The archive · Content & Film · Product decision · 2024
OpenAlternative launches a two-day directory of open-source tools curated for longevity
Piotr Kulpinski turns years of bookmarked open-source projects into a community directory whose only filter is "actively maintained and has a paid hosted tier".
OpenAlternative
What it had to solve
Existing "open source alternative" sites were noisy and ad-heavy, listing every popular repository regardless of maintenance, and readers worried projects would quietly die. Piotr Kulpinski had spent years collecting well-run open-source companies to learn from their code, and wanted to learn the Astro framework; a directory seemed like a two-day way to turn that collection into something useful.
How it works
OpenAlternative began as a private habit: Piotr Kulpinski collected well-run open-source companies over years, mostly to learn from their code. When he wanted to learn Astro, the static-site framework everyone was discussing, he decided to publish the collection as a directory — a two-day project that became a community-driven list of open-source alternatives to proprietary software.
The twist was the filter. Rather than listing every popular repository, Kulpinski only included projects that were actively maintained and offered a paid, hosted version — freemium open source. A project with a revenue-backed hosted tier, he argued, has an incentive to keep its open-source core alive, which is exactly the confidence a company needs before adopting an alternative.
Launched on Hacker News on 8 March 2024, the site drew 156 points and 52 comments. Readers debated the freemium criterion from both sides — a sign of longevity for some, a future lock-in risk for others — and asked for search and "alternative to X" navigation, which the author said he planned to add.
Why it lands
- Years of bookmarks became the inventory: the author built the directory from projects he already knew and studied, so two days of work produced a curated list rather than a scraper dump.
- The freemium filter answered the question users actually had — "will this project still be maintained?" — with a structural signal instead of a promise.
- Restricting entries kept the list small enough to stay trustworthy, while community submissions kept coverage from depending on one person.
- Launching on Hacker News turned critics into product feedback: search, licensing tags and per-tool pages all came out of the thread.
What it did
The Show HN drew 156 points and 52 comments. Commenters pushed back on the freemium filter — some read a paid tier as proof the project would stay alive, others as a future lock-in risk — and asked for search and "alternative to X" pages; the author confirmed search was planned and explained the curation logic in replies.
What you can take
A directory's value lives in its filter: one honest test — "would this project still be alive in five years?" — beats exhaustive coverage, and building from material you already own keeps v1 cheap.
Since then
The launch thread doubled as a roadmap session: Kulpinski answered each critique, defended freemium open source as one legitimate model among several, and promised search and licence tags. Commenters compared the site with established rivals, and the author argued that curation around maintenance and business models was the differentiator. The domain remained live, and the discussion kept returning to the question the filter had tried to answer: how a user can trust that an open-source project will still be there in five years.
Sources
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