About Us

What is LiteLocker?

LiteLocker is a community driven list of open source alternatives to proprietary software and applications. The goal of the site is to be your first stop when searching for open source services. It will help you find alternatives to the products you already use.

How did LiteLocker get started?

The project started as a weekend project to learn a new technology and try something new and fun from scratch. It gained a lot of traction early on (100k unique visitors in one week, #1 on Hacker News) so it was clear that there was a need for a site like this.

I've always been a fan of open source software and I've always wanted to contribute to the community in some way. I thought that creating a list of open source alternatives to proprietary software and applications would be a great way to give back to the community.

How are rankings calculated?

LiteLocker uses a sophisticated algorithm to calculate the health score of each open source project, which determines its ranking. The score is based on several factors:

1. GitHub Metrics: We consider stars, forks, watchers, and contributors, with each metric weighted differently.
2. Project Age: Newer projects get a slight boost to balance out the advantage of older, more established projects.
3. Recent Activity: Projects with recent commits are ranked higher to ensure we're showcasing actively maintained alternatives.
4. Manual Adjustments: In some cases, we may apply a small manual adjustment to account for factors our algorithm can't capture.

Here's a breakdown of how the score is calculated:

• Stars, forks, and watchers each contribute 25% of their value to the score, adjusted for the project's age.
• The number of contributors has a higher impact, contributing 50% of its value to the score.
• We apply a penalty for projects that haven't been updated recently, with the penalty increasing for up to 90 days of inactivity.
• The project's age is factored in to give newer projects a fair chance. Very new projects get a full score, while older projects (5+ years) get about half the score for each metric.

This approach helps us balance between popular, well-established projects and promising newcomers in the open source community.

Why open source?

Open source software offers unmatched transparency that proprietary solutions simply cannot provide. With access to the source code, you can verify exactly what a program does—ensuring your privacy is protected and your data isn't being harvested for profit. This transparency isn't just theoretical; it's why open source projects like Firefox and Linux are often more secure and respect user rights more than their closed-source counterparts.

The collaborative community behind open source creates software that evolves based on real needs rather than corporate profit motives. When thousands of passionate developers and users contribute to a project, the result is often more innovative and resilient. Take Coolify, which began as an open source project and revolutionized how we deploy applications—or Nextcloud, which continues to add features requested by its community while respecting user privacy and control.

Perhaps most importantly, open source eliminates the vendor lock-in and restrictive licensing that plague proprietary software. You gain:

• Freedom to modify the software for your specific needs
• Independence from any single company's business decisions
• Control over your digital infrastructure and data

As technology increasingly mediates our lives, these freedoms aren't just convenient—they're essential for maintaining autonomy in the digital age.

Tools Used

• ScreenshotOne – The screenshot API for developers
• Typefully – Twitter scheduling/analytics
• Beehiiv – Newsletter
• Airtable – Database
• Screen Studio – Screen recording for marketing videos

Contribute

If you have any suggestions for open source alternatives to proprietary software and applications, feel free to contribute to the list. You can also contribute by suggesting new categories or improving the website. The source code is available on GitHub.

Enjoy and feel free to contribute!

Affiliate links

The site participates in affiliate programs with select service providers, where some links are automatically tracked as affiliate links. I try to make sure that these services are not given preferential treatment.

About the Author

I'm a software developer and entrepreneur. I've been building web applications for over 15 years. I'm passionate about software development and I love to contribute to the community in any way I can.

Some of my other projects:

• DevSuite – Find the perfect developer tools for your next project
• OpenAds – Automate ad spot management and increase website revenue
• Dirstarter – Next.js directory website boilerplate

I'm always looking for new projects to work on and new people to collaborate with. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or suggestions.

– Piotr Kulpinski