debloat.dev: a marketplace of open-source replacements for bloated vendor software

A new website, debloat.dev, presents itself as a marketplace of open-source replacements for bloated vendor software. The catalogue currently lists 215 projects across 186 posts, and every listing takes the form of a forum thread: anyone can comment, while publishing and rating require an account.

How the catalogue is organised

The site is split into ten categories: peripherals (42 projects), laptops and desktops (28), networking (23), audio (22), smart home (20), NAS and storage (19), phone and sync (18), printers and scanners (18), cameras and webcams (13), and TV and media (12). Those ten categories add up to exactly 215 listings.

The featured project on the home page is Cockpit, an LGPL-2.1 replacement for the Synology DSM and QNAP QTS administration interfaces.

What replaces what

Among the newest entries are Conversationaly (a Fireflies.ai replacement, MIT), SSH Tunnel Manager (Secure Pipes, MIT), Helium (Google Chrome, GPL-3.0, rated 4.5/5), OpenZiti (VPN, SD-WAN and microsegmentation, Apache 2.0), Zen (Adblock Plus and Total Adblock, MIT, 4.6/5), Prikkert (Doodle and Cally, EUPL-1.2), Asuswrt-Merlin (ASUS stock router firmware and its Trend Micro add-ons, GPL-2.0) and pymobiledevice3 (iTunes, iMazing and 3uTools, GPL-3.0, 4.7/5).

The busiest threads belong to Immich (a replacement for Google Photos and Samsung Gallery cloud sync, AGPL-3.0, 4.4/5, 15 posts), GSConnect (Phone Link and Samsung Flow, 5.0/5, 10 posts), G-Helper (ASUS Armoury Crate, 4.6/5), Syncthing (MPL-2.0, 4.6/5), Home Assistant (4.5/5), Jellyfin (a Plex alternative, 4.9/5), QMK (4.8/5) and ESPHome (4.8/5).

Open data and licences

The site includes a requests page where users describe which program they want replaced, a JSON API for submitting projects, an OpenAPI specification, an RSS feed of the 30 newest listings and a sitemap. Pages are server-rendered and carry no tracking; the only cookie appears when a user signs in. An llms.txt file is published, and pages can be served as markdown through an Accept: text/markdown request.

Licences range widely — MIT, GPL-2.0 and GPL-3.0, LGPL-2.1, MPL-2.0, AGPL-3.0, EUPL-1.2 and Apache-2.0 — so users can choose an alternative by legal terms as well as by features.