This looks like Aseprite. Aseprite is already open source and you can get it for free, all completely legal. The only caveat is that you need to compile it yourself (which takes 2-5 shell commands). I think this is more than fair, but ripping off Aseprite is not so much. Their license also strictly prohibits that behavior.
erk__ 4 hours ago [-]
The history section of the repo clears it up [0]
> LibreSprite originated as a fork of Aseprite, developed by David Capello. Aseprite used to be distributed under the GNU General Public License version 2, but was moved to a proprietary license on August 26th, 2016.
> This fork was made on the last commit covered by the GPL version 2 license, and is now developed independently of Aseprite.
Same old story, too much support requests and bad actors making it hard to make money off opensource.
This is one case where we really should support the original product, you can buy a perpetual licence of a pittance and they just 2 guys chugging along.
LibreSprite has 5000 commits, 30 in the past year whilst ASEPrite has over 10000 at this point.
chrysoprace 3 hours ago [-]
The person you're replying to was making a clarification on the license, not arguing about the validity of changing the license or charging for it.
Libresprite is an important project because people can fork it and learn from it by extending it, and submit those patches upstream, regardless of how active it is.
mort96 39 minutes ago [-]
I think aseprite is a perfectly fine project, but where possible, I like to use open source tools rather than proprietary tools.
1313ed01 2 hours ago [-]
I have paid for Aseprite, but on many machines I just install the old GPL version, usually available as a package. It is fine for most tasks, even if the latest version has many improvements.
A fork of the old version to have a slightly better version conveniently available in package repos would be nice. I don't think it has to catch up with Aseprite to be useful.
ROllerozxa 3 hours ago [-]
Aseprite is source available nowadays, not open source. Libresprite was then forked off of the last commit of Aseprite before the license was changed from the GPL.
paxys 46 minutes ago [-]
1. Asperite is not open source.
2. It’s okay for two projects to do the same thing, even if you personally prefer one over the other.
enlyth 3 hours ago [-]
Aseprite is such a joy to use that I paid for it just to support the developers
Aeolun 2 hours ago [-]
It’s also really cheap!
mghackerlady 31 minutes ago [-]
I've used libresprite and generally think it's very nice, but I'd really recommend using GIMP or Krita over it for most pixel art, learning those is useful outside of pixel art
KaiserPister 1 hours ago [-]
I'll shill this project again: I built myself a small sprite generator because I'm a terrible artist.
If you're looking for pixel-art sprites, check out 8bitsmith.com.
Or you can just ask Nano-Banana for sprite sheets and it does a pretty good job!
captainregex 55 minutes ago [-]
I have really struggled to get nano banana to follow size/proportion ratios for sprite art. any tips? I fed in a bunch of examples first and tried to write a really strict prompt. I wonder if any of the sw being discussed here can be programmatically controlled by claude code or similar to do sprite work
makerofthings 2 hours ago [-]
Aseprite is absolutely worth paying for. I do game jams and it works really well.
There's an experimental android version too which is more than aseprite offers. For the basics libresprite is a great entry into pixel art
pjmlp 51 minutes ago [-]
I love the MS-DOS feel to it. Many graphical tools used to have such UI flavour.
krige 4 hours ago [-]
Haven't used LibreSprite but Aseprite, from which it forked, has been an enormous boon to me, for pixel arting it definitely fits my habits and abilities much better than anything else I tried (GIMP, Krita, GrafX2, actual DPaint, Digipaint...).
I guess it's a bit old but it works reasonably well, and supports a lot of different file formats which is occasionally useful.
desdenova 3 hours ago [-]
Didn't know about Pixelorama, looks interesting.
Libresprite (since aseprite went evil) has been the only editor I can use for over a decade, glad there are others now.
_0xdd 2 hours ago [-]
Tried to run it on macOS but it crashed on boot. Looks cool!
whywhywhywhy 4 hours ago [-]
Begging open source projects to stop with the libre<name> convention, it's awkward to say, it's cringe and seems to spiritually doom a project to fail.
kleiba 3 hours ago [-]
The "libre" terms originates from the "free software" movement which does not like the term "open source" on philosophical grounds. In English, "free" has multiple meanings, and the romance language-derived "libre" was chosen in the past to distinguish the movement's ideals from the use of "free as in beer".
I just wish more of these projects would be a bit more ambitious and put more focus in their communication on being good at what they do, rather than being free and made by idealists. They're branding themselves in a way that only really appeals to other techy idealists, while accidentally putting off a lot of potential users who are neither technical nor philosophical enough to know or care what a term like libre means. There's a lot of good, free software that is selling itself short by communicating more about being the latter than the former.
kleiba 2 hours ago [-]
I think there's some truth to what you say - at the same time, a lot of successful products have names that basically have no meaning at all, or at least none that's related to what the project actually does ("Windows", "Cursor", "Firefox", etc...)
Of course, a point could be made that any inoffensive but basically fluffy name is still better than a geeky sounding tech babble name...
lukan 2 hours ago [-]
The most succesful open source projects (firefox, blender, linux, krita,..) do not have libre in their name, the most famous of those who have is probably libreoffice, but it is not exactly loved.
So I totally agree on rather having a name that appeals normal users, than a certain tech bubble who will rather use the terminal wherever they can anyway ..
kleiba 2 hours ago [-]
Hey, no terminal shaming here!
Dwedit 4 hours ago [-]
One example that really sticks in my mind was "Libreboot". Yes, it's supposed to represent a free BIOS/booting system. But it also sounds like the name of a library dedicated to rebooting your computer.
abirch 2 hours ago [-]
Almost any name is better than GIMP.
madduci 3 hours ago [-]
At least they signal that the project is open and free. What about projects using "Open" but they aren't? (See: OpenAI)
PowerElectronix 4 hours ago [-]
That's like asking a EU product to not be named Euro-{product}.
whywhywhywhy 1 hours ago [-]
Also cringe and tainted.
progx 4 hours ago [-]
LibreOffice ?
notachatbot123 4 hours ago [-]
Yes, that is one of the major offenders. It is very awkward to pronounce in many languages.
kalterdev 3 hours ago [-]
I speak two languages (English and Russian) and have never found their name to be awkward. This is the first time, actually, that I've seen somebody say they don't like their name.
EDIT: Also Qt, MySQL, SQLite, GIMP (rather unnecessarily), ...
desdenova 3 hours ago [-]
Curious on what languages have a hard time saying Libre.
Every latin-derived language (which are most of the western languages) can pronounce it naturally, and even English speakers can approximate it well enough to be understood (even though they're incapable of pronouncing the non-retroflex `r`).
3 hours ago [-]
spruko 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
AndyPa32 2 hours ago [-]
AI;DR
Rendered at 14:42:25 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
> LibreSprite originated as a fork of Aseprite, developed by David Capello. Aseprite used to be distributed under the GNU General Public License version 2, but was moved to a proprietary license on August 26th, 2016.
> This fork was made on the last commit covered by the GPL version 2 license, and is now developed independently of Aseprite.
Also I am not really sure if you can convince me that this is a open source license: https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite/blob/main/EULA.txt
Not that it is a unreasonable license, but it is not open source.
[0]: https://github.com/LibreSprite/LibreSprite?tab=readme-ov-fil...
This is one case where we really should support the original product, you can buy a perpetual licence of a pittance and they just 2 guys chugging along.
LibreSprite has 5000 commits, 30 in the past year whilst ASEPrite has over 10000 at this point.
Libresprite is an important project because people can fork it and learn from it by extending it, and submit those patches upstream, regardless of how active it is.
A fork of the old version to have a slightly better version conveniently available in package repos would be nice. I don't think it has to catch up with Aseprite to be useful.
2. It’s okay for two projects to do the same thing, even if you personally prefer one over the other.
If you're looking for pixel-art sprites, check out 8bitsmith.com. Or you can just ask Nano-Banana for sprite sheets and it does a pretty good job!
https://www.stef.be/dpaint/
https://github.com/Orama-Interactive/Pixelorama
https://github.com/piskelapp/piskel
They're similar pixel art editor programs.
https://mtpaint.sourceforge.net/
I guess it's a bit old but it works reasonably well, and supports a lot of different file formats which is occasionally useful.
Libresprite (since aseprite went evil) has been the only editor I can use for over a decade, glad there are others now.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
Of course, a point could be made that any inoffensive but basically fluffy name is still better than a geeky sounding tech babble name...
So I totally agree on rather having a name that appeals normal users, than a certain tech bubble who will rather use the terminal wherever they can anyway ..
What other major software has that?
Linux?
EDIT: Also Qt, MySQL, SQLite, GIMP (rather unnecessarily), ...
Every latin-derived language (which are most of the western languages) can pronounce it naturally, and even English speakers can approximate it well enough to be understood (even though they're incapable of pronouncing the non-retroflex `r`).