[LUAU] FOSS alternatives to proprietary software

[Hawaii Linux Institute]

Julian Yap wrote:
> I usually get asked questions along the lines of 'What's the Open Source
> alternative to WS FTP LE?'  It pains me to see people using these kinds
> of deprecated shareware products past the 30-day trial period...  Like
> WinZip.
>
> So I started a page to list the FOSS alternatives to proprietary
> software.
> http://www.hosef.org/wiki/FOSS_alternatives
>
> I was wondering, what are your favorite FOSS alternatives?  
>
> As you can tell from the page, I have screenshots.  So for now, I'm
> keeping it simple/pretty and sticking to GUI applications vs.
> command-line alternatives like GCC.
>
> Mahalo,
> - Julian
This is a great post.  Thanks for the hard work & your enthusiasm has 
made at least myself feel terribly ashamed (don't know how others feel).

However, we must realize that devil is in the details.  It's not just 
whether there exist FOSS alternatives, but how the alternatives work 
(with respect to both features, user-friendliness, etc) vis-a-vis the 
Windows (perceptively/deceptively) real thing.  We should try to work on 
each and every must-have alternative, and perhaps compile a list of 
locally available respective experts.

Let's not forget that, as we have discussed in separate threads, for 
those Windows apps that we are ready to move from, there is always the 
alternative of using VMWare (server or player) to run them under a 
virtualized environment.  Wayne