Open Source & Free Tools for Web Workers

Readest is an ebook reader designed to offer a comprehensive and customizable reading experience across multiple devices.

Features:

• Parallel Reading: This function allows you to read two documents side-by-side, which is useful for comparing texts, learning languages, or multitasking. The views can be synchronized for seamless reading.

• Customization: Readest allows you to adjust fonts, layouts, and theme colors to create a personalized reading environment. You can choose from a variety of themes and colors to suit your preferences.

• Reading Essentials: Readest provides tools such as highlighting, bookmarking, note-taking, and full-text search.

• Smart Tools: Built-in dictionary, translation (DeepL), and Wikipedia integration facilitate effortless understanding, especially for multilingual readers.

• Cross-Platform Sync: Readest allows you to read across all platforms with syncing between devices.

• Read Aloud: With AI-powered text-to-speech (TTS) functionality, Readest can read books aloud.

Readest aims to break barriers to understanding and refine the reading experience for curious and passionate readers. The application encourages users to join its newsletter to receive early access to updates, features, and releases, and to provide feedback to improve Readest.

Friendica is a decentralized social network with several key features.

Here's a summary:

• Decentralization: Friendica has a decentralized architecture, meaning there is no central authority or ownership. It allows for relationships across compatible systems, creating a network of smaller sites. Users can experience wall-to-wall posts and remote comments across different network nodes.

• Privacy: Friendica provides access lists for every item and private conversation groups where communication is restricted to group members. It also features one-to-one private messaging on supported protocols. Users can set content to "expire" after a set time and download their personal data.

• Interoperability: Friendica supports protocols like ActivityPub, OStatus, and diaspora*. It also supports email contacts and communications and can import websites and blogs via RSS/Atom feeds. Plugins offer support for other services.

• Posts, Photos, and Events: Users can write and edit posts, as well as comment on and like/dislike posts from contacts. They can also share photos with selected people and organize events.

• Profiles: Friendica allows users to have public profiles and private aspects, or keep everything private.

• Extensibility: Friendica can be extended via third-party plugins and themes.

• Hosting: You can run a personal Friendica node on shared hosts, as it runs on PHP with MySQL. If you can run WordPress, you can run Friendica.

Metabase is a business intelligence tool that offers a range of features, including:

• Analytics dashboards.

• A query builder that allows users to query data without needing SQL knowledge.

• The ability to create models.

• SQL editor for those who prefer to write SQL queries.

• Drill-through functionality.

• Permissions management.

• Sandboxing to segment data access.

• Usage analytics.

• Collections for organizing content.

• CSV upload capability.

• Self-service analytics, allowing users to explore data on their own.

• Embedded analytics, for customer-facing analytics.

Metabase also allows you to connect to over 20 data sources. It provides options for creating and sharing interactive dashboards with various visualization types. Metabase also focuses on making business intelligence accessible to everyone with its user-friendly interface.

Matomo is a web analytics platform that emphasizes data ownership and privacy protection as an alternative to Google Analytics. Here's a summary of its main features:

• 100% Data Ownership: Matomo gives users full control over their data, allowing them to know where it's stored and what's happening to it without external influence. This means no third-party has access to the data.

• Privacy Protection: Matomo is presented as an ethical alternative to Google Analytics, ensuring user privacy. It can be used without requiring user consent. Matomo is designed to be GDPR and CCPA compliant. Unlike Google Analytics, it allows for the secure tracking of personal data in accordance with privacy laws.

• Google Analytics Importer: Matomo allows users to import historical Google Analytics data directly into the platform, eliminating the need to sacrifice past data.

• No Data Sampling: Matomo provides 100% accurate reporting by avoiding data sampling, which means users can make decisions based on complete data.

• Open Source: Matomo is a transparent, secure, open-source platform that has been thoroughly tested.

• No Data Limitations: Users can track an unlimited number of websites, users, and segments, and there are no limitations on how much data can be stored.

• Easy to Use: Matomo features a user-friendly interface to help users get the data they need quickly.

• Customizable: The platform can be customized and extended to meet specific needs.

• Support: Matomo provides support to help users best utilize the platform.

• Real-time Data: Matomo provides real-time data, features, and reports to improve website performance.

• Trusted: Matomo is trusted by over 1 million websites in over 190 countries. It is used by a variety of organizations including large corporations, SMEs, governments, and non-profits.

• Cloud and On-Premise Options: Matomo offers both cloud-based and on-premise hosting options.

• BigQuery and Data Warehouse Export: There is a feature for exporting data to BigQuery and other data warehouses.

Plausible Analytics is presented as a simple, lightweight, open-source, and privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics. Here’s a summary of its key features:

• Privacy-focused: Plausible is built with user privacy in mind. It does not use cookies and does not collect personal data. All site measurement is done anonymously, without persistent identifiers or cross-site tracking. The visitor data is processed on servers owned and operated by European companies and never leaves the EU. This eliminates the need for cookie banners and GDPR consent.

• Simple Analytics: Plausible provides an intuitive dashboard that displays essential website insights on a single page. It cuts through the noise and does not require users to build custom reports or dashboards. Plausible is easy to use and understand without prior training.

• Lightweight Script: The Plausible script is very small, 75 times smaller than Google Analytics, which helps to reduce page load times and carbon footprint.

• Open Source: Plausible's source code is available on GitHub, allowing anyone to inspect it and verify its actions. It is released under the AGPL license, and users have the option to self-host it.

• Comprehensive Tracking: Plausible allows users to track goal conversions, revenue, and campaigns using UTM parameters. It also tracks outbound link clicks, file downloads, and 404 error pages. Custom events and dimensions can be created to track conversions and attribution, and funnel analysis can be used to increase conversions.

• Shareable: Plausible dashboards can be shared publicly via a custom link, embedded into websites, or shared privately using a secure link. Team members can be invited with assigned user roles.

• Smooth Transition: Plausible offers a real-time dashboard, entry pages report, and integration with Search Console. It also allows users to import historical Google Analytics stats.

• Flexible API: Plausible provides an API to retrieve stats programmatically and send metrics wherever they are needed.

• Email and Slack Reports: Plausible can send weekly or monthly reports, along with traffic spike notifications.

• First-Party Connection: The script can be served as a first-party connection to get more accurate stats.

• Visitor Segmentation: The dashboard can be filtered by any metric that is clicked on to allow for in-depth insights.

• Integration: Plausible integrates with tools like WordPress, Ghost, Squarespace, Wix, and Weebly, and supports single-page applications and hash-based routing.

• No Data Sharing: User data is not shared with or sold to third parties and is not monetized.

Plausible offers different plans based on the monthly pageviews, and includes features such as team member access, site limits, data retention, email and Slack reports, Google Analytics import, goals and custom events, and more. Higher-tier plans include a Stats API, Looker Studio Connector, custom properties, funnels, ecommerce revenue attribution, and priority support. Enterprise plans provide higher limits and additional features, including API access for reselling and technical onboarding.

Plausible is a self-funded, bootstrapped company and is funded by its subscribers. The platform is designed to handle a large volume of traffic and is used by many startups and brands.

Fathom Lite is a simple, privacy-focused website analytics tool.

Features:

• Privacy-focused: Fathom Lite is designed with a focus on user privacy. It is presented as a more privacy-conscious alternative to Google Analytics.

• Simple website analytics: Fathom Lite provides basic website analytics.

• Open source: Fathom Lite is an open-source software.

• Built with Golang & Preact: The application is built using the programming languages Golang and Preact.

• Self-hosted: Fathom Lite can be installed on your own server.

• Maintained Long-term: While no new features are being added to Fathom Lite, it is being maintained and bug fixes will be provided.

• Tracking Snippet: Fathom Lite provides a tracking snippet that users can add to their websites to begin collecting data.

• MIT Licensed: Fathom Lite is licensed under the MIT license.

• Docker Support: Fathom Lite can be built and run using Docker.

• Free to Use: Fathom Lite is free to use.

• Basic Features: Compared to Fathom Analytics, Fathom Lite is less detailed and feature-rich.

• No Support: Fathom Lite does not come with support.

• Manual Updates: Fathom Lite requires manual updates via the command line.

• Manual Backups: Fathom Lite requires manual backups by the user.

Additionally, the sources provide information about how to install Fathom Lite, both in production and development environments, as well as how to use Docker to build and run the application.

UXWizz is a self-hosted web analytics platform that aims to provide comprehensive website analysis while prioritizing user privacy and data control.

Features:

• All-in-one analytics: UXWizz offers a variety of tools in a single platform, eliminating the need to switch between multiple dashboards. This includes stats, heatmaps, session recordings, A/B tests, event tracking, goal setting, and user segmentation.

• Self-hosted: The platform is designed to be self-hosted, giving users full control over their data and preventing third-party access. Data is stored in a user's own MySQL database. This approach enhances data privacy, reduces third-party risks, and helps with GDPR compliance.

• Data privacy and security: By not sending data to third-party services, UXWizz provides complete privacy and avoids potential GDPR issues. Users can customize tracking to ensure compliance.

• Performance and scalability: UXWizz is built to be highly performant, even on a basic server setup, and is capable of tracking millions of pageviews.

• Ease of use: UXWizz emphasizes ease of installation, maintenance, and updates. It offers automatic, one-click updates.

• User Behavior Analysis: The platform offers features to improve website design and functionality. Heatmaps show which parts of a page receive the most attention. Session playback allows users to identify usability and technical issues by watching recordings of user browsing sessions.

• Conversion Rate Optimization: UXWizz facilitates the comparison of user segments, helping users understand where their buyers come from and improve sales.

• Cost-effective: UXWizz aims to eliminate the costs of cloud-based services and restrictive plans. It allows users to track unlimited domains, page views, and events.

• Direct data access: Data is stored locally, enabling easy backups, deletion, and integration.

• Premium Support: Users can get help within 24 hours directly from the developer for installation, operational issues, or feature requests.

• Business protection: Data is kept away from competitors and large corporations.

• Trusted: UXWizz is trusted by thousands of companies and webmasters. The reviews indicate that users consider it a superior alternative to other analytics platforms, and it has helped businesses refine their content, identify confusing elements on pages, and optimize what is displayed above the fold.

LinkAce, is a self-hosted tool for archiving, organizing, and sharing web links. Here are its main functionalities:

• Archiving: LinkAce allows you to save articles and bookmark tools, preserving important content long-term. It also automatically backs up links via the Internet Archive.

• Organization: You can categorize links with tags and group them into custom lists.

• Monitoring: The application continuously monitors saved links and sends notifications when a website moves or becomes unavailable.

• Search and Filtering: LinkAce provides a powerful search function, allowing you to find links and filter and order results by various properties.

• User Interface: LinkAce has a clean interface and handles both light and dark mode based on your preferences or operating system settings.

• Sharing and Privacy: You can share your link archive with guests, or keep it private. Links, tags, and lists can be set to private separately.

• RSS Feeds: Both private and public links are accessible via RSS feeds, and feeds are also available for tags and lists.

• Bookmarklet: Instead of browser extensions, LinkAce provides an easy to use Bookmarklet to save any website with one click.

• REST API: LinkAce offers a REST API for all features, enabling control and access to all your data from other applications.

• Installation: LinkAce provides pre-configured Docker configurations and a built-in web installer to make installation easier, and it is recommended to install via Docker.

Lens is designed to check a website's meta tags, icons, and RSS feeds. Here are its main functionalities:

• Metadata Check: Lens examines a website's metadata, including the character set, title, Open Graph title, description, Open Graph description, and Fediverse creator information. The application also checks for "rel='me'" links.

• Icon and Color Check: Lens identifies the website's icon, title, theme color, and Apple touch icon.

• RSS Feed Check: The application checks for the presence of RSS, Atom, and JSON feeds. It also identifies the feed type and title, as well as the feed URL.

• HTML Display: Lens displays the HTML code found on the page, providing code examples for metadata, RSS feeds, and icons.

Lens also indicates that a domain must be added to the Author Attribution section under Public Profile > Verification in Mastodon settings for the Fediverse creator function to work. This requires Mastodon version 4.3.

• Flohmarkt is a decentralized, federated small advertisement platform.

• The name "flohmarkt" is German for "flea market" or "garage sale," and it is intended to be a small place for a connected group of people.

• The platform is meant to be a place for the exchange of goods and services.

• The project name, "flohmarkt", is written in lowercase letters.

• Flohmarkt provides its own http server to show small ads published by registered users.

• Registration is done through the server itself and can be switched off to limit access.

• Users register with an email address, and a confirmation link is sent.

• Registered users can publish small ads which are viewable to anyone who can access the website.

• To communicate with the ad author, unregistered users must log in or use a fediverse account.

• The small ads are actually notes in the fediverse.

• The url of the note can be opened with a fediverse client.

• Users can boost the ad like any other note.

• Users can also reply privately to the author by marking their note as 'direct'.

• It's possible to follow accounts on flohmarkt servers to get new ads in your timeline, like any other fediverse account.

• The software asks for the community's coordinates and radius at installation to help limit how far goods might travel.

• Flohmarkts can manually federate with other flohmarkts in their range to show their goods on their page.

• This is intended to build local communities where face-to-face trades are more common.

• The wiki is a good source of information.

• A presentation about flohmarkt took place at ChaosCamp 2023.

• There is a list of known instances on the wiki.

• A service compatibility chart is available.

• News about flohmarkt is regularly posted on Mastodon: @grindhold@23.social under the tag #flohmarkt.

The platform is designed to facilitate local trading and community building by connecting individuals through a decentralized, federated system.

Frappe Learning is a learning management system designed to help users create and manage online courses. Here are some of its main features:

• Structured Learning: Frappe Learning allows users to design courses with a 3-level hierarchy: courses, chapters, and lessons, which helps to keep track of multiple topics and ensures the context of the lesson is set by the chapter.

• Diverse Content Types: The platform supports a variety of content types including videos from YouTube or Vimeo, direct uploads from a computer, text content, and quizzes.

• Live Classes: Frappe Learning enables the creation of batches to group learners, and instructors can conduct live classes using Zoom, with the ability to create Zoom classes directly from the app.

• Assessments: Instructors can create quizzes with multiple-choice or text answer options, set marks, passing percentages, and configure questions to be shuffled. They can also include assignments that allow submissions as PDF, document, image, or URL.

• Evaluations and Certifications: The app offers a scheduling system for face-to-face evaluations where learners can select a time slot based on evaluator availability. Once evaluated, students can be granted certificates using a built-in template or a custom-designed one.

• Social Learning: The platform provides a discussion section below each lesson for learners to ask questions, and fellow learners and instructors can respond. Learners can also leave reviews and ratings for courses.

• User Profiles: Each learner has a profile page where they can add a picture, bio, and headline, and list all earned certificates. This profile can be shared with others.

• Open Source: Frappe Learning is 100% open source, which provides a cost-effective solution, particularly for non-profit organizations.

• Customizable: The platform allows for customization of courses.

• Ease of Use: It is designed to be easy to use for educators, organizations, and freelancers for creating and sharing courses.

• Origins: Frappe Learning was initially developed as a custom platform for FOSS United, and later adapted for Frappe's own learning platform.

In summary, Frappe Learning aims to be an easy-to-use and versatile learning system that supports structured courses, various content types, live interactions, assessments, certifications, and social learning. It is intended to be a default choice for anyone looking for a learning system, including educational institutes, corporations, and individuals.

Tuba is an application with many features, including post editing, polls, profile editing, multiple accounts, markdown & HTML syntax highlighting, Bookwyrm support, Funkwhale support, Peertube support, quote posts, and admin tools. It also has a focus picker, audio visualizer, blurhashes, a built-in media viewer, gestures, animations, custom emojis, filters, content warnings, search filtering, reports, follow requests, mute & block management, lists, explore, a spellchecker, user/hashtag/emoji auto-completion, notifications, instance announcements, emoji reactions, draft posts, scheduled posts, and #FediWrapped.

The application is ready to use with features for posting, notifications, profiles, search, hashtags, threads, direct messages, and multiple accounts. Tuba is designed with privacy in mind, with no ads, tracking, or out-of-instance requests. It is also adaptive, and works on mobile devices, laptops, and desktop computers. Finally, Tuba is free and open source and is licensed under GPL-3.0. Tuba is a fork of Tootle.

Rodent is an Android client for Mastodon, which is a social network similar to Twitter. However, unlike Twitter, Mastodon is distributed, open, and owned by the community. Rodent is designed to support many of the common features of Mastodon and also adds some innovative features that set it apart from other Mastodon clients.

Rodent has a user-first approach and is designed to be disruptive and unapologetic. The developers of Rodent encourage users to send suggestions to rodentapp@gmail.com or message @rodentapp@mastodon.social. The developers also suggest that if a user wants a feature, it will likely be added to Rodent.

Immich is a self-hosted photo and video management solution that allows users to back up, organize, and manage their media on their own servers. It is designed to help users browse, search, and organize their photos and videos with ease, while maintaining their privacy.

Key features of Immich include:

• Backup: It facilitates the secure backup of photos and videos to a user's own server.

• Organization: Immich helps users organize their media.

• Browsing and Searching: The platform enables users to easily browse and search through their photos and videos.

• Privacy: It is designed to prioritize user privacy by providing a self-hosted solution.

• Open Source: Immich is available under the GNU AGPL v3 license.

• Mobile App: There is a mobile app available to download for backing up photos and videos.

• Active Development: The project is under very active development, so users should expect bugs and changes and not rely on it as their only method of storing photos and videos.

CommaFeed is a self-hosted personal RSS reader inspired by Google Reader. It allows users to collect and read their favorite content in one place. Here are its main features:

• Layouts and themes: Offers 4 different layouts and light/dark themes.

• Responsiveness: Works on both mobile and desktop.

• Keyboard shortcuts: Supports keyboard shortcuts for most functions.

• Language support: Translated in 25+ languages.

• Scalability: Can support thousands of users and millions of feeds.

• OPML support: Supports OPML import/export.

• API: Provides a REST API and a Fever-compatible API for native mobile apps.

• Rules: Can automatically mark articles as read based on user-defined rules.

• Browser extension: Has a browser extension.

• Database support: Supports H2 (embedded), PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB.

• Multiple deployment options: Can be deployed using Docker, cloud hosting (PikaPods), or by downloading precompiled packages.

• Customization: Offers configuration options via a properties file, command line arguments, environment variables or a .env file.

• Memory Management: Can be configured to manage memory usage.

• Native compilation: Can be compiled to native code for faster startup and lower memory usage.

• Translation: Files are provided for internationalization.

• Active Development: There have been 49 releases of the application.

CommaFeed is built using Quarkus and React/TypeScript. It is available under the Apache-2.0 license.

Snikket is a messaging platform designed for privacy, security, and user control. It offers a messaging experience similar to popular apps but with key differences.

Here are its main features and purpose, summarized in under 2000 characters:

• Decentralized Network: Unlike mainstream apps where messages go through a central provider, Snikket uses a network of independent services that communicate with each other.

• User Control: Users can choose a Snikket service provided by someone they trust (like a friend, family member, or organization), giving them more control over their data.

• Group Focus: It's ideal for small groups such as families, friends, clubs, or small organizations.

• Privacy: Snikket does not require a phone number, upload address books, or sell data to advertisers.

• Safe Space: Within a Snikket instance, users control who joins via invitation links.

• Organization: Users can organize groups into "circles," create group chats, and make audio/video calls.

In essence, Snikket aims to provide a private and secure messaging alternative that puts users in control of their communication.