This post was something that's been on my mind for years now, actively in practice since 2022, and more recently inspired by this post, 'The Freedom Tech Stack'

For context, I am a web developer, graphic/UX designer; hobbyist artist, video producer, poet, comedian, and relentless learner. I have been living with schizophrenia for 20 years now. I am extremely high-functioning, and as of February of this year, I maintain that high-functioning ability without the need for pharmaceutical medications. I say this not as an implicit suggestion that schizophrenic people not medicate, they absolutely should, but I say that as a position of authority when I tell you that I am a master of dealing with most forms of delusions, paranoia, and pragmatic application of personal benefit in the face of the bigger picture (which is so much further out of our control than most appear to be able to accept).

The reason I make this statement is that the Bitcoin community has a bit of a reputation - for better or worse - of being a bit paranoid. This list is not explicitly privacy-centric, but it is implicitly so due to the nature of self-hosting. It is instead focused on usability and control over ones own digital assets critical to everyday personal/business usage of software that the everyman is expected to know and use.

I am not including blockchain technologies since everyone likely has highly opinionated flavors of choice in that regard and I don't want to muddy the conversation with preferential debates in that category. I am also not going to mention AI since these things are moving too quickly and I am making a list that is most likely to stand the test of time. If you prefer alternatives or additions to the items below, of course, voice them!

Lastly, this list is centric around two opinionated setups:

This post is a snapshot of my master list of software I use or have tested thoroughly and intend to use as I migrate away from proprietary software. They are based on three primary aspects:

Some items are tagged "Assembly Required" - Signing up to the non-self-hosted option is EZMode, however setting up your own server will require sysadmin skills. Maybe one day, the community can hatch up a way for a one-click setup to be possible.

In my opinion, Open Office is simpler to use than alternatives like LibreOffice. It loads faster as well and does everything I expect it to.

In my slow learning journey to escape Adobe, I was overjoyed when trying out kdenlive. It does everything I've tried to do in Premiere Pro and feels more intuitive and less clunky than Premiere Pro itself.

Inkscape is admittedly not my favorite compared to Adobe Illustrator. However, not having malware on your system is a great compromise.

A suitable Photoshop replacement. The UX is pretty clunky, especially if you are migrating away from Adobe. However, I never ran into an instance where it couldn't do what I needed a Photoshop replacement to do.

If you have ever heard of Plex, it's the same idea. Self-host media that you already own to access your library the same as you would a streaming service like Netflix.

This password manager is opinionated that your passwords should not be accessible by your other devices, but does allow danger-mode like Cloud syncing if your risk tolerance allows it.

I've always used Audacity, long before I knew what FOSS was.

Already a leader in 3d image creation, this is a no-brainer project to support with your loyalty, and (like everything on this list) donations if you can.

This is a way to use various workspace tools like Email, project management, and so much more while self-hosting. For deliverability, you should use an external delivery service like Sendgrid. However, in extreme cases where in-house delivery is required, it is fully compatible with configuring that yourself.

If you're not a software person, this is at least valuable in the sense that you could use Gitea to mirror all the repositories on this list!

I drafted this entire post in Obsidian. The paid version offers cloud syncing, but you can also DIY it with plugins (I use a plugin with an S3 remote storage). I believe Obsidian is not as copyleft, but it is open source and your files are all in markdown format making egress quite easy.

After Figma CEO's ceaseless touting of being "the Adobe killer," his two faces were revealed in 2022 after announcing Adobe's acquisition of Figma. Thankfully, the Department of Justice blocked the acquisition for its blatant monopolistic posture. However, I am fully soured and not giving Figma another chance. That's where Penpot comes in.

As mentioned, my schizophrenia diagnosis over time compelled me to examine and modify all sources of stress. In the context of software, as I became more interoceptive, I realized how annoyed/angry with everyday software usage. I would get bombarded with ads, upsells, or put into coercive relationships in regards to my data or usage of software. In most instances, software that I already paid a ton of money for! Furthermore, features would often get clawed back and eventually re-surface as paid features despite the application being advertised as "free tier forever." This wouldn't have bothered me if not for the fact that I was already paying them for parallel services, so the clawbacks simply meant I would pay a second time to get the same functionality back.

This careful management isn't exclusive to how I interact with software, but since this post is already pretty long-winded, I decided to stick to that theme.

I know this doesn't cover a lot of ways people use software, so if you have any additions to this list, please add them in the comments - there is a 100% chance I will zap your reply if the software is FOSS.