Is there some project that the opensource world is missing that you think it needs?

  • Onno (VK6FLAB)
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    611 month ago

    Nothing and everything.

    There are thousands if not millions of open source solutions scattered around society. Some are feature complete, most are not. Some are maintained, many are not. A handful are funded, the rest is not.

    What open source needs, more than anything else is fundraising and the means to distribute those funds to the tune of the trillions of dollars that the corporate world extracts in profits from those open source efforts.

    In other words, the people who make this need to get paid.

    Firefox terms and conditions, Red Hat, and several other projects that have caused uproar through the community, are all caused by the need to get paid to eat food and have a roof over your head whilst you contribute to society and give away your efforts.

    • @lordnikon@lemmy.world
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      91 month ago

      I 100% agree with this what we need is a centralized store like steam that is a non-profit. Where they make it easy just to buy the software. I love distros as much as the next person but having it centralized between all distros gets people paid. My only concern is how do we get the devs of libraries used by those apps use paid. And yes i know it sounds crazy it’s open source how can you charge? Nothing in free and open source says you have to not charge. You just have to given them the source when you do so.

      Even if someone can build it themselves for free. If you make the store a great experience to use. People will just buy. It’s likely this i can go out and pirate any games I want. So from a monetary perspective it’s the same. With a little work I could have my games for free but steam is so good i just buy the game.

      • exu
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        91 month ago

        I know micropayments is a bad word, but a centralized nonprofit where I could pay 50$ a month to distribute amongst projects I use and their dependencies would be great. Disregarding any privacy concerns of course, as they would have to track all or most of the applications I use and for how long.

          • exu
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            21 month ago

            I know about that and use it for some projects, but it’s still the hassle of donating to individual projects and small payments have disproportionally higher fees (I’m not blaming them it just is like that)

        • @lordnikon@lemmy.world
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          11 month ago

          Yeah the problem with that model is the overhead to pick who gets the money would cut in to much. My thought is you want it you buy it. They could do it like humble bundle and have a slider to pay more if you want.

      • @ObsidianZed@lemmy.world
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        21 month ago

        Perhaps a model like itch.io offers. Each product can set a price or have a “pay what you want” model. I feel some would be more likely to give money if it’s right up front.

        But the biggest part that I think we need, is a centralized location, store or not. Sometimes it’s hard to find if an open source alternative even exists because it could be on Github, Gitlab, Codeberg, etc.

  • @badcodecat@lemux.minnix.dev
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    411 month ago

    games! in maybe 95% of cases you can find an open alternative to some (non-game) software, but with games it’s the opposite.

    i would say that the main proprietary softwares i still use, are video games

  • @whatwemadeourselves@slrpnk.net
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    351 month ago

    A mesh network internet, it’s more of a hardware, security, and adoption problem but at this point there’s enough wifi overlap in most residential areas that entire towns could have their own local internet without needing the ISP model at all.

      • JustEnoughDucks
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        1 month ago

        Only Android Open Source Project, not the different phone UIs, vendor blobs, firmware, camera apps, etc… It is really the basics that are open source.

        But also the source of android is 100% controlled by google unless it is an alternative forked project like lineageOS (at least I think so)

      • @qpsLCV5@lemmy.ml
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        71 month ago

        android yes, but the entire google play ecosystem is not, and some things are very hard to do without being inside that ecosystem.

        I’m using my fairphone without any google account (so no play store), and it works, but there are some obstacles. Luckily my bank still offers a good website and even uses some international standard for 2 factor auth, so i can do my ebanking without the app - which, like most companies, is only offered in the play store.

        for public transport, i downloaded the app from apkpure (in hindsight, the aurora store would likely be the better option) and it works fine for buying tickets. this is just my lazyness, i could buy tickets on the website (but it sucks) or at ticket machines, but the app is super convenient.

        for various other services i just refuse to install apps. parking payments, my insurance company, work (luckily i have a bunch of freedom at work, using linux on my work laptop too)… is all stuff that would be convenient but it’s all just available in play store. it looks like aurora is a good option, but 1. i don’t know how long until google kills it and 2. i want to completely stop being dependent on adtech anyway.

      • That’s not untrue but phones are complex, requiring lots of components and drivers to work together, so it’s hard to get a fully free phone.

        • @whatwemadeourselves@slrpnk.net
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          11 month ago

          If we started with a very basic, touch tone phone and worked from there it might be doable. Seems to me the hard part is breaking through the FCC/Cell company monopoly, so just focusing on how to contact a cell tower and make a voice phone call would be the key.

  • Ray1992xD
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    281 month ago

    The EU managed to get Meta on their knees with GDPR. They could force unlocked bootloader and easy install of any OS on phones just like on laptop/pc. I believe then we would really get the Linux phone movement going. Imagine: iPhone with UBports.

      • Avid Amoeba
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        1 month ago

        Yeah I have no hope for an American FOSS design.

        Perhaps an EU-backed one might appear at some point.

        Recently I stumbled upon a Chinese team working on a FOSS pair of cores, with source in GitHub. I think they were aiming at competing with A76 and N2. Supposedly they’re well underway.

        Found it

        If these guys (or any others) tape out a competitive FOSE chip, it’ll change the world. If it’s a decent project, everyone and their mother will fork it. And we’ll get chips that cost just a bit over the silicon and packaging cost.

  • I Cast Fist
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    241 month ago

    Most anything related to healthcare:

    • System for medics and nurses to input all the data of a patient, which can be accessed by said patient if need be
    • System for keeping track of vaccines applied and pinging people who need to take more shots (second dose, reinforcement dose, etc)
    • drivers and programs to interact with medical equipment
    • Pup Biru
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      121 month ago

      there’s actually a bunch of these, but healthcare tends to fall prey to “too much money, too many consultants, fancy brochures”

    • @0101100101@programming.devOP
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      61 month ago

      Healthcare normally have tight varying legal requirements that software must adhere to, so I would say there couldn’t be a single solution for multiple countries.

  • @golden_zealot@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    At the minute, a true open source and free browser/web engine, though I know this is nigh impossible to maintain without thousands of people. Some part of me is hopeful though given recent events.

    • @shirro@aussie.zone
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      1 month ago

      They exist. Firefox and chromium are open source. Big companies pay their dev costs but they can be forked. Chromium is a descendent of WebKit which is a descendent of khtml from the KDE project. The engines have been open source for decades It’s the proprietary crap they put on top which is the problem.

  • @qpsLCV5@lemmy.ml
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    181 month ago

    for me the most critical ones are replacements for discord and microsoft teams. for discord the critical piece is the login - people don’t want to make accounts on each server, so until we have proper federation with a good user experience people won’t actually move off it.

    for teams i’m sure theres projects in development, i just don’t know them or their status - all i know is that i want a project to combine several specialized FOSS services (jitsi is great, and there’s lots of other collaboration tools for email/calendar/chat) into one nice unified frontend that is actually reasonably easy to self-host and maintain.

  • It you’re looking for ideas-- Something you’re passionate about. Find a problem you’re having, fix it, and make it open source. That’s the best way to make sure whatever you do doesn’t get abandoned. Good luck

    • @thevoidzero@lemmy.world
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      21 month ago

      Sometimes you get into skill issue, or time issues. I make some softwares that I need, but I don’t have advertising skills to make people use it.

      And sometimes I want to make something, but I don’t have the necessary skills.

      For example I’d like a local filesharing option. Where a single folder would be synced in my phone from home computer when I’m at home, and from work computer and phone when I’m at work. Without using cloud sync between them only when I’m physically traveling between them, that’s good enough for most use cases of cloud sync that I want for work.

  • @porcupine@lemmygrad.ml
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    131 month ago

    I’m always surprised that, for as widely used as PDFs are, there doesn’t seem to be any real alternative to Acrobat for editing existing PDFs.

    • Drew
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      21 month ago

      what’s up with Lemmy? Seems to be doing great

      • FarraigePlaisteach
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        61 month ago

        Things can be good from the consumption side. But the developers are often working long extra hours to make that happen. If we want to escape capitalism ever, we need to think of the human element.

    • @0101100101@programming.devOP
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      51 month ago

      I considered an accounting SaaS once. Only once though. The amount of constantly changing regulations would make it a very high maintenance project.

        • @0101100101@programming.devOP
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          21 month ago

          And have you ever read the forms? I don’t know if writing the software could be seen as tax advice or filing on behalf of someone.

          Who would use the software if it didn’t suggest ways to save them money, which would then take on the burden of actually being legally correct? UK tax accounts can be submitted directly to the government which requires an additional level of checks by them. Accounting is relatively simple to understand for UK accounting… until it isn’t. It becomes very complicated, very quickly, and that dramatically alters the database schema, alters workflows, and this stuff can be in a constant state of flux. Corporate accountancy laws are very different to personal tax accounting, and keeping abreast of both situations can be very difficult to manage.

          I spoke to a person representing a fairly small commercial accounting SaaS who said they specifically only target high-net-worth companies who can afford to pay the prices they need to turn a profit, and that’s why they put on silly fake award shows (my words) for people within these companies (mostly c-suite people) to placate them into spending more money with them.

          Doesn’t sound good now does it? No one will take that responsibility for free.

    • @PeteWheeler@lemmy.world
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      11 month ago

      Yeah, as a past tax accountant, I wouldn’t count on it.

      Because not only would you need to be updating tax regulation every year (which is completely unpredictable with new laws and interpretations) you would also need to update it for every country and state/providence.

      No one should do that for free.