FreeMind
The original open-source mind mapper — simple, Java-based, and still running after all these years.
Retired
FreeMind appears to be discontinued or shut down — Listed as discontinued on AlternativeTo; no new stable release in over a decade. Community forks (notably Freeplane) carry the codebase forward. This page is kept as an archive record and is excluded from search engines.
About
FreeMind was created by Jörg Müller and later maintained by a core team led by Christian Foltin. Released under the GPL, it became the mind mapper of the 2000s and its .mm file format turned into the de-facto interchange standard — Freeplane, MindNode, MindMup, and Coggle all read it. The original project is now dormant: AlternativeTo lists it as discontinued and there has been no new stable release in over a decade, though the last builds still run on Windows, macOS, and Linux wherever a Java runtime is available. Community forks on GitHub have modernized the build for newer Java versions.
Honest assessment: pick Freeplane for active development and new features; keep FreeMind in the catalog as the historic reference and for opening legacy .mm archives. No published performance benchmarks found.
What it can do
- Classic hierarchical mind mapping with folding branches
- .mm XML file format readable by most other mappers
- Icons, colors, fonts, and hyperlink support
- Encrypted nodes
- Export to HTML, PDF, and image formats
- Keyboard-driven editing
Setup
Download the last stable build and run it with a Java runtime; no account needed.
Prerequisites
A Java runtime (JRE) on Windows, macOS, or Linux.
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 6/10
Scored 6/10 (METRICS tier, metrics-v1). Evidence: GPL open-source status and Müller/Foltin authorship confirmed via makeuseof and GitHub fork documentation; AlternativeTo marks the original as discontinued with no stable release in over a decade. Strengths: historic reference implementation, the .mm format it pioneered is still the interchange standard, fully free and open source. Docked for: (1) original project dormant — no releases, no security updates; (2) dated Swing UI and a Java-runtime dependency. License: GPL open source. Superseded in practice by Freeplane.
How the trust score is built
Full methodology →- Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
- 6.0/10
- Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
- 3.0/10
- Openness · license + docs
- 10.0/10
- Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
- 6.0/10
- · Created by Jörg Müller, later led by Christian Foltin; GPL-2.0.
- · AlternativeTo lists original as discontinued; no stable release in over a decade.
- · Its .mm format became the interchange standard (Freeplane, MindNode, MindMup, Coggle read it).
- · Superseded in practice by Freeplane; kept as the historic reference.
Sources
Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.