Hi everyone! For… I guess over a year now? I’ve been observing and trying out lots of software recommended by the privacy community and internet as a whole. With that time, I’ve been able to slowly put together a list of all the software I personally believe to be the best for their own various reasons. I finally have enough to be able to share it with all of you!
I’m also looking for feedback. I haven’t tried all the software on that list, and I’m sure there’s software I’ve never heard of that needs added. I’m looking for your feedback on what you think should be added, removed, or changed. That includes the list itself, if you think there are any design improvements.
Do note: Any software marked with a ⭐️ I am not looking for feedback on. This is software that I firmly believe is the best of the best in its category, and likely will not be changed. However, if there is a major issue with the software that you can provide direct proof of, then there is a chance it will be changed in the next release. There are no grantees.
The sections marked with ℹ️ are lacking, and can use your help! Some software there may not be the best one, or may have many software or sections missing. I am absolutely looking for help and feedback here, and would love your help!
My goal with this project is to help people find the best software from many standpoints, and to prove that there really are good open source alternatives for almost anything! I hope this helps someone, and I look forward to your feedback!
Thank you all for reading and taking the time to look through my list!
Edit: This project has moved to GitLab!
For instant messengers, I would also add Wire and Matrix/Element (Matrix is the protocol, Element is the messenger that uses the protocol).
https://wire.com/en
https://matrix.org/ - https://element.io/
Both good open source secure messengers. Matrix is made by a type of non-profit foundation made to guide the development of the core protocol, and Wire is a Swiss company staking their future on how secure their messenger is for Enterprise applications. They both have different philosophies on how their operations are ran, but they’re both open source and secure.
They’re not as privacy respecting as Briar or SimpleX, but they’re also more aimed at organizations and groups that plan on self-hosting and potentially not federating with the rest of the network to help silo their organizational data. Wire obviously aims towards Enterprise customers, but Matrix does as well, despite a different approach. Matrix has had growth with both German and French governments for various secure communications systems within their government bodies based on the matrix protocol. So good messengers, just aimed at a different group of people as Briar/SimpleX.
So maybe they could have their own “Enterprise Chat” section? I dunno, just my thoughts.
I have Element. Nice cool thing, but as for the privacy maybe Session is better?
Session at least has a foundation behind it as well to try to seek financial support and drive development, and I’ll give it that.
However, personal opinion incoming, I think another underappreciated aspect of the “privacy” conversation isn’t just routing but also hardware ownership. We can rely on other people’s routing services all we want, but in the end, that’s still other people’s property we have to traverse to make connections. Especially for groups that function within a small community, I think locally hosted intranets are really important. Sure, some metadata leakage may happen, but most of the metadata leakage that happens (if I recall correctly) is to the service host/admin. So if you’re in a small, local, tight-knit community you may not be worried about your best friend who is a technical wizard knowing small bits of metadata for your localized interpersonal communications. Especially if you use the Matrix protocol but decline to federate and keep it an “internal” tool for your group/organization. I think “ownership of the means of communication” may be the 21st century equivalent of Marx’s “ownership of the means of production” in terms of importance to the proletariat. If we continue to just use large organizations network pipes to communicate, there are still unfortunately ways to target and block our traffic.