Free Software Directory:Antifeatures

Antifeatures are flags applied to applications to warn of behavior that may be undesirable from the user's perspective. Frequently it is behavior that benefits the developer or third party, but that the end user of the software would prefer not to be there.

The pages of applications which have antifeatures include a prominent warning added to the page source.

Discussion is happening on the talk page and mailing list, and Dev for work in progress. Currently we need to merge this page from Free System Distribution Guidelines (GNU FSDG) and software categories.

• Listed software tagged with Antifeature: 26
• Alphabetic list

Blacklisted

This software is not part of the Free Software Directory except to warn against using it. It is not free software or includes severe malware and many people have been lead to believe it is ethical free software. Once there is no longer a popular misconception about this fact, it's page will be deleted like any software which does not meet the requirements.

0 listed:

Bait and surrender

There are two versions of this software, one free and one proprietary. The proprietary version may have more features, but the free software version is still useful. Users should be careful to use only the free software version of the package, to avoid surrendering their freedom.

1 listed:

	License	Version identifier	Version date
LanguageTool	LGPLv2.1orlater

Closed documentation

Some software is free but the primary documentation (such as the user guide) and other important resources (e.g. forums, news) are inaccessible or hosted in an exclusive private walled-garden or otherwise for which:

1. reading the documentation requires non-free software to execute,
   • e.g. non-free javascript,
   • e.g. the documentation exists exclusively in a proprietary format for which no free tools exists to read it,
2. the use of free tools to access the documentation is hindered (e.g. text-based browsers like lynx and w3m cannot reach the HTML containing or linking to the user guide [graphical captchas will do this]),
3. or some group of people is blocked or hindered from accessing the server that hosts the documentation (e.g. by captchas that give Tor users unequal treatment).

0 listed:

Delayed upstream forks

Software that is not a straight fork; instead, they are parallel efforts that works closely with and re-bases in synchronization on the latest base software as the upstream supplier.

0 listed:

Free fork needed!

The developer has betrayed the community by moving to a proprietary license, but people can continue to use and fork the last free version.

1 listed:

	License	Version identifier	Version date
SourceForge	GPLv2orlater

Superseded

1 listed:

	License	Version identifier	Version date
QtiPlot	Other

Software names with words to avoid

Software named with Words to Avoid (or Use with Care) Because They Are Loaded or Confusing.

Ad-blocker

When the purpose of some program is to block advertisements, “ad-blocker” is a good term for it. However, Adblock Plus blocks advertisements that track the user (with the EasyPrivacy filter list) as consequence of broader measures to prevent surveillance by web sites. This is not an “ad-blocker,” this is surveillance protection. Read more about “Ad-blocker”.

0 listed:

Search the FSD for adblock

Linux

Please call the complete system GNU/Linux, both to give the GNU Project credit and to distinguish the whole system from the kernel alone. Read more about “Linux”.

0 listed:

Search the FSD for linux