Freeplane

Freeplane is a fork of FreeMind, lead by Dimitry Polivaev.

Freeplane uses SourceForge for file downloads.

Freeplane uses GitHub as a code repository and for forums and tickets; it no longer uses SourceForge for these purposes.

System requirements:

• Freeplane-1.11.4 from 28 May 2023 requires Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 11 (released on 25 September 2018) or later through 17, according to freeplane.exe launcher and per freeplaneGui.lj4.xml source code file.
• The last version supporting JRE 1.8.0 was Freeplane 1.9.x series: Freeplane 1.9.14.

Announcements of the Freeplane fork in FreeMind forums:

• Freemind-developer: Vision of the second project, 2008-03-01, sourceforge.net
• Open Discussion: FreeMind fork, 2008-11-16, sourceforge.net

Visuals:

• Subjectively, as per Dan Polansky, Freeplane 1.9.14 looks, let's say, not so nice: the icons, the white background color in menus, everything says something's wrong. This is so not only in comparison to FreeMind, but also, say, Notepad++.

Download statistics:

• As 9 June 2023, Freeplane is downloaded about 14,000 times a week[1], whereas FreeMind is downloaded about 6,000 times a week[2]; in April, Freeplane was downloaded about 8,000 times a week.
• As 9 June 2023, FreeMind's last final release is from 12 April 2014, nearly a decade ago. Freeplane most recent release is from 28 May 2023.

Release classification:

• Freeplane does not use the ranks of alpha, beta and release candidate (RC). FreeMind did use beta and RC ranks.
• Freeplane has a freeplane preview file section:
  • freeplane/files/freeplane preview
• Thus, there is the rank preview, which must be something like beta and release candidate, but not differentiated.
• As per the "freeplane preview" file section:
  • "This directory contains the latest preview versions of Freeplane created for testing purposes almost every week."
  • "The data format of the maps saved and read by preview versions can be changed without any notice."
• There is Release cycle page in Freeplane documentation, in "attic"; this does talk of alpha, beta and RC. This is probably no longer followed, as per the file section and as per this being in the attic.

See also

• Statistics
• Releases

Links

• Freeplane homepage, docs.freeplane.org
• Freeplane project page, sourceforge.net
• freeplane, github.com
• freeplaneGui.lj4.xml, github.com -- indicates the required JRE version