What projects does the opensource world lack
Is there some project that the opensource world is missing that you think it needs?
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Is there some project that the opensource world is missing that you think it needs?
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.
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.
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.
Liberapay might interest you. Not quite the same but maybe close enough
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)
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.
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.
Yeah alternativeto.net works for that but there is no direct pay and install
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
Try Veloren and Anarch! Lots of fun to be had.
Intereating, this? Never heard of it before: https://drummyfish.itch.io/anarch
Yes. The author is a bit edgy, but it’s a cool and impressive game
Games have a very high barrier to entry though with many different parts, so that may be the reason?
StarCraft would not be so hard to make. But nobody did that, even though 0 AD exists to clone age of empires 2
It even works as a 2D game so no modeling experience necessary
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.
Berlin's C-Base were working on mesh about fifteen years ago for Berlin - you could check out c-base.org
A. Phone.
Android is open-source, I thought.
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)
I run grapheneos since a couple of years and I love it.
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.
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.
Fairphone comes pretty close.
@frightful_hobgoblin @0101100101
Very needed
A project to give me money in exchange for me writing software.
Have you checked out NLNet?
It is an European Agency that funds you to write FOSS software based on a project/idea you submit to them
yeah denied lol
Liberapay
The post open project maybe?.One day perhaps.
A high performance RISC-V CPU core.
Jim Keller is now working on one. I kind of doubt it will be FOSS, though.
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.
Hear, Hear
A fitness tracker app that rivals Strava.
Try FitoTrack. I've been using it for awhile, measurements are very close to what Strava records. It does lack the social element though
On iOS I’m using OutRun. It provides basic activity tracking, which is what I care about. I don’t need a social network.
It’s open source: https://github.com/timfraedrich/OutRun
Ooh that's a great idea, maybe I should get on it 🤓
Most anything related to healthcare:
there’s actually a bunch of these, but healthcare tends to fall prey to “too much money, too many consultants, fancy brochures”
https://www.gnumed.de/documentation/
Gonna take a look at that one. Data migration from a 10+ years program would definitely be the second biggest pain, number one would be training staff to use it, but i do think it'd be worth it
Main problem with it is lack of certification, which prevents it's use ironically in Germany, the country of origin. I would have loved to use it. If you live in a less–regulated health system, I wish you success!
Data migration will be a huge problem – medical management system companies tend to lock their customers into their system by preventing data migration.
I just didn't bother with migration. I used an autohotkey script to print all patient charts of the old system into pdf files – unconvenient but failsave – and built the new data base from scratch.
In my case, it'd be an actual epic job, since I work for govt and we use an old version of TrakCare, which has been the source of a number of headaches for at least 7 years now
I'm curious, which certifications does it lack such that Germany can't use GNUMed?
TrakCare – wow, intersystem offers a bunch of data management software in > 20 countries.
At first glance, TrakCare seems to be targeted at hospitals. GNUmed is targeted at small practices.
Billing the public health insurance. It's perfectly usable for private practice, but there are only very few private only practices in Germany.
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.
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.
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.
https://ladybird.org/ is pretty cool, tho it definitely needs more work
A printer or printer firmware. There was a discussion about this elsewhere on lemmy, of course this would be difficult and expensive but it would be very cool
Some of the OLD HP Thinkjet printers were pretty rudimentary; the original Thinkjet cartridges are still widely manufactured for certain industrial applications. Tell me we couldn't reprap that shit.
A reprap style project could probably make a passable document printer- but what's the appeal? People only work on those projects to make new or previously unobtainable machines available.
I just don't think it'd be worth the effort.
I think the appeal is to have some kind of paper printer that isn't under the thumb of fucking megacorps.
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.
Have you tried element?
The problem with Element as it compares to discord in my experience of showing it to discord-heavy users is that it does not contain the feature set that they are seeking.
Discords roles and permissions abilities, multiple channel types, streaming capabilities, public bots that are easily joinable, profile customization features, moderation capabilities, and more have no real equivalent in Matrix/element. Hence, when I have shown it to discord users before, they have 0 interest in using it because for them it is like reverting to an IRC.
This is part of what suggesting alternatives to Discord is hard. People tend to view it as one thing, often chat or voice/video, instead of a holistic solution that is all of those things and more along with making most tasks super easy to do for people.
Element's still Electron-based for the desktop app, given Electron is Chromium and Google has the final say over Chromium, that doesn't make it trustworthy at least in my opinion and I'm sure others' opinions too.
I run it in Firefox, though
Was about to point you to MatterMost but saw it's not open source, doh! Anyone know if it was and switched? Or was it always closed source?
Edit: Turns out it was and still is open source, I just apparently suck at researching.
Mattermost does have an Github Repository with a choice of three licenses: MIT (if using versions compiled by them), AGPLv3 (if compiled by you) or an Enterprise license. I would count that as open source.
Oh awesome! I saw their website just describes them as "source accessible" and that github didn't detect a license type and (wrongly) took that to mean it was an "open core but not really open source" product.
@houseofleft https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/blob/master/LICENSE.txt
https://meet.jit.si/ was a contender during the covid era
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
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.
Openly available traffic data that follows a reliable standard.
Tax software. It's the only reason I keep a windows VM.
I considered an accounting SaaS once. Only once though. The amount of constantly changing regulations would make it a very high maintenance project.
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.
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.
I would really like to see something like Jellyfin/Komga but for sheet music. There’s a software in early development called Sheetable that stores it in PDF format, but I really want to see something that has MusicXML support so that sheets can be played back.
MuseScore Studio can open .XML and .MXL files, if that's what you mean.
It can, and it’s quite good! But I mean something more like a self hostable archive.
Oh. In that case, I just use Syncthing for now, since I only have 3-4 devices.
Hi! My partner is a middle school band teacher. I have been trying to find anything that is music related for her so I can help her classroom workflow.
Any recommendations? Because I honestly can't find anything good. I will check out Sheetable soon.
Sadly, neither have I- in the closed source world there’s stuff like Soundslice which is pretty good but nothing really open source
Lemmy, Piefed and Mbin could use some help
what's up with Lemmy? Seems to be doing great
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.
Idk if there's a os music sheet software somewhere but if someone know one i am interested
MuseScore?
Or to be specific as of late, "MuseScore Studio." There have been... a lot of company changes over the past 2 years...
If you'd like something LaTeX-like (best for transscribing rather than composing), then there's LilyPond.
I've been wanting to try to leave Windows for Linux, but I just can't find a replacement for AutoHotkey that can do everything that it can. It would have to be some kind of weird combination of various Python libraries, AutoKey, and Espanso, and even then it's either not as easy or downright convoluted at best.
I also can't find any FOSS image editor that can do this.
I think that it never happened because folks find the power in bash scripts instead and different desktops can't be automated the same anyway.
About the only UI automation I need is KeePass auto-type.
Auto type is so handy. I used KeePass previously, but recently switched to using these commands to type out my clipboard after pressing a custom hotkey:
sh -c 'sleep 0.5; xdotool type "$(xclip -o -selection clipboard)"'It is so damn handy, especially when you have to deal with VNC and iDRAC so often
Yes, that's a good one. I also have Espanso set to autotype bank account numbers, my driver's license (with or without dashes), license plate, and more; prefill a Reddit search URL from scratch, etc.
SikuliX
Wow, fascinating!!! I don't know how I couldn't find any tool like this! Thanks, this may be a game changer!
I use hyprland and can bind stuff through their config, whether that is some library functions or executing a script i wrote. I'm sure there are other ways to do similar with different desktop environments.
Interesting - what features are you using to have to need that?
AutoHotkey, it's navigation through programs by hotkey-invoked series of smart, self-changing mouse clicks and keystrokes, though it can also do math and launch programs or put the focus on windows in specific ways. For example, I have a dynamic, template-based, weekly, ~60-slide PowerPoint builder whose clicks and keystrokes change across the screen depending on what the content is. One AHK GUI I built lets you specify how to proceed using a base template I made + a spreadsheet with data from week to week.
I also have a URL-cleaning script that deletes all my known trackers when pasting, does URL-decoding, etc. AHK can even check for images on screen and click them or wait to proceed (like wait for the browser to finish loading before taking action, etc.). I've got a bunch of various scripts and have not found any cross-platform tool as remotely as easy + capable.
However, thanks to your post and another Lemmy denizen, I now know of SikuliX! I'll check that out...
There's work being done on it, but from my understanding, it's slow going...
I have no clue yet if an open source solution exists, but I'm just getting started volunteering with a local animal rescue, and they definitely need a better solution for records management.
A more general business management application like Odoo could work?
Thanks! Looks interesting. Might be a bit awkward to fit the data types, but I'm definitely curious to play with it and see how it compares to the other ERPs I've experienced, which were also clunky, even with more typical business data.
Don't use Odoo, you will end up having to pay for features. What features are you after? There are dozens of alternatives.
I only just discovered this problem a few days ago, so I don't really know yet. We definitely need to be able to track a number of details about the animals including source, outcome, medical records, etc. I think having a way to keep track of "employees" (we're 100% volunteer run), "customers" (finders and adopters), and finances is also pretty important, and hopefully in a way that doesn't require a lot of duplicate entries due to multiple fragmented systems.
There's quite a few (mostly proprietary) systems out there specifically designed for shelters, so I suspect something like that might be the best option for the current issue, but looking at Odoo might be relevant to my professional development in general, as I was recently laid off, and hoping to pivot a bit from the general administrative work I had previously been doing.
It's a shame that doesn't exist yet. I was in your position for a horse charity 25 years ago and couldn't find anything either. I ended up writing them such a system, which grew and grew. Sadly it was owned by them and replaced a couple of years ago.
Is sheltermanager not suitable for self hosting? They claim to be open source
Thank you! This particular issue is something that I only started to become aware of a few days ago, so I'm still trying to learn more before pushing for any big changes. I don't know that self hosting is even the right solution for our group, so I'm glad to see that they also offer a hosted option, although the self hosted option seems like a great way for me to test it out.
I was curious so I took a closer look at Sheltermanager and, honestly, I'm very impressed. They have a free demo on their site so you can show it off to people and see if there's any interest.
And agree, self-hosting doesn't sound like it would suit them or you, but you asked in an opensource thread and that is nearly always self-hosted. SM looks quite fairly priced for a hosted solution.
Oh yeah, I'm very much aware of where I asked. Haha. I see an opportunity where I can at least advocate for the FOSS options, so I'm trying to learn what those are and how they compare to other solutions before I make any suggestions to the decision makers.
I was recently laid off, and have been wanting to explore some personal self hosting projects, plus I'm hoping to make a bit of a career pivot, so my interest is coming from a variety of motivations.
Of they've replaced it they might be open to the idea of freeing up the source code?
That's their decision, but it's very unlikely. Like much bespoke software that's evolved over a long time, it was a pretty messy codebase, and also mostly in perl and was entirely written to their exact needs. It worked because of me, which was a curse because they were unable to find another person to support it after I left.
You had me at perl!
Something similar to splitwise.
I have not used it much, but https://spliit.app/ is pretty good
Thanks. This looks promising. I want few more minor features but I can easily add them. Thanks again.
A manga chapter/volume manager similar to sonarr/radarr/readarr that can download with or similar to fmd2/hdoujin downloader/mihon
Something like this: https://apps.gnome.org/en/Komikku/ ?
Interesting, I havent heard of this one before! Its more of a single device type app rather than a selfhosted server like sonarr, but it looks interesting none the less
Would this work for your use case?
https://github.com/Casvt/Kapowarr
Unfortunately not, that is only for western comics and doesn't work with manga. It is very close though!
How about https://github.com/Suwayomi/Suwayomi-Server ?
Open source language learning only has Anki. Everything else is in an enbryonic stage.
There are so many low hanging fruits. Add-on to look up words in subtitles and add it to Anki. Luo dingo clone that's a bit less tedious (without having to write so much of your native language). Clozemaster clone (unless someone knows how to set up Anki to do this)
100% agree, would like to see more stuff in this space. Do you have any links to more "enbryonic tools". I recall seeing another tool awhile ago that I tested (can't remember the name) that worked a bit like LingQ. It would run a webserver and you could read links through it and mark words you didn't understand. I couldn't really get into a flow using it as tool to learn languages.
You're talking about learning with texts
It's not great for languages like Korean where you might have a lot of different conjugations that will be detected as new words
See I just started getting into learning another language and like most people I just downloaded Duolingo. But now on YouTube everybody recommends Anki. Over anything else I mean also immersion but like Anki is the go-to so I think Open source won
forget me not, i think on f-droid may be an option. it's fairly easy to make data files for, and you could easily ask your favourite llm to wrap some data into the format.
I think Memento is open source. It's good for subtitles->Anki cards.
That's a good one, but it's only for Japanese.
Of course, you can't easily extend that to other languages unless you have conjugation/declension tables. When I want to learn a word I need to be adding the base form to Anki, not the actual word said
DNS management. Think something like InfoBlox where I can have GUI driven control from simple adding a new zone record all the way up to full anycast configuration.
I love the terminal and CLIs to death but zone files suck and setting up bind or unbound/nsd is more painful than it should be.
I have a decent web UI based DNS (and other stuff) management if you'd like to give it a try.
I'm running Netbox as the main tool Coupled with the DNS plugin With a cron job running OctoDNS with octodns-netbox as data source, and zone transfer to my local Unbound server for resolution and cloudflare for public DNS.
It was a bit of work to setup but I didn't have any issues with it so far.
Joining an existing project would be more helpful.
Google earth
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.
So just sync over local wifi basically? I'm pretty sure you can do thing with syncthing if you just disable "global discovery". You can read the local discovery protocol here https://docs.syncthing.net/specs/localdisco-v4.html but afaiu there is no cloud sync involved at that point and just device to device sync.
Perfect, it looks like the thing I want. Hopefully it can do multiple devices in different networks. I'll test it out when I can.
Thank you :)
It's awesome that more people are discovering new useful software through answering here!
Yep it can! :)
No problem! I personally use syncthing to keep my password database synced between my phone, laptop, and desktop. As well as to keep some important files backed up between different devices that way if my hdd or something happens to one of the devices I have backup on the other ones.
Would you be able to trigger it using something like nfc actions, so you'd only have to swipe an nfc tag and it'd start copying automatically? In which case, a few cheap nfc stickers from china, throw them about the house / apt and then carry on with your life.
Probably? I just have it setup to always be running in the background on my devices. So if it detects a file change to my sync folder that gets sent to all other devices currently connected. I use global sync so as long as the device has an internet connection or is on the same local network it should be able to sync.
There is an API to interface with syncthing daemon running on your computer https://docs.syncthing.net/dev/rest.html so if you wrote a program to track the nfc action and interface with that API I think you probably could.
Ah well in that case it wouldn't be needed because as soon as it's in range of the local network would be easier than taking the trouble of using nfc!
Proper 3D CAD software, we have FreeCAD but it isn't very good.
Another good email client. Many are trying to leave Thunderbird on GNU Linux but there aren't many to choose from.
Why? Thunderbird announced it is not adopting the Firefox EULA.
https://mastodon.online/@thunderbird/114112105485771954
Still two words.
Sometimes a hyphenated adjective
A self-hosted photo/video viewer which presents itself as an Open Directory that maps closely to the underlying file system and also includes the ability to view images and stream videos. If videos are too large/incompatible with the user’s browser, they should be transcoded on the fly (optionally with the gpu). Genuinely surprised something like this doesn’t exist
Most of what you want already exist in tons of simple php scripts that will take a directory and present each directory as a gallery. The live transcoding thing is something you can always add, because ya know, the majority of servers do not have GPUs.
I would love to see a non-proprietary desktop music player. Just something simple that I can listen to my MP3s with. Audacity is great, but it’s a PITA when it comes to casual listening.
/s. As sbv Said in another comment, I think it’s best to join an existing project. Loops has potential to rival TikTok but it’s still not in a state I would use.
Edit: I could have placed the /s a bit better to flag my surreal sense of humour. I was joking about FOSS lacking a desktop music player, because there seem to be hundreds of them. I use Audacity for editing, not listening to mp3s :)
There are more than I ever wanted to know:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_audio_player_software
We can go further
You got Fooyin as a viable, and even really good, open alternative to Foobar2k.
Audacity is not a music player, but a music editor. Aren't there countless desktop music players you can use?
You mean like foobar2000? I don't know much about fully FOSS players, but foobar is free
Leadership: What is important, what redundant projects should be joined or axed and their developers merged.
Ahh yes, consolidation and centralization, core pillars of the FOSS movement.
Maybe it should be.