Submission Guidelines

This list is for utilities and applications you can download. Development technologies like frameworks or databases aren't allowed.

Criteria

To avoid the clutter trap that many other lists succumb to as they scale, only the best software is included. But "best". Here, it's mostly guaged based on five criteria. Keep in mind every criteria is more of a suggestion and can be skirted, thus, pay greater attention to the real-life examples I've included - they do a much better job of articulating what makes it onto this list.

1. Popularity

Projects with over 5000 stars are preferred. Popularity is far from the best method, but people use specific software for a reason - probably because it's halfway decent. Again, this isn't foolproof since people can be allergic to change, but the other criteria can weed out those exceptions.

2. A Foundation

A solid set of contributors, not neccesarily in quality but commitment

3. Activity

The project must show signs of recent activity. Abandoned software will not be placed on this list - no expections.

4. Future Proof

Going alongside the above criteria, the project must have consistent activity and evidence of a future.

5. Quality

Lastly, is the software decent?

Examples

Determing whether software belongs on this list often involves a lot of external research - all of which will be explored in these examples.

1. PearCleaner

Description: A free, source-available and fair-code licensed mac app cleaner

Stars: 4.2k

Contributors: 7

On the surface PearCleaner woudn't fit with a relatively small amount of stars and just seven contributors. But research brings about the following conclusion: PearCleaner is one of two major app cleaners for MacOS - the other being the proprietary AppCleaner. Despite just 7 contributors, they have been continuously pushing updates on a ~two week interval. They have a solid roadmap for future updates and been delivering on those promises.

Result: YES

2. Marktext

Description: A simple and elegant markdown editor, available for Linux, macOS and Windows.

Stars: 48.1k

Contributors: 144

Every part of this project passes the test... except for the fact that it's abandoned. It's still insanely popular but hasn't had a commit in 7 months and the last release was two years ago.

Result: NO

3. Zed Editor

Description - Code at the speed of thought – Zed is a high-performance, multiplayer code editor from the creators of Atom and Tree-sitter.

Stars: 52.3k

Contributors: 753

Just about any software on this scale will make it onto this list. Zed Editor has a massive user base, a massive team, a solid roadmap, and the means to execute on those promises well into the future.