How we choose and check resources

Where the information comes from

Resources are discovered and described from public sources whose terms allow reuse: Flathub and F-Droid (official open source software catalogues), Wikidata, Homebrew, Openverse, code repositories and publishers’ official pages. Every fact (licence, platforms, version…) keeps track of its source and of the date it was collected.

An initial editorial selection complements these sources for online services; its information stays marked “not documented” until it has been checked against an official source.

Three pricing levels

Completely free

every feature is free, with no known usage limit (typically open source software).

Free with trade-offs

free, but with a required account, advertising, data collection or attribution.

Limited free plan

a free plan exists, but advanced features or heavy use are paid.

When pricing could not be established at the source, the listing says so (“pricing not documented”) and is not published as free.

Confidence levels

A

fact read from a structured official source (distributor catalogue, project metadata) or validated in the admin console.

B

fact taken from a reliable open database (Wikidata, Homebrew, code repository) or from an official page consulted and dated.

C

editorial information not yet checked: never presented as established, shown as “not documented”.

A listing is only published if its category, official website and pricing are established at level A or B, the official website responds, and the project is neither abandoned nor flagged as problematic.

Automatic checks

• Official links are checked again every week; a link that fails three times in a row takes the listing offline until it is fixed.
• Sources are re-read regularly; a significant change (becoming paid, licence change, archiving) is flagged and the listing is put back under review.
• Descriptions taken from a source keep a mention of that source and its licence; otherwise the listing is written automatically from verified facts, and says so.

What we don’t claim

Checks are documentary and technical: we read the sources and test that links respond. Unless a dated manual check is explicitly mentioned, a listing does not mean that a person installed or tested the software. Always check the terms on the official website before any important use, especially commercial use.