A lot of people tend to say that they must use this or that proprietary software. But I have enough experience with GNU / Linux and Free Software that those claims make little sense to me. It is just finding what to use often appears to be hard.

![](https://notabug.org/jyamihud/FreeCompetitors/raw/master/screen_shot_01.png)

There are lists of Free Software such as the [Free Software Directory](https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Main_Page). Which is good in general to search through. There are websites like [AlternativeTo](https://alternativeto.net/) which lets you look for alternatives, but has two major downsides: 1.) It lists proprietary alternatives too; and 2) It lists alternatives, based on the fact that people find those programs be an alternative.

For example, somebody might have been looking for an alternative to Adobe Acrobat, the PDF reader. An alternative might be [Evince](https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evince) or something. But you could also use Firefox. It has a builtin PDF reader. Or you could use GIMP ( the image editor ) because it can import PDF files and convert them into images. Those websites usually fail to find those connections. So I wanted to make one where the alternatives are measured in functional similarity. Not by UI design, or the developer's goals. Which in theory should find more solutions to people who are just looking to do one simple job, that their proprietary program is capable of, and that they do now know has an alternative. Because nobody associated one with another. 

The algorithm I came up with does recommend Gimp and Krita when searching Photoshop. But it also recommends FreeCAD when searching Adobe Illustrator. Because both apparently can edit SVG files.

[Source Code of Free Competitors](https://notabug.org/jyamihud/FreeCompetitors)

Free Competitors Live Instances:

[This very website's Search](/search?fc=on)

[xhxcyntzwnbkdkpqqjmlsy7kmjgqubgtyghuh5yyd5j4ne54dbgdgkyd.onion](http://xhxcyntzwnbkdkpqqjmlsy7kmjgqubgtyghuh5yyd5j4ne54dbgdgkyd.onion) ( a tor server that I run personally )


# Poster inspiration

The software is designed to look like a poster I designed some time before it.

[Main Page, Poster: Digital Safety Guide](/posters/digital_safety_guide)

**Happy Hacking!!!**