List of proprietary software for Linux

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Linux is an open-source kernel and usually comes bundled with free and open source software, however, proprietary software for Linux does exist and is available to end-users. Together with GNU it comprises the GNU/Linux operating system.

The following is a list of proprietary software for Linux:

Contents

Networking [edit]

Web Browsers [edit]

  • Firefox with nominally-optional plugins -- although the basic browser is Libre software (free as in freedom -- as well as free as in beer), many essential[1][2][3] addons that provide additional or modified functionality are distributed under proprietary licenses, or open-source-yet-GPL-incompatible-licenses[4] (the most[citation needed] common scenario being MPLv1.1 which is not simultaneously dual- or tri-licensed with a GPL flavor).
    • Notable fully-proprietary addons include ColorZilla, FastestFox, Feedly, Ghostery, LastPass, MeasureIt, Shareaholic.
    • MPLv1.1-only addons include Chatzilla, FireFTP, FoxLingo, Rainbow Color Tools, Sage, Total Validator, Zotero.
    • Notable addons with other potentially-non-libre-licenses (depending on the definition of freedom used) include RightToClick and Flagfox.
    • Java is supported as a plugin via several proprietary options: Oracle JDK7[5], Oracle (discontinued) JDK6[6], IBM JDK[7]. See also: OpenJDK7 [8], OpenJDK6 (ongoing supported by RedHat despite Oracle discontinuation) [9], IcedTea7 [10], IcedTea6 [11], GNU GCJ[12].
    • See also the Chrome/Chromium browser family, which also permits[citation needed] installation of formerly-Firefox-specific XPI addons.
    • See also SeaMonkey, IceCat/IceWeasel, and other Mozilla Firefox derivatives.
  • Google Chrome – freeware (as in beer), Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal (HA HA HA -- please see eLinks and stop making me laugh) design with sophisticated[citation needed] technology to make the web faster[citation needed], safer[citation needed], and easier[citation needed].
    • An open source version of the codebase also exists, distributed by Google as Chromium -- it is a reference implementation of Chrome, with Google maintaining their private changes/improvements to the Chromium codebase in a separate repo branch (which is then distributed under the Chrome license and Chrome name -- plus includes proprietary plugins for AAC / MP3 / SWF / PDF baked into the installer).[13]
    • The approach used with Chrome/Chromium is somewhat similar to what Google does -- matching Oracle's private forest[14] behavior albeit not[citation needed] distributing the GoogleJDK changes at present as Oracle does[15] with the JDK EULA -- in terms of maintaining a for-Google-only JDK[16][17][18][19][20] in their own version-control-repo of the OpenJDK reference-implementation[21] codebase that ships[22] with desktop Linux distros. (See also ChromiumOS versus ChromeOS.[23])
    • One of the notable potentially-proprietary plugins for Chromium and Chrome is the Java JRE; this functionality can be implemented by either the proprietary Oracle plugin from their private forest, or theoretically[24] the non-proprietary IcedTea plugin[25][26] (built on Oracle's OpenJDK reference-implementation). It is unknown whether Google distributes any of their private-repo JDK changes as part of any Java plugin version for Chrome (or ChromeOS).
    • Additionally, while the chromium reference-implementation codebase itself is open source, the tools required for actually compiling the codebase into a usable app are not, in some cases. The flavor of Chromium that compiles for Windows depends on Microsoft's ATL graphics library, which is freely downloadable and 99% open source, but the 1% which is not under an open source license prevents legal compilation without ownership of a copy of Microsoft Visual Studio Professional (proprietary payware as opposed to Microsoft Visual Studio Express proprietary freeware). While compiling Chromium for Linux does not require[citation needed] proprietary tools, more endusers run Chrome or Chromium under windows than under Linux; this is a case where a sister-project can draw time and money away from the non-proprietary flavor.
    • Furthermore, both Chromium for Linux and Chrome for Linux have nominally-optional proprietary addons, in much the same way that Firefox addons (see Firefox entry on this page) are often under a proprietary and/or GPL-incompatible license. The proprietary plugin situation also applies to Chrome (on any platform). Besides being able to host Chromium-specific plugins (which also work in Chrome of course), both Chromium and Chrome also support Firefox addons directly -- see the list of proprietary addons for Firefox elsewhere on this page.
  • Opera – freeware, offers free (as in beer) and easy to download Web browsers for computers, mobile phones and devices. Linux download is a binary-only offering, which is not[citation needed] in the auto-update repos of any distro (however Opera can configurably perform auto-updates on itself).
  • Netscape – (discontinued) freeware (as in beer), last Linux version is 7.2
Background: rationale for inclusion [edit]

Determining whether any particular Linux web browser contains proprietary software is actually more difficult that it might seem at first glance. This is because modern browsers tend to support a plugin architecture (and such plugins typically may have differing software licenses than their parent browser-slash-container). Whether a browser is proprietary therefore depends to some extent on whether it "needs" proprietary plugins to function fully; this is often a judgement call, since the basic browser may function without proprietary plugin XYZ -- except that it will then be unable to display webpages with that particular proprietary audio codec, or that particular video-related technology, or that particular app-programming-language. Whether this "matters" depends partly on how many webpages use the proprietary technology in question on the server-side; PDF documents, Flash movies, MP3 audio, Java applets, ActiveX/Silverlight applets, and MP4 video are well-known historical examples.

More subtly, modern browsers tend to be cross-platform codebases, which simultaneously release a version of their codebase for Linux, Android, Windows, Windows8RT, OSX, and iOS -- but not always under the same licensing terms. Some projects, such as Chrome, are designed from the beginning as forks (not necessarily tied to the OS the sister-projects run under, either). In situations where the Linux version of the browser is non-proprietary, but the Android version (or the Windows version) of that "same" browser is proprietary, the team which is working on the overall browser-project is at risk of bifurcating: new features may be added to the proprietary flavor first, or exclusively. Similarly, performance enhancements may be pursued on the proprietary flavor first, or exclusively. This bifurcation is especially likely if the userbase of the Linux version of the browser is smaller than the userbase of the proprietary version(s) of the browser, which as of 2013 is usually the case.

The more general phenomenon of maintaining private branches, OS-specific sister projects, and branded sub-versions of a particular base project is discussed at the article on forking. Historically, at least one browser has experienced the various sorts of forks: Mozilla was an open-source fork of a formerly-proprietary product, Firefox is an open-source fork of Mozilla (and in turn has forks named SeaMonkey and IceCat/IceWeasel), Chromium is a 'planned' fork underneath Chrome (both sister-versions of the codebase are available on Linux and Android OSes -- this is a public-reference-branch underneath proprietary-private-rebrand situation), Opera is forked into OperaDesktop and OperaMobile (plus formerly OperaMini), and all modern GPL and proprietary browsers are (at least spiritually) forks of the original public-domain-licensed "WWW" browser written by Tim Berners-Lee. Some distros try to separate applications by their license requirements at the installer-repo level (e.g. Debian/Ubuntu has base + universe + multiverse), whereas others go further (Trisquel for example), and yet others make no such explicit separation attempt. The overall situation is highly complex, because the software and licensing make it so.

Both of the above concerns (plugin architecture that supports proprietary plugins as well as family-ecosystem that supports proprietary versions) are examined in the entries here. Finally, by their very nature of all browsers might be considered partly proprietary, even if all the versions of the browser in question, and all the plugins for that browser, are guaranteed to be under non-proprietary licenses... because the *websites* which the browser visits (the whole point of installing and using a web browser) may offer proprietary content, such as music-files with DRM. In such cases, even if the Linux version of a non-proprietary browser has a non-proprietary plugin which can play the non-proprietary audio-format in question, the main content of the website still ends up being proprietary (the song in this example -- but the same sort of generic problems apply to online web-apps, online videos, and online documents). At present, all known general-purpose Linux browsers suffer from this philosophical objection. However, AGPL and GPLv3, as well as GFDL and CCSA, which are server-side-software-licenses and content-licenses that attempt to remedy such difficulties, do already exist; Wikipedia is an example of such a website. Because all general-purpose Linux browsers currently allow the enduser to visit non-GPLv3 websites, and download non-CCSA content, we do not list them below as being "partly proprietary since they can visit RIAA.org and Netflix.com" since that is inherently exhaustive -- see instead the entire list. There *are* some special-purpose Linux-or-Android browsers that *only* visit Wikipedia, however; as of 2013, though, these are better thought of as niche apps which are extensions of the website, rather than as general-purpose browsers which intentionally only connect to freedom-respecting servers.

(Much of this discussion about proprietary plugins, proprietary sister-versions, and proprietary content-restrictions also applies to Linux audio players/editors, Linux video players/editors, Linux document viewers/editors, and Linux database viewers/manipulators, and potentially other sorts of applications that interact with external files or external servers.)

E-mail Client in MS Outlook Style [edit]

  • Bynari – Insight Family of products is a collaboration suite of products that consists of open source components and proprietary development, by Bynari, that runs on Linux.
  • Lotus Notes – 8.0.0 for Linux/x86 (Red Hat and SuSE initially)[1]
  • Zarafa Outlook Sharing Zarafa is designed to integrate with Microsoft Office Outlook and is meant as an alternative to the Microsoft Exchange Server.
  • Zimbra – Open source cross-platform webmail and Desktop client.

FTP Client/s [edit]

  • IglooFTP PRO for Linux
  • Pro:Atria Ltd SFTPPlus commercial SSH server and client with additional audit and automation functions in order to meet regulatory and corporate compliance requirements.
  • Xellsoft.com SynchronEX+ Shareware, SynchronEX enables robust multi-directional file tree synchronization and backup over local & network paths in any situation:

Firewall (packet filtering) [edit]

  • SmoothWall Corporate – A closed fork of SmoothWall, targeted at enterprise and corporate users

Visual traceroute [edit]

P2P File Sharing [edit]

  • Loophole (WinMX protocol) – WinMX servers down since 09.2005.
  • MetaMachine eDonkey2000 – latest release from 25.07.2005.

"Hotline" P2P protocol clients/servers [edit]

  • GHX

Multifunction sound modem program/s [edit]

  • PrimaFax

Fax software [edit]

Network maintenance [edit]

Routing [edit]

  • GateD

Distributed Computing [edit]

Desktop/System software [edit]

Work with files [edit]

Console Archiver/s [edit]

Desktop search [edit]

File splitters [edit]

PDF viewer [edit]

PDF Authoring [edit]

Cryptography [edit]

Scanner utilities [edit]

Antivirus [edit]

Bootloading [edit]

  • Acronis OS Selector

Hard disk partitioning [edit]

Backup software [edit]

PIM / DB / Hierarchical notebook with tree view [edit]

Drivers [edit]

Printer driver [edit]

Multimedia [edit]

Audio/Video [edit]

MP3 Encoding [edit]

Score Writer [edit]

Multimedia Player [edit]

Music [edit]

Graphics [edit]

Graphics viewers/editors [edit]

Professional Graphics Editors [edit]

Digital imaging [edit]

2D Bitmap Animation and Paint [edit]

Vector Graphics Editor/s [edit]

Flash Player [edit]

3D Graphics [edit]

Video, etc. [edit]

Simple/Professional Video Production Environment [edit]

Creation of 2D and 3D Effects [edit]

  • Fusion – Linux version is based upon the Windows version using wine.
  • Nuke
  • Shake – (discontinued)

Miscellaneous [edit]

Office/Business [edit]

Office suites [edit]

Word Processor [edit]

Spreadsheets [edit]

Presentations [edit]

Local database [edit]

E-Commerce and Web Business [edit]

Personal Finance Manager [edit]

Financial Accounting [edit]

Enterprise Automation (Russian) [edit]

  • Keeper
  • Oblik

Collaboration Software [edit]

Project Management [edit]

Communications software [edit]

  • EasyIVR Call processing (IVR, CTI, ACD) for Linux

Games [edit]

Programming and development [edit]

C++ IDEs [edit]

CASE [edit]

CASE-facility for UML [edit]

  • Together ControlCenter

Top-level CASE System [edit]

  • Rational Rose

Compilers [edit]

Revision Control [edit]

HTML/DHTML Editor [edit]

InterBase/Firebird IDE [edit]

Java IDE [edit]

Memory Leak Tracing [edit]

  • BoundsChecker
  • Insure

Object Pascal IDE [edit]

Perl/Python/Tcl IDE [edit]

Prolog [edit]

WYSIWYG HTML Editor [edit]

Servers [edit]

WWW [edit]

DB Engine [edit]

E-mail / Personal information manager / Groupware Servers [edit]

Product data/product lifecycle management (PDM/PLM) [edit]

Proxy [edit]

Cluster Filesystems [edit]

  • Matrix Server

Managed File Transfer [edit]

  • Serv-U File Server – Managed file transfer server, supporting FTP, FTPS, SFTP, HTTP, and HTTPS file transfer methods as well as numerous other features.

Miscellaneous applications [edit]

Mathematics [edit]

Statistical Packages [edit]

3D Modelling [edit]

CAD/CAM/CAE [edit]

Diagram and Chart Designing [edit]

HDD testing/benchmarking [edit]

Game makers [edit]

Dictionaries [edit]

  • Lunestar is an English-Turkish dictionary - freeware

Emulators [edit]

Video game console emulators [edit]

Virtual Machine Emulator [edit]

Windows Compatibility Layer [edit]

See also [edit]

  • Wine (software), a "compatibility layer" that allows many windows software to run on Linux (both proprietary and free)
  • Lin-App A free, categorized and tagged on-line information service of various commercial applications and games for Linux.

References [edit]

  1. ^ See Lotus Notes 8.0 trial download
  2. ^ http://www.tummy.com/xvscan/
  3. ^ Debian Bug report logs – #364034. Accessed on: January 12, 2009.
  4. ^ TrueCrypt licensing concern Accessed on: April 20, 2009
  5. ^ Bug #109701 in Ubuntu. Accessed on: April 20, 2009
  6. ^ non-OSI compliant packages in the openSUSE Build Service. Accessed on: April 20, 2009
  7. ^ Gentoo bug 241650. Accessed on: April 20, 2009
  8. ^ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems#TrueCrypt
  9. ^ "Steam Community :: Steam for Linux". Valve Corporation. Retrieved 2013-01-31. 
  10. ^ "Teamcenter 2005 Delivers Comprehensive PLM Offering". Siemens PLM Software. 2006-06-20. Retrieved 2009-06-25. 
  11. ^ "UGS Ships NX 4 and Delivers Industry’s First Complete Digital Product Development Solution on Linux". 2009-04-04. Retrieved 2009-06-20. 
This list is based on The Table of equivalents / replacements / analogs of Windows software in Linux, which is licensed under GNU FDL.
Linux
Distribution
GNU
Window managers
User interfaces
Applications
People
Media
Lists
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and features
Mobile
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