as you.
So: you = full access, everyone else = nothing, until you say otherwise.

Attached some screenshots of it running.
It's a solo project, very much still cooking, binaries are up on releases if anyone wants to poke holes in it. Please poke holes in it, that's genuinely what I'm here for. 🙏

Here is the repo: Operon


r/foss 1d ago

Probangs: extended syntax for search engine bangs

1 Upvotes

For my invention exchange, I came up with a variant on DuckDuckGo's bangs targeted toward power users.

For those who haven't used them, traditional bangs can be used to skip over your search engine's results and jump directly to the relevant website, for example:

!binggif cat (search Bing Images for cat gifs)
!r linux (search Reddit for posts about Linux)
!greddit linux (same, but searches Reddit posts via Google)
!w (no search term, just go to Wikipedia home page)
!clj juxt (search the Clojure docs for the juxt function)
! yahoo (I'm Feeling Lucky search, likely landing on yahoo.com)

Probangs take this a few steps further, allowing multiple bangs per search term (opening each in their own tab), as well as flags, parameters, and site searches. This makes for more versatile and more memorable keywords.

b!gif ddg!gif cat (search Bing and DuckDuckGo for gifs)
r!foss linux (search r/foss specifically for Linux)
r!foss@sp (same, but using StartPage)
w!fr w!eo (open the Wikipedia main page for French and Esperanto)
so!vim exit (search Stack Overflow's vim tag for exit strategies)
gh!usr=mozilla browser (search for browser-related repos belonging to
                        Mozilla on GitHub)
ia!tor itsfoss.com (find an archived site using the Wayback Machine's
                    onion service)

The reference implementation, !Pro Search, can be used as a quick and private in-browser router for these searches, with some extra features such as:

  • Use with any search engine: Instead of being limited to DuckDuckGo or Brave, search terms without bangs will default to your favorite search engine(s). Furthermore, bangs that were previously tied to either Google or DDG (e.g. !greddit or !ddgr), will now just use the configured engine instead.
  • Local search history: If enabled, allows you to use the up and down arrows to reuse old searches. Also, special keywords !! edits the last search, !? edits the last search, but strips out the bangs, and !* edits the last search, but strips out the query. Searches beginning with a space are omitted from history.
  • Search suggestions: Bang autocompletions will be suggested as you type them out. If self-hosted, partial search queries can be sent to any search engine for suggestions. It does this by stripping out the bangs, finding the first search engine among them that supports suggestions, sending the partial query, then inserting the bangs back into the suggested completions.

Probangs syntax, the parser, the master list, and the !Pro router are all free and open to use however you like. They can also be imported as a Clojure library or inserted into a personal start page.

What do you think, sirs?


r/foss 1d ago

DGPUNET P2P AI Update on Distributed GPU Network v.06.25 complete, v.0.7 next

1 Upvotes

DGPUNET (Distributed GPU Network) is a free and open source software (FOSS) project that enables clusterized pools of mixed GPU — and CPU — compute from whatever machines you have on hand, enterprise or consumer, different makes and generations, not just Nvidia, into one distributed AI compute fabric. It keeps AI work moving without vendor lock-in and without a single point of failure, when the cloud gives you the runaround or hardware is 3, 6, or 24 months out.

As of v0.6.25 DGPUNET has moved from pre-alpha to alpha stability. Not quire yet ready for beta, but I am now using it in my daily personal and professional work. https://techtalkhawke.com/news/status-update-on-hawkes-ai-dgpunet-distributed-gpu-network


r/foss 1d ago

Derakuma, a Fontobene library for the web

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2 Upvotes

I made a small Fontobene library for the web, called Derakuma. It's installable as an npm package, and is fully open source, under the MIT license. If you want to read the long lore, head over to my original post attached above. Enjoy!

https://github.com/zeankundev/derakuma

Here's the npm package that you can use:

npm package