market-research/

Free/Libre/Open Tools

Note: This list is currently a work in progress.

The following software projects are ones we use or have used ourselves and so are upstream projects that enable our work.

Communication

  • CiviCRM (AGPL) — constituent relationship management application to organize volunteer and donor information
  • Discourse (GPLv2) — forum software for community discussion and planning
  • IRC at freenode.net — Internet Relay Chat network that supports FLO projects and communities
  • Jitsi Meet (Apache License 2.0) — video conferencing with webRTC for meetings
  • Mumble (BSD) — low-latency voice chat application

Design

  • GIMP (GPL) — bitmap graphics editor, used for photo editing and general image manipulation
  • Inkscape (GPL) — vector graphics editor, used to create the images for the site, including website mockups and illustrations
  • Kdenlive (GPLv2+) — non-linear video editor, used to create introductory videos on the site
  • Krita (GPLv2+) — sketching and painting application; also used to convert image color space for printing
  • Pencil (GPLv2) — used to make wireframes and prototypes
  • pngquant (BSD) — utility for lossy compression of PNG files for web
  • Scribus (GPL) — layout and desktop publishing software with support for vector and bitmap formats; used to convert image colorspace for printing
  • Simple Scan (GPLv3) — scanning utility a with batch scan, page reordering and other features, used to scan in paper sketches for inking

We’ve used the following applications for animation:

  • Blender (GPLv2+) — 3D production suite with a modeler, compositor, rendering engine as well as full non-linear video editor and animation support for both 3D and some 2D
  • Natron (GPLv2) — an extensible compositor with support for a number of file formats
  • Synfig (GPL) — 2D animation software with HDRI and sound support

And the following for music production (a few select items of many):

Development

  • GitLab CE (MIT) — repository hosting and code collaboration. (Unfortunately not a fully FLO project as they have a restricted proprietary Enterprise version)

Documentation and project management

  • Etherpad (Apache License 2.0) — collaborative drafting of project specifications and other documents
  • Gitit (GPLv2) — wiki used to store information on various aspects of the project, including planning and research

Server infrastructure

  • Apache (Apache License 2.0) — web server
  • Docker (Apache License 2.0) — enables software containerization and templates for faster deployment
  • Nginx (BSD) — web server and reverse proxy