25 Awesome Open Source, End User Apps

Open source movement is popular among programmers, almost everything we use today is open source by default. Thanks to open source it is possible to fork projects, contribute to existing ones, and also learn more about how tools we use work.

I’m regularly reporting about open source projects in various programming languages. So far you could learn about 130 interesting open source projects if you subscribed to my posts.

Contrary to the popular belief, open source is not only about tools, and apps built for programmers. There is already a huge number of popular end user apps with open source code.

You may be familiar with OpenOffice, LibreOffice or Blender. These are just top of the shelf open source projects that lead in their areas of document editors and 3D rendering apps.

Today, I’d like to interest you in ten other end user open source projects. They may be less popular, but are very interesting! Oh, let’s go with 25. Let’s dig in!

1. OpenPilot — Open Source Car AutoPilot

The last project is one I learned about a month ago, and it blew my mind. You probably are familiar with Tesla autopilot right? So, imagine there is an autopilot that can be added to a number of various cars. It can connect with the car through the standard interface and control aspects of driving according to the conditions on the road. Imagine it is open source. OpenPilot is exactly that. An open source autopilot for various cars written in Python.

2. Home Assistant — Open Source Home Automation

Home automation is a nice thing to have. I’d love to be able to open my door automatically when I am near, or open windows automatically.

What stopped me from getting into it, among others, is that it is extremely expensive and risky.

Like, I am not an expert. But there does not seem to be a standard between manufacturers. So, similarly to Apple products, if you buy one, you have to buy everything from them.