Open Slopware
Free/Open Source Software tainted by LLM developers/developed by genAI boosters, along with alternatives.
The intention of this list is to raise awareness of this technology's usage in popular software, as well as give people informed alternatives that they can reach for when they want to make decisions for themselves. This is not a list created so you can go and give these projects trouble for their decision. If you want to file a complaint about it with them, we consider that acceptable but ask that it be done respectfully and constructively.
For more information on why we think this list matters, please see Why not LLMs?.
Contributing
To contribute to this list, file a pull request adding it to the appropriate category, along with any known alternatives. The pull request must include links to evidence of such (social media posts, screenshots, commit history, links to CLAUDE.md, etc). Title the pull request "Add <software-name>" or such.
Criteria
The criteria for being included in this repository are any of:
- One or more core/prominent developers openly use LLMs in any level of supportive capacity to develop this software specifically. Accepting drive-by or minor contributions that happen to use LLMs is NOT qualifying. This may change in the future.
- The software itself integrates genAI features of any kind, internally or externally.
Removal
Any project here may be removed as long as the following become true, even if prior LLM-authored code remains:
- The project establishes a "No genAI" policy, where the core developers commit to no longer using LLMs for developing that project in particular and no longer accepting obvious LLM-authored contributions, and state the policy prominently in their repo.
- Any genAI functionality of the project itself is removed in its entirety. "Kill switches" are insufficient.
Tainted Software
Browsers
Command-Line Shells
Computer Graphics
Photography
Terminal Emulators
Developer Tools
Programming Languages
Note on alternative languages
Suggestions for alternative programming languages are necessarily more complex than many other categories considered here, as that's one of the core technical choices to be made when starting a new software development project.
Depending on your needs and technical concerns, you may find any number of different alternative languages useful. For example, when considering alternatives to .NET, Java or Scala may be interesting candidates from the perspective of being similar VM-based frameworks, while Python or Rust may be interesting alternatives in other ways.
Editors
| Name |
Alternative(s) |
Evidence |
Notes |
| Zed |
Lapce, other popular editors like neovim, emacs, etc |
They prominently advertise genAI features as a core part of their product. See their website. |
There's a killswitch to disable genAI features entirely, but it's likely the code itself is still heavily LLM-authored. |
| VS Code |
VS Codium* removes the AI features from VS Code |
It's literally their main advertising tagline, and they publicly use LLMs in their public repository. Most AI "features" are enabled by default, and some cannot be disabled. |
*VS Codium is still written with LLMs since Microsoft owns it |
Accessibility Tools
Microcontroller Tools and Libraries
Service Monitoring
Libraries
Rust
Game Engines
Services
Operating Systems
Why not LLMs?
tktk. Could use some help writing this with concrete receipts on environmental, social, political, and economic/labor harms.
