{"id":412,"date":"2026-10-25T02:18:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T02:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aberdeendream.com\/?page_id=412"},"modified":"2026-10-25T02:18:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T02:18:18","slug":"recommendations","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.aberdeendream.com\/index.php\/recommendations\/","title":{"rendered":"Recommendations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Open source is our default &mdash; it is how we build our own work, and it is what we recommend to the young people, cooperatives and local businesses we work with. This page collects our standing recommendations: free and open software anyone can adopt today, and publications and open reports worth reading.<\/p>\n<h2>Software we recommend<\/h2>\n<p>Professional-grade, free and open source &mdash; no licence fees, no lock-in, fully auditable code:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>LibreOffice<\/strong> &mdash; a complete office suite for documents, spreadsheets and presentations, well suited to education and everyday work. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.libreoffice.org\/\">libreoffice.org<\/a> (MPL 2.0).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Firefox<\/strong> &mdash; an independent, privacy-respecting browser built by a non-profit foundation. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mozilla.org\/firefox\/\">mozilla.org\/firefox<\/a> (MPL 2.0).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Thunderbird<\/strong> &mdash; a mature e-mail and calendar client for organisations and cooperatives. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thunderbird.net\/\">thunderbird.net<\/a> (MPL 2.0).<\/li>\n<li><strong>GIMP<\/strong> &mdash; raster image editing and retouching. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/\">gimp.org<\/a> (GPL).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Inkscape<\/strong> &mdash; vector graphics and illustration for logos and print. <a href=\"https:\/\/inkscape.org\/\">inkscape.org<\/a> (GPL).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Krita<\/strong> &mdash; digital painting for young artists. <a href=\"https:\/\/krita.org\/\">krita.org<\/a> (GPL).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Blender<\/strong> &mdash; 3D modelling, animation and rendering of professional quality. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.blender.org\/\">blender.org<\/a> (GPL).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Audacity<\/strong> &mdash; audio recording and editing for podcasts and media projects. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.audacityteam.org\/\">audacityteam.org<\/a> (GPL).<\/li>\n<li><strong>VLC media player<\/strong> &mdash; plays every media format on every desktop. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.videolan.org\/vlc\/\">videolan.org<\/a> (GPL\/LGPL).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Open, local AI<\/h2>\n<p>We promote local, open AI models &mdash; run on your own hardware, with your data staying with you:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Mistral AI<\/strong> &mdash; open-weight models released under the Apache 2.0 licence, developed in Europe. <a href=\"https:\/\/mistral.ai\/\">mistral.ai<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Ollama<\/strong> &mdash; run open models on your own laptop or server with a single command; no cloud account needed. <a href=\"https:\/\/ollama.com\/\">ollama.com<\/a> (MIT).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Open WebUI<\/strong> &mdash; a self-hosted web interface for local models, with accounts and access control for a whole team. <a href=\"https:\/\/openwebui.com\/\">openwebui.com<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Publications and open reports<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>OpenUK, State of Open<\/strong> &mdash; the annual report on open source across the UK economy and public life. <a href=\"https:\/\/openuk.uk\/\">openuk.uk<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>EU Open Source Observatory (OSOR)<\/strong> &mdash; studies and policy research on open source in the public sector. <a href=\"https:\/\/joinup.ec.europa.eu\/collection\/open-source-observatory-osor\">joinup.ec.europa.eu<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>GitHub Octoverse<\/strong> &mdash; the yearly data report on who builds open source, where and on what. <a href=\"https:\/\/github.blog\/news-insights\/octoverse\/\">github.blog\/news-insights\/octoverse<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Every recommendation above is free to adopt; always check the licence of each project for your own use case. This page grows as our work uncovers new tools and reports worth sharing.<\/p>\n<p><em>Prepared by Bard, an AI assistant from Mistral AI, for Aberdeen Dream.scot CIC.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Open source is our default &mdash; it is how we build our own work, and it is what we recommend to the young people, cooperatives and local businesses we work with. This page collects our standing recommendations: free and open software anyone can adopt today, and publications and open reports worth reading. Software we recommend [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-412","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aberdeendream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aberdeendream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aberdeendream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aberdeendream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aberdeendream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aberdeendream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":417,"href":"https:\/\/www.aberdeendream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/412\/revisions\/417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aberdeendream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}