Best Free and Open Source Software

posted by Rianne Schestowitz on May 23, 2025

• Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Mule ESB - LinuxLinks

  Mule ESB (Mule Enterprise Service Bus) is a lightweight, Java-based platform that helps the integration of various applications and systems. It acts as an integration platform, allowing developers to connect applications quickly and easily, enabling them to exchange data and collaborate seamlessly.

  Mule ESB is proprietary software. We recommend the best free and open source alternatives for Linux. Note the applications highlighted are not a like-for-like replacement.

• SSPlot is a simple plotting utility and numerical simulator - LinuxLinks

  SSPlot is a simple plotter and numerical solver, which can plot csv style plain text files with numerical data separated by whitespace, and can numerically solve equations and ODEs to generate data and plot them for studying dynamical systems.

  This is free and open source software.

• aiortc is a library for WebRTC and ORTC - LinuxLinks

  aiortc is a library for Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) and Object Real-Time Communication (ORTC) in Python. It is built on top of asyncio, Python’s standard asynchronous I/O framework.

  The aiortc implementation is fairly simple and readable. As such it is a good starting point for programmers wishing to understand how WebRTC works or tinker with its internals. It is also easy to create innovative products by leveraging the extensive modules available in the Python ecosystem. For instance you can build a full server handling both signaling and data channels or apply computer vision algorithms to video frames using OpenCV.

  This is free and open source software.

• Popout3D creates 3D images with a phone or camera - LinuxLinks

  Popout3D creates 3D images with a phone or camera.

  Take two photos of a subject and the software will create a 3D image from them. Vertical and rotational alignment of the left and right images is essential for a convincing 3D effect, but difficult to achieve with an ordinary camera. This software corrects it. 3D image formats that can be created are anaglyph (red/cyan), side-by-side and crossover. Several photos can be processed at once, the resulting images can be reviewed and poor ones deleted.

  This is free and open source software.

• suanPan - finite element method (FEM) simulation platform - LinuxLinks

  suanPan is a finite element method (FEM) simulation platform for applications in fields such as solid mechanics and civil/structural/seismic engineering.

  suanPan is written in C++ code and is targeted to provide an efficient, concise, flexible and reliable FEM simulation platform.

  suanPan is partially influenced by popular (non-)commercial FEA packages, such as ABAQUS UNIFIED FEA, ANSYS and OpenSees.

  This is free and open source software.

• Keila is a newsletter tool - LinuxLinks

  Keila is an open source alternative to newsletter tools like Mailchimp or Sendinblue.

  With Keila you can easily send out newsletter campaigns and create sign-up forms.

  For smaller newsletters, you can use your own email inbox to send out campaigns. For larger newsletter projects, AWS SES, Sendgrid, Mailgun, and Postmark are supported in addition to SMTP.