Vaultwarden
Password Managers
Lightweight Bitwarden server API implementation written in Rust.
GPL is the middle ground: you can run it on your servers and charge for access without publishing anything, because hosting is not distribution under GPL-2.0 or GPL-3.0. The moment you ship code to a customer — an installer, a Docker image they run, an embedded device — derivative work must be released under the same licence. LGPL narrows that to the library itself if you only link against it dynamically.
GPL obligations trigger when you distribute binaries, not when you host the software yourself. A pure SaaS wrapper is usually compliant; shipping a desktop app, appliance or on-prem build is not. This dataset tracks 351 GPL projects (21% of 1665 total), 188 of them actively maintained, led by Vaultwarden with 65k stars. Verified against repository metadata as of August 2026; this is engineering guidance, not legal advice.
Running the software inside your own company, without redistributing it, is permitted under every licence family here except undeclared/proprietary code.
Usually fine for pure SaaS, because hosting is not distribution — until you ship an on-prem build, appliance or installer to a customer.
Restricted. Either derivative work must be released under the same licence, or the licence explicitly forbids commercialising a fork.
| Project | Category | Stars | Maintenance | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vaultwarden | Password Managers | 65k | Actively maintained | GPL-3.0 |
| Jellyfin | Media Streaming | 56k | Actively maintained | GPL-2.0 |
| Odoo | Resource Planning | 54k | Actively maintained | LGPL-3.0 |
| Discourse | Communication | 48k | Actively maintained | GPL-2.0 |
| Paperless-ngx | Document Management | 44k | Actively maintained | GPL-3.0 |
| Sunshine | Games | 40k | Actively maintained | GPL-3.0 |
| ToolJet | Software Development | 40k | Actively maintained | GPL-3.0 |
| qBittorrent | File Transfer | 39k | Actively maintained | GPL-2.0 |
| Halo | Software Development | 39k | Actively maintained | GPL-3.0 |
| ERPNext | Resource Planning | 38k | Actively maintained | GPL-3.0 |
| AdGuard Home | DNS | 36k | Actively maintained | GPL-3.0 |
| ntfy | Communication | 34k | Actively maintained | Apache-2.0, GPL-2.0 |
| Homepage by gethomepage | Personal Dashboards | 32k | Actively maintained | GPL-3.0 |
| Mindustry | Games | 29k | Actively maintained | GPL-3.0 |
| Cloudreve | File Transfer & Synchronization | 29k | Actively maintained | GPL-3.0 |
| Typesense | Search Engines | 26k | Actively maintained | GPL-3.0 |
| Calibre | Document Management | 26k | Actively maintained | GPL-3.0 |
| Tasmota | Internet of Things (IoT) | 25k | Actively maintained | GPL-3.0 |
| Navidrome Music Server | Media Streaming | 23k | Actively maintained | GPL-3.0 |
| SafeLine | Web Servers | 22k | Slowing down | GPL-3.0 |
| Matomo | Analytics | 22k | Actively maintained | GPL-3.0 |
| WordPress | Content Management Systems (CMS) | 21k | Actively maintained | GPL-2.0 |
| Kodi | Media Streaming | 21k | Actively maintained | GPL-2.0 |
| GoAccess | Analytics | 21k | Actively maintained | GPL-2.0 |
| Calibre Web | Document Management | 18k | Actively maintained | GPL-3.0 |
Password Managers
Lightweight Bitwarden server API implementation written in Rust.
Media Streaming
Media server for audio, video, books, comics, and photos with a sleek interface and robust transcoding capabilities. Almost all modern platforms have clients, including Roku, Android TV, iOS, and Kodi
Alternative to ERP
Free open source ERP system.
Alternative to Tribe, Circle, Community management
Advanced forum / community solution based on Ruby and JS.
Document Management
Scan, index, and archive all of your paper documents with an improved interface (fork of Paperless).
Games
Remote game stream host for Moonlight with support up to 120 frames per second and 4K resolution.
Alternative to Retool, Internal tools
Low-code framework to build & deploy internal tools with minimal engineering effort (alternative to Retool and Mendix).
File Transfer
Free cross-platform bittorrent client with a feature rich Web UI for remote access.
Software Development
A powerful and easy-to-use website building tool (documentation in Chinese).
Alternative to SAP Business One, Odoo
ERP system to help you run your business.
DNS
User-friendly ads & trackers blocking DNS server.
Alternative to Notification infrastructure, Push notifications
Push notifications to phone or desktop using HTTP PUT/POST, with Android app, CLI and web app, similar to Pushover and Gotify.
Personal Dashboards
Highly customizable homepage (or startpage / application dashboard) with Docker and service API integrations.
Games
Factorio-like tower defense game. Build production chains to gather more resources, and build complex facilities.
File Transfer & Synchronization
File management and sharing system, supports multiple storage providers.
Alternative to Algolia, Digital search experience, Search
Blazing fast, typo-tolerant open source search engine optimized for developer happiness and ease of use.
Document Management
E-book library manager that can view, convert, and catalog e-books in most of the major e-book formats and provides a built-in Web server for remote clients.
Internet of Things (IoT)
Open source firmware for ESP devices. Total local control with quick setup and updates. Control using MQTT, Web UI, HTTP or serial. Automate using timers, rules or scripts. Integration with home autom
Media Streaming
Modern Music Server and Streamer, compatible with Subsonic/Airsonic.
Web Servers
Web application firewall / reverse proxy to protect your web apps from attacks and exploits.
Alternative to Google Analytics, Web analytics
Web analytics that protects your data and your customers' privacy (alternative to Google Analytics).
Alternative to Web CMS and Blog Engines
World's most-used blogging and CMS engine.
Media Streaming
Multimedia/Entertainment center, formerly known as XBMC. Runs on Android, BSD, Linux, macOS, iOS and Windows.
Analytics
Real-time web log analyzer and interactive viewer that runs in a terminal.
Document Management
Browse, read and download eBooks using an existing Calibre database.
Alternative to Asana, Trello
Manage your projects, tasks and goals. Collaborate via work packages and link them to your pull requests on Github.
Communication
Forum software built for the modern web.
Media Management
Automatic TV Shows downloader and manager for Usenet and BitTorrent. It can grab, sort and rename new episodes and automatically upgrade the quality of files already downloaded when a better quality f
File Transfer
Fast, easy, free Bittorrent client.
Miscellaneous
Proofread more than 20 languages. It finds many errors that a simple spell checker cannot detect.
Media Management
Automatically download movies via Usenet and BitTorrent (fork of Sonarr).
Miscellaneous
Habit tracker app which treats your goals like a Role Playing Game.
Media Streaming
Audiobook and podcast server. It streams all audio formats, keeps and syncs progress across devices. Comes with open-source apps for Android and iOS.
Alternative to WhatsApp, Telegram
Instant messaging platform. Backend in Go. Clients: Swift iOS, Java Android, JS webapp, scriptable command line; chatbots.
Games
Voxel game engine (formerly Minetest). Play one of our many games, mod a game to your liking, make your own game, or play on a multiplayer server.
Communication
Mail server suite based on Dovecot, Postfix and other open source software, that provides a modern Web UI for administration.
Alternative to Elastic Cloud
Full-text search and data analytics, with fast response time for small, medium and big data (alternative to Elasticsearch).
Document Management
Cross-platform e-book/manga/comic/pdf server and web reader with user management, ratings and reviews, and metadata support.
Communication
Screego is a simple tool to quickly share your screen to one or multiple people via web browser.
E-commerce
WordPress based e-commerce solution.
Communication
Marketing automation software (email, social and more).
E-commerce
E-commerce platform with essential commerce features. Modular architecture and fully customizable.
Self-hosting Solutions
Homeserver manager. One command setup, one click installs for your favorites self-hosted apps.
Authoritative/recursive DNS server with ad blocking functionality.
Alternative to Video Conferencing
Supports real-time sharing of audio, video, slides (with whiteboard controls), chat, and the screen. Instructors can engage remote students with polling, emojis, and breakout rooms.
Communication
General-purpose, lightweight, minimalist WebRTC Server.
Human Resources Management (HRM)
Complete HRMS solution with over 13 different modules right from employee management, onboarding, leaves, to payroll, taxation, and more.
Media Streaming
Organize, search, and enjoy your YouTube collection. Subscribe, download, and track viewed content with metadata indexing and a user-friendly interface.
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GPL obligations trigger when you distribute binaries, not when you host the software yourself. A pure SaaS wrapper is usually compliant; shipping a desktop app, appliance or on-prem build is not. GPL is the middle ground: you can run it on your servers and charge for access without publishing anything, because hosting is not distribution under GPL-2.0 or GPL-3.0. The moment you ship code to a customer — an installer, a Docker image they run, an embedded device — derivative work must be released under the same licence. LGPL narrows that to the library itself if you only link against it dynamically.
351 of 1665 tracked projects carry a GPL licence — about 21%. 188 of them show real momentum (commits in most of the last twelve months plus a recent release), so the practical shortlist is smaller than the raw count suggests.
Licence breach is copyright infringement, and the usual consequence is not a lawsuit — it is a failed diligence review. Acquirers and Series A investors run automated licence scans over your dependency tree; an unresolved copyleft or source-available dependency in a closed product either delays the deal or gets priced into it. The cheap fix is choosing correctly at week one.
Yes — GPL is an OSI-approved open-source licence family. What varies is the obligation that comes attached, not whether the code is open.
Licence data comes from repository metadata and can lag a relicensing event. Confirm the LICENSE file in the repository before shipping. This page is engineering guidance, not legal advice.
IdeaProof checks whether your idea is already built, how saturated the category is, and where the remaining wedge sits — in about two minutes.
Validate your idea freeSearch this database by category and by the commercial product you would replace. It covers 1665 projects across 130 categories, each mapped to the paid tool it substitutes. If your category shows a "Crowded" verdict, a maintained free version almost certainly exists and your positioning has to account for it.
No. It means free is your price anchor. Plenty of large companies were built next to a good open-source project — the ones that failed were the ones selling the same job at a price the free tool made indefensible. Find the part of the job the project deliberately does not do, and sell that.
Each category gets a 0–100 score built from three inputs: how many implementations exist, what share of them are still actively maintained, and how far ahead the leading project is compared with the category median. 62+ is Crowded, 38–61 Contested, under 38 Open. 11 categories are Crowded and 88 are Open.