Is there some project that the opensource world is missing that you think it needs?
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A high performance RISC-V CPU core.
Hear, Hear
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)
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.
Fairphone comes pretty close.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
people don’t want to make accounts on each server, so until we have proper federation
I’ve shit on matrix a lot but this is something it does well.
https://meet.jit.si/ was a contender during the covid era
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.
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.
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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.
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’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.
i’ve had good success doing small edits with libreoffice (design? draw? idk what its called).
that or Inkscape are the only real answers I’d have if you forced me to name one, but I’d have a hard time recommending a vector graphics editor to a regular person who just wants to edit text formatting in a PDF without messing it up.
The PDF was/is a closed-source propriety file format.
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!
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!
Google earth
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.
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.
Wow, fascinating!!! I don’t know how I couldn’t find any tool like this! Thanks, this may be a game changer!
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…
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.
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)
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
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
