Free and Open Source Software

Software is more consumer-friendly when it has a free and open-source software license (not to be confused with freeware). This is because the code is freely available to audit by anyone knowledgeable, as well as create their own fork if they want to modify the original software.

Benefits of free and open source software over proprietary software:

• More software: This form of licensing allows developers to contribute to, use, and create copies of each other's code which often leads to more software and more choice on which software the user wants to use.
• Monetarily free: Most times this software is monetarily free. But developers still have the right to sell distributions of their software even if the code is freely available.
• No ads: 99% of the time this software doesn't contain ads because ads don't usually fit in the ethics and funding models of the organizations and individuals creating free and open source software.
• No spyware: The open nature of this software means there is no where to hide spyware.

Some of the various useful free and open source licensed software:

• Element is an instant messaging client for the Matrix protocol.
• WebCord is a Discord client with many client-side privacy features.

• Brave, a web browser with many built-in features such as ad-block, enhanced privacy, device sync, and more.
• FreeTube, a privacy-oriented YouTube browser that allows you to download audio and videos as well as keep locally-saved playlists and subscriptions without depending on YouTube's mercy for your account.
• Zen Browser, a firefox-based browser with a focus on simple, secure, customizable experience.

• Audacity is a digital audio editor and recording application.
• Ardour is a DAW.

• GIMP is a raster graphics editor used for image manipulation and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized tasks.
• Inkscape is a vector graphics editor for Linux, Windows and macOS. It offers a rich set of features and is widely used for both artistic and technical illustrations such as cartoons, clip art, logos, typography, diagramming and flowcharting.

• Shotcut is a cross-platform video, audio, and image editing program.
• MPC-HC is a compact, lightweight, and customizable media player for Microsoft Windows.
• MPV is an advanced customizable media player with a minimal UI and lots of features.
• Handbrake is a transcoder for digital video files.
• LBRY is a video platform that uses blockchain technology. It is impossible for videos to be taken down, making this a proper alternative to YouTube censorship. The web front-end is Odysee.

• Logseq, a markdown block-based note-taking app that encourages daily entries and linking between pages. Also has task management, PDF annotations, flashcards, and whiteboards.

• KeePassXC is a password manager that saves your passwords on a local encrypted database. The benefit of this is that you can generate brute-force-attack-resistant passwords for each site without having to memorize it. So if one site gets breached, your password can't be cracked and used to login to all your other accounts on other websites.
• Sandboxie isolates programs so they don't access more parts of your system than they need to. This is good for limiting attack surfaces as well as the privacy invasion of certain proprietary programs.

• Linux Mint, a user-friendly Linux distribution based on Ubuntu.
• GrapheneOS, an android-based, privacy-hardened operating system for Pixel phones that is easy to install.
• Arch Linux, a Linux distribution with a focus on simplicity for developers. This also makes it more simple for non-developer power users.
• Fedora Linux, a Linux distribution with a focus on out-of-the-box experience, security, and bleeding-edge updates.

• Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, a survival horror roguelike.
• Mindustry, a factorio-like tower defense for desktop and mobile.
• OpenTTD, a transport tycoon recreation.
• Unciv, a 2D recreation of Civilization V for desktop and Android.
• Space Station 14, a multiplayer role-playing disaster simulator with incredible depth in technical mechanics.