I run r/DigitalEscapeTools, a small community focused on open-source, privacy-respecting, and Google-free tools. The goal is to help users discover practical alternatives to mainstream tech while keeping discussions respectful and non-commercial.

I’d like to invite open-source developers and maintainers to share their projects if they fit the following:

🔹 What we’re looking for

Open-source software (FOSS preferred)

Privacy-respecting / minimal tracking

Useful tools (apps, web tools, CLI, extensions, etc.)

Actively maintained or stable projects

🔹 What we avoid

Closed-source apps

Tracking-heavy or ad-driven software

You’re welcome to share:

What your project does

Why it exists

Source code (GitHub, Codeberg, GitLab, etc.)

How users can contribute or give feedback

If you’re interested, feel free to post directly on r/DigitalEscapeTools or join the discussion there.

This is not a promotional post — just an attempt to connect developers and users who care about open source and digital independence.

Thanks, and keep building 🛠️

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[–] emb@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago

Concept of it sounds good. I don't think you're going to get a lot of love here by linking to Reddit and encouraging people to contribute there.

Have you considered aggregating and organizing this info and sharing it on a separate website? (Personally-owned) websites are underrated these days.

[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Here's my GitLab. None of it's "active" really. I'm the only contributor to most things I have on GitLab. At least some of the things there, if they started getting attention and interest, I might very likely make them active. But for now, they're just out there and may or may not receive further updates. Though I'm working on other projects I specifically intend to publish as FOSS in the future.

Simple-CSS-Shrinker was made for a web-based game I wrote back in the day. I ought to dust that game off and publish it.
JeSter, the JS tester. A really simple JS unit testing framework that runs in a browser and doesn't require Node or V8 or anything. Made in service to the same game I mentioned in the previous item.
pystocking was basically in service of hydrogen_proxy
hydrogen_proxy is a "scriptable HTTP proxy" written in Python. Definitely intended for privacy kind of applications. But it's kinda slow. I have in the back of my mind to rewrite it in Go, but it's not high on my priority list. (I'm honestly mulling the idea of quitting the use of browsers all together if I can wrangle a way to do that that doesn't involve switching to a bunch of proprietary software. The main browsers are bullshit these days.)
GoVTT was written because I wanted to play a TTRPG with friends remotely. It's a web-based virtual tabletop application that you can self-host. I may some day offer hosting for it. (Like, if you want to use it but don't want to be bothered to go through the hassle of hosting it yourself, maybe I'll offer to host it for a small fee.) No guarantees, though, except that it'll always be FOSS and it'll always be an option to self-host.
codecomic is a domain-specific language for making simple webcomics or story boards. I made it because I wanted to be able to include webcomics/story boards in my game mastering notes, which are managed with a system that I should also publish as FOSS.

My main side-projects right now that I haven't published yet are:

A domain-specific language for building 3d game assets. Roughly speaking, FreeCAD is to OpenSCAD as Blender is to what I'm currently working on building. (It's in the early stages right now. I intend for it to be able to do modeling, rigging, animations, textures, normals, etc. All in the DSL's syntax. I'm making progress, but of course that project is ridiculously ambitious. We'll see where it is in a year.)
A framework for rapidly prototyping 3d-printable mechanical keyboards. (Also pretty ridiculously ambitious.) The image below is a sneak peak at the first keyboard I'm intending to build with it. Some day.

3D render from OpenSCAD of a 3D-printable keyboard with funky-shaped keycaps.

[–] thelocalhostinger@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

i am super impressed by codecomic.

[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Hey thank you! I'm glad to hear some interest in it. I've definitely got ideas as far as how I'd like to see it improve moving forward (some syntactic sugar, more sophisticated ways of drawing "people"/creatures/skeletons/etc, maybe vector graphics output support -- no project is ever really done, you know.) I'm on another project at the moment, but if it got enough interest, I'd probably be inclined to put more work into it.

I don't have a TTRPG campaign running right now (which is what I wrote it for), so I'm not "eating my own dog food" very much with that particular project. But I would love to do more with it. Only reason I'm not already is because I've got so many other projects I want to work on. Heh.

The main project I'm working on lately has been that 3D game assets DSL that I mentioned later in my post. It's probably quite a bit more ambitious than codecomic (it's actually Turing complete which definitely adds to the challenge), but I do see a point approaching where it's feature-complete enough to at least publish an alpha version. It also definitely needs a lot more code comments/documentation before I publish. Probably still months away, but it feels a lot closer than it did last week. Heh.

Anyway, thanks again for the complement!

[–] hereforawhile@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago

I just released this little self host able social media platform

https://gitlab.com/here_forawhile/nanogram

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

No one here is interested in your Reddit community.

[–] kevincox@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago

Please be polite. If you don't like a post you can downvote it. If you would like to comment please be more civil.

[–] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 0 points 2 weeks ago

Open-source software (FOSS preferred)

FYI, there isn't really such a thing as "OSS but not FOSS." The free software definition and the open source definition mostly overlap. Anything that is free software is almost always open source and vice versa.