Ask HN: Which project does not have any good open-source alternatives? - <AUTHOR> Open Source is changing the tech industry. But there are still a lot of space where the closed source proprietary software is the only player.<p>Can you comment some of the space? So a person who is thinking about creating a new open source project can get the idea and start making a alternative? <comment><USER2> Excel alternatives might be uncountable. Implementing spreadsheet basics is an advanced beginner exercise. But even Google's billions only get it a distant second best because Microsoft is still working hard despite the lead. Sure Google and Apple can meet most needs most of the time. They're good enough mainly because they are free beer. Not because they are open source. Obviously.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a GNU fanboy at heart. But I dont believe in magically willing well engineered software into existence. It takes resources fungible with money. Projects with cash are at an advantage. Projects with cash, motivation and years of experience in the codebase are the ones that dominate. Not starting from scratch becomes a huge advantage.

A new project in a space needs to find an unserved market segment _with resources fungible with money._ That's why successful developers' tools are easy and CAD programs hard.

If you want to make an alternative, just make it and learn from what happens. Because what everyone wants is a free iPhone. Good luck.

<comment><USER3> I'm not an Excel user. Genuinely curious: Is it really that the alternatives are worse, lacking features, unstable, or does it come down to "they're not Excel", in that they're not a drop in replacement that can perfectly load and run every Excel sheet ever created.

Because that would be my gut feeling: Not interoperable enough, since some things just work differently, but not necessarily much worse. If you can't send your sheets to company b without being sure they can properly use it, it's worthless. Pretty much the same problem with Word.

<comment><USER4> A PM that worked on Excel in the late 2000s explained it to me like this: Most people use about 20% of the features in Excel - which should make it easy for competitors to copy, right? The kicker is that different people/industries tend to use a "different 20%" of the features, making the barrier to really compete very high.

<comment><USER5> > The kicker is that different people/industries tend to use a "different 20%" > of the features, making the barrier to really compete very high.

The thing is that different job functions that are exposed to overlapping user bases in the same industry (and even office) use a different 20%. If it was just per-industry variation, it would be easy for industry-specific competitors to succeed, but the parts of Excel used actively by Andrew, who makes a tool that is also consumed by Bob and Carol are different than those used actively by Bob and Carol (which also differ from each other, and which each have their own users who rely on the tool and the features it relies on, even though they don't actively use the features.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> High level multiphysics, RF, and CAD tools and simulators. Autodesk, Ansys etc. still dominate the field. The state of tools like OpenFoam is like the early days of Gimp and KiCad; theoretically possible to use but only if your background is in software engineering and/or if you are really, really poor and desperate e.g. a grad student on a tight budget. If you look at software like open source FTDT sims, almost all requires specifying layouts, project settings, and designs in ridiculously long config files that would put JS build tools to shame. If you are lucky, you might be able to design your model using a proper GUI e.g. Gmsh. If you are not, be prepared to start drawing out your model with a text editor, point by point. Imagine creating SVGs by hand, that's how ludicrous it is. Most of the "open source" stuff are grad projects, more of an exercise in show and tell than anything serious. Sure it is perfectly possible to specific the cross section of an airplane wing by hand. By the time you are done with that your colleagues using proper GUI tools have already ran their simulation and published three papers.

For those who are interested, one promising project is SU2:

[https://su2code.github.io/](https://su2code.github.io/)

<comment><USER7> One of the goals of the FreeCAD project [1] is to be a high-level interface for tools like OpenFOAM (via the CfdOF workbench [2]), and other solvers/meshers like CalculiX, Elmer, Gmsh, and Netgen.

Its modular, workbench-based, Python-around-C++ core approach provides an environment for people to make their own specialized tools, like the Arch Rebar tool [3] that was created as part of a Google Summer of Code project. [4] like airfoil design as you mentioned. There was a recent forum thread started by people interested in doing exactly that. [5]

[1] [https://freecadweb.org/](https://freecadweb.org/)

[2] [https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewforum.php?f=37](https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewforum.php?f=37)

[3] [https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Arch_Rebar](https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Arch_Rebar)

[4] [https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=22760](https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=22760)

[5] [https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=41159&start...](https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=41159&start=10)

<comment> fake-name I recently spent time at work trying to get OpenFOAM to do, well, anything using FreeCAD. I couldn't get it to _install_ properly on linux _or_ windows.

On windows, you're supposed to use some part of their autoinstaller through the freecad UI, which apparently didn't set some environment variable somewhere. On linux, I had package incompatibilities (using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS).

It... needs work.

<comment><USER7> > It... needs work.

Hah, very true. I have been working directly with OpenFOAM upstream to improve the packaging situation on Debian/Ubuntu but unfortunately I didn't get started in time for the 18.04 release. It's a bit tricky too in that many FreeCAD developers use Linux but I would bet most of our potential engineering end-users would be on Windows. Thanks for your feedback.

<comment> fake-name If they had a PPA, it would solve the issue.

The problem is they don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the definition of "good" matters a lot here.

Consider Adobe's Photoshop and Lightroom. Many people (including me) would love to see those supported on Linux, or even better, be out-classed by open- source software, e.g. Gimp and Darktable.

Gimp and Darktable truly are wonderful pieces of software. But they aren't yet compelling enough to cause a mass-migration by professional photographs. Another example would be Microsoft Office vs. LibreOffice.

So you may need to refine your goals a little: Do you want to (a) fill a gap where _no_ viable OSS exists, or (b) help OSS dethrone proprietary software in some category, e.g. Photoshop?

> So a person who is thinking about creating a new open source project can get > the idea and start making a alternative?

I cringe when I read that, because I've asked that question many times for myself, and I never ended up following through. I think there's some wisdom in the notion that the best OSS project idea is one that solves a problem _you_ have. Otherwise it's just too hard to really see it through.

<comment><AUTHOR> > So you may need to refine your goals a little: Do you want to (a) fill a gap > where no viable OSS exists, or (b) help OSS dethrone proprietary software in > some category, e.g. Photoshop?

Filling a gap where not OSS exists. I was trying to understand the gap. Like, many people are saying there are huge gap in CAD technologies, but this can be only solved by the persons who have domain knowledge, like Civil Engineers. Unless the people having the domain knowledge does not agree to volunteer or take the inatiative, no one will see any progress in that field.

> I think there's some wisdom in the notion that the best OSS project idea is > one that solves a problem you have

Yeah, it is true. Like I am facing about a problem with APM that there are no or open core alternative of proprietary. Untill this post, I did not know other people are also thinking about its need.

<comment><USER9> People do volunteer and take initiative. Then they get hired by Adobe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Two that I have encountered:

Aspera: a high-performance data transfer suit, used in genetics and the film industry. I wrote a blog post about it a year ago and still get near-daily emails asking me if there is an open source alternative yet. QUIC may provide a basis for a solution, but it needs to be explored.

PDMS: software for planning, modeling and simulating oil and gas plants. Main two commercial suites are AVEVA PDMS and Autocad Plant 3D. AVEVA PDMBS is upwards of $1,000 per seat per month (!), so not feasible for projects which I have in mind (more on that in the new year). I'd imagine that Blender could be used as a starting point for a Free alternative, but I'm not sure. This is a tougher one.

[1] [https://www.ccdatalab.org/blog/a-desperate-plea-for-a- free-s...](https://www.ccdatalab.org/blog/a-desperate-plea-for-a-free- software-alternative-to-aspera)

<comment><USER11> Open source projects tend to emerge when there is general access to the purpose of that project. You can't expect an open source project for Ocean- based Wind Turbine simulation or molecular synthesis of Organochloride compounds.

They're niche industries that require tremendous amount of upfront investment, in both physical assets to realize the utility of the open-source project, and knowledge-base required to operate the software.

On the other hand, you could have a piece of software that requires niche knowledge but its used literally everywhere - for e.g. OpenSSL. Not many people can contribute to it, yet it exists as open source. The point I am trying to make is that OpenSSL and your quantum hardware control software are very different things.

<comment><USER10> I actually respectfully disagree with this. In my travels, I have encountered many situations where very niche, industry-specific software is completely Free and Open Source, and I have encountered situations where commonly-used, widely useful software is proprietary with no Free solution.

On the Free side, I think one reason is the copyleft nature of the GPL. Another pattern indicator is how modular the software is - smaller bits are easier to open source than massive projects - and the general inclinations of the programmers, their bosses, and their legal teams.

That being said, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a Free alternative to AutoCAD in 2020. (Pipes 3D is an AutoCAD extention). It's widely used software across numerous industries, much like Photoshop, Illustrator or Audition, but there is no Free alternative that I'm aware of.

A particularly annoying thing to me here is that AVEVA was actually originally developed and owned by the British government, but it was privatized (I think under Thatcher.) I think the value created for the tax payer would have been much greater to create free tools and software and make them available to everybody rather than just whatever pittance they got from selling it during a privatization firesale.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason of not having a open source alternative of CAD is not having proper domain knowledge. The people who have the domain knowledge are not taking that intiative that the early stage software engineers took.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's tons of highly specialized vertical market software that will basically never have open-source alternatives. Every industry has a few examples. I at least know of the high-end CAD, FEA, and CFD software used in certain branches of engineering. See Ansys, Autodesk, etc. The reason why is that building this type of software correctly requires an immense amount of domain knowledge. That type of knowledge doesn't come together in a useful way without a lot of money.

Such software also doesn't get used enough to be trustworthy as far as results without some other big companies using it to do things with and testing the results. What company is going to trust their product designs to the results of a bunch of open-source code with no company standing behind it?

<comment><USER13> I don't understand why there isn't an industrial consortium supporting an open source CAD standard. Enough companies depend on proprietary software that they already pay a fortune for that they could front the cost of software development to save money in the long run.

<comment><USER14> (1) Cost of software is relatively small compared with the cost of employing the people who use it.

(2) Cost of software is relatively small compared with the cost of retraining staff and changing business workflows and processes to cope with different software.

(3) Changing to new software is relatively simple compared with the problems of making all your staff, your contractors and your suppliers change to new software.

(4) Even if changing to new software was relatively simple and cheap, there would be massive risks in doing it. If you are designing nuclear power stations, nuclear submarines, skyscrapers, bridges or whatever, the cost of mistakes can run into the billions, or be fatal for a significant number of people.

(5) Bonus point: making this kind of switch could take a decade and could end up not saving you any money (cf Munich trying to switch to open source). Not many CEOs will attempt it because they are more focused on the next quarter's results. Anyway, in many if not most companies, the benefits -- if any -- would accrue to whoever the-next-CEO-after-the-next-CEO happens to be. And who really cares about that?

It's hard enough to get most people to change their email client or their text editor or whatever when the alternatives are free and the real-world risks are negligible. Getting them to change the software on which their whole business survival is based is another matter.

Moral: changing business software is not as simple as it seems if you only look at the software and don't look at the whole business plus the whole industry infrastructure of related businesses. It's never as simple as people think.

<comment><USER15> (5) Munich might not be a valid example. Parent talked about a consortium, for which a single city administration might be a bit small, and AFAIK the failure was not necessarily technical.

<comment><USER14> Belated reply (Christmas!)

> the failure was not necessarily technical

Well, that was exactly my point ;-)

If you only look at the technical issues, ur doin it rong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Video editing.

There's Kdenlive and OpenShot that are maybe the most well-established, but they we're both very buggy the last time I dealt with them, and they're nowhere _near_ featureful as what's available commercially.

I think we could benefit from a well-know MovieMaker equivalent. Something that isn't featureful, but is _reliable_ (read: doesn't crash) and intuitive.

<comment><USER17> I'am about to try DaVinci Resolve as an alternative to Premiere (I used Premiere in the past). But I don't want to fork $20 per month because I don't use it that often. A good opensource video editing software (or NLE non-linear editing as they call it) would be great.

<comment><USER18> Wait, isn't DaVinci Resolve a one time purchase of $299? Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER19> They have a free version thats good enough for a lot of people. I'm assuming they use that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There might be an opening for an OSS alternative to game engines like Unity and Unreal. There are scores of open-source game _frameworks_ out there, but there's nothing I'm aware of that comes close to the ease-of-use and cross- platform-build support that Unity has. Of course, you might have an uphill battle because both of the above are free for smaller projects and have fairly generous pricing models that scale based on income.

<comment><USER21> Godot is what you are talking about. It seems to be doing very well. It's MIT licensed, and has official support for C#, C++ and their own Lua-like scripting language.

<comment><USER22> Godot might be it in the future... but not yet.

It seems to focus on 2D for now, almost all the showcase games for it are 2D also. I don't think it's been battletested enough in 3D yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This article about how Microsoft Access won't die got me thinking about creating an open source alternative. I just retired and am looking for a project. I also have a history with msft that might be helpful.

[https://medium.com/young-coder/microsoft-access-the- zombie-d...](https://medium.com/young-coder/microsoft-access-the-zombie- database-software-that-wont-die-5b09e389c166)

<comment><USER24> This is my pet peeve. I'm already working in a relational language ([http://tablam.org](http://tablam.org)) to use as the core.

My dream is to have not only an Access/Excel(in the role of pseudo-table programming) alternative, but one that could work great in a iPad/mobile device.

Also, in this space, most "options" are fully on the cloud.

Thats cool, but will never be a _real_ challenger to Access or Excel if depend on cloud 100%. I need it to work fully standalone.

My first programming language was FoxPro. I know what it look like to "live the dream". One single language and environment and you TRULY code ALL the app: Db, logic, forms, reports, web services, etc.

\---

BTW: why start with a relational lang? The MAIN power of the dbase/fox family above access was to have a truly tailored language for the task. With office, you MUST work from a paradigm (Access:Relational, Excel:Reactive functional) and become an inferior procedural maybe OO developer (VBA) to finish stuff. The dissonance is heavy.

<comment><USER25> I interviewed with a quant hedge fund in 2004 whose systems where all in FoxPro. They loved it. The general partner of the fund believed that Microsoft had figured out that they could unbundle FoxPro into 3+ components (DB, IDE, Reports...) and sell each separately. It's been a mystery to me why no one, using sqlite as the DB foundation, has attempted a modern-day FoxPro\MsAccess- like tool.

<comment><USER24> Using sqlite will be good. This is part of my plan (to build on top of sqlite (better) or lmdb (crazy!). Honestly sqlite, not kid ourselves).

P.D: I think for a company like MS FoxPro was not a good business, but it could be very good for a smaller player. Fox have a decent market and was very loved by the community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Focus on what you know. Make sure your team includes at the very least (in no particular order):

\- Someone who is _part of the target audience._ They should be able to provide your team with a good idea of the features you absolutely need to get started, and might be a good source of ideas for differentiating features.

\- Someone great at _manual quality assurance_ \- user testing, poking the system through the laughably complex and diverse devices we all use, and ideally translating manual test scripts to automated ones, where possible. Lots of software has massive amounts of features hidden behind a broken UI.

\- Someone great at _UX,_ in particular related to the type of UI you are building. Web UX is not the same as desktop or API UX.

\- Someone great at _automated quality assurance_ \- TDD, CI/CD, linting, fuzzing, code & user metrics, telemetry, performance and stress testing. They keep your progress from stalling over time.

\- Someone _trusted by the entire team to plan, direct and arbitrate._ They avoid double work, keep the team going in the same direction, and keep interactions human rather than textual (which has far too low bandwidth to avoid conflict in the long term).

For most features you'll want _all_ of these involved in the planning at the same time (and place, if at all possible), to get the most out of everyone's time. They'll all be able to see how the work fits together and will provide unforeseen insights and questions crucial to building an excellent product.

</comment><comment><USER27> 3D CAD software is light years behind in the open source ecosystem, but competing with Solid Works or Auto Desk is a enormous task... Although Blender seems to be catching up in 3D animation!

<comment><AUTHOR> CAD software like AutoCad does not have any good Open Source alternative. As it is mostly used by Civil Engineers, I think when the Civil Engineers will motivated by the Open Source manifesto, they will approach making soemthing good alternative of CAD software!

<comment><USER28> CAD is far from just something for civil engineers.

It's used by mechanical engineers. It's what you use to design an engine. Good CAD software hooks up to the inventory system so that parts can be ordered automatically.

It's used by electrical engineers. Special CAD packages exist for integrated circuit design, magnetics, and antennas. For example a motor might contain coils of wire, permanent magnets, air, and various components through which magnetic field lines are directed. Eddy currents must be analysed.

It's used by chemical engineers. Pipes and tanks and pumps get laid out. Stuff like water hammer must be accounted for, except maybe the fluid is poisonous and explosive. Expansion joints for thermal stress and pressure changes might be important. Stress on welds must be calculated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not completely on topic, but I fear we're rapidly losing many video games of yesteryear to time and their closed-source nature. Luckily, milestone games like Doom and Quake were open sourced some time ago.

There's reverse engineering of some codebases like Rollercoaster Tycoon, Diablo, and Super Mario 64, but for 99% of games we'll never see them outside of the original release or an emulator.

<comment><USER30> I learned programming mostly from reverse engineering open source games. Would be great to see this happen more.

<comment><USER31> I would love to see a pervasive culture of copying proprietary games as open source projects, which we see with a lot of non-game software. Open source should be keeping old games alive and loved, instead old games are being clawed back to re-monetize.

There is some open source games, but not many and all the old console games are simple and graphically/audio simple, all the old PC games, it's really only modern AAA titles that have tons of complex assets and would be hard to 'open source clone of X'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Exchange. Imap and friends don't provide the seamless functionality that Exchange does. Contacts, calendar, permission sharing, group message folders. You just can't get close. I love OSS, but I have to recommend Exchange because their is no viable alternative.

<comment><USER33> This is true but happily I will never run it again thanks to office 365 and gmail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The IDA disassembler is pretty irreplaceable. Or at least it was until the NSA released Ghidra - I haven't tried it to know.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Disassembler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Disassembler)

<comment><USER35> I feel Binary Ninja (closed source) is kicking both their asses in terms of UI and API. Ghidra feels really dated to me. IDA is incredibly expensive. Another open source alternative would be radare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> ManyCam - software that creates a virtual webcam on Windows and thus allows one to:

\- use one physical webcam in multiple apps simultaneously

\- switch which physical webcam software is using seamlessly

\- add live video effects

\- use a static image or video file as the webcam source

(If there is something like this already, then I have missed it!)

<comment><USER37> OBS Studio has a plugin that enables virtual webcam output on windows. I've used it to create a more reliable webcam output from Blackmagic capture cards, as not all software likes to recognize the included webcam driver.

[https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/obs- virtualcam.539/](https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/obs-virtualcam.539/)

<comment><USER38> I've been doing a lot of RGBd scanner stuff in the last few years. "Volumetric Video" as some people call it. The Intel RealSense platform has been a boon and the new Kinect with Linux SDK is cool but with some of the things I've been trying to do to build composite scenes from multiple devices or recordings I hit a wall that could be summed up as lack of virtual webcam support. I haven't hacked on OBS much but have used it quite a bit. This looks like a fantastic example to investigate for useful patterns to leverage.

Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> There are some projects that have solutions, but not great ones. My definition of great is something that people with very little technical knowledge can set up themselves, correctly and securely. This is based on my experience, trying to show non technical people how to self host some things.

\- File, email self hosted and e2e encryption has Nextcloud, but only technical people can set it up. There should be a happy-clicky thing that non technical people could set up and it would force them to do it the right way, because the right way is the easy way. By happy-clicky, I mean, they create an account on any VPS provider, then click "add service", say how big to let it scale to, define what domain name to use and they are done.

\- Web based chat servers that scale. Again, there are web front-ends, like Convos and TheLounge you can put in front of IRCD, but non technical people don't have the patience to set up IRC networks and put web front-ends on them. If there was a happy-clicky solution that used RPC over HTTPS or something to negotiate clusters and all the person has to do is point DNS to it, then more people would self host chat.

\- File sharing. If there was something lighter weight than NextCloud that could auto-scale in any VPS provider and could be deployed from each VPS provider, then more people would self host. I almost wrote something like this out of necessity but so many people were using dropbox, I abandoned it.

In summary, I think the gap that needs to be filled is to have more projects that integrate into VPS providers (by the VPS provider) and be part of their VM deployment system, so that anyone can deploy them easily. Maybe there could even be a business model around integrating 3rd party services into each of the VPS providers, following some non vendor specific standard, that all the VPS providers could set up. Linode, Vultr, AWS, Azure, Softlayer, OVH, Hetzner, Digital Ocean, etc... and no code specific to any of them. All of them should have a standard API that services can be integrated into and then easily deployed securely and correctly by less than technical people.

<comment><USER40> > _There should be a happy-clicky thing that non technical people could set up > and it would force them to do it the right way, because the right way is the > easy way._

Absolutely! There should be a default configuration path that is easily accessible. That is to say, the non technical user can basically just click Install and answer maybe one question and everything else is automatic with good defaults. Any additional choice will just cause pain, because non technical people won't have the knowledge to make informed choices.

> _By happy-clicky, I mean, they create an account on any VPS provider, then > click "add service", say how big to let it scale to, define what domain name > to use and they are done._

This is crazy if we're talking about non technical users. A non technical user won't know what a VPS even is. They won't know what a service is or why they should add one. They won't know what scale means. Is it the one in the bathroom? What's a domain name?

Supporting federation of hosting with various VPS providers can be useful for advanced technical users but any mention of it should be avoided for a non technical audiance. There has to be a sane default choice made already for all these questions.

<comment><USER41> Maybe just ask how big they want their mailbox to be with estimated monthly costs at each size? That will match up to the experience of buying things on the internet. Give a way to increase the size later and make clear they can do it and it should feel like a pretty safe question to ask.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm surprised no one has said "PowerPoint" yet. LibreOffice and Google Slides are nowhere close. Animations, theming, diagramming tools... I run an Ubuntu laptop and have been missing PowerPoint so much I tried to get a Windows VM for it. Couldn't get graphics support in VirtualBox working correctly :(

<comment><USER43> I find PowerPoint to be the most easily replaceable program in the Office suite because effective presentations do not depend on cool animations or themes to get the message accross. The best presentations I've seen have had black text on a plain white background with clear and precise language. Either that or presentations that only consist of images or diagrams and no text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> An open source API compatible alternative to CUDA / CUDNN would be great. Nvidia owns the deep learning ecosystem due to CUDNN.

</comment><comment><USER36> A Lego-CAD tool for touchscreens i.e. Android tablets. I've used LeoCAD on Linux, which isn't bad but finding parts is a nightmare. And the existing non- OSS alternative on Android, Draw Bricks, doesn't support many special bricks like those from Simple Machines.

</comment><comment><USER45> It's harder to names ones that do, really. It's easy to find some "alternative" to most famous software packets, but despite people repeatedly naming all the same programs (known to pretty much anyone interested anyways), none of them can replace, say, photoshop.

So, out of my head (and, yeah, all of them have "alternatives" no serious user would ever switch to):

Ableton Live

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Premiere

AutoCAD

Microsoft Office (Excel in particular)

Google Calendar (self-hosted)

VisualStudio of Jetbrains IDEs

<comment><USER46> > Jetbrains IDEs

The Community Edition of IntelliJ, at least, from which all the others derive (I believe) is open source.

[https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij- community](https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community)

<comment><USER45> But you'll still spend money on PhpStorm (or whatever) and for a good reason. Besides, community edition very much does have open source alternatives: I cannot think of a reason it couldn't be replaces by, say, Eclipse. So it doesn't really mean anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Google Desktop Search (it is dead now anyway). Was brilliant while it lasted.

There were some other alternatives as well but I think GDS starved them to death before Google got bored and killed GDS. (Please le me know if there are good alternatives, free/paid/open source, everything is interesting as long as they fo the same things GDS did and can convince me that they don't upload my data.)

<comment><USER48> I personally use an app called Everything[1] since I moved to win10. Win10's search indexing seems to be trash and its tendency to prioritize web results over desktop results is infuriating. Everything is good for finding something tucked away on your hard drive(s), is dead simple to use (give it a few minutes the first time around to index everything, then just search). I wish I could replace the existing Cortana with it or something else rather than opening a different app, but alas When in Windows, do as Microsoft demands.

[1] [https://www.voidtools.com/](https://www.voidtools.com/)

<comment><USER43> It's amusing how simple Everything is: it just searches the file database in Windows by name. It doesn't search file contents. I am not sure why this isn't the way Windows search works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Ableton Live and/or Bitwig Studio

I don't think anything comes even remotely close to the level of productivity and rapid experimentation / prototyping these DAWs can bring to the table.

<comment><USER10> It's not quite the same thing, but VCV Rack is making incredible and rapid progress into becoming a fully fledged DAW. I find myself using Ableton less and less and Rack more and more. Check it out!

<comment><USER49> Yes, I'm aware of VCV Rack and it is an amazing open source project. I use Bitwig Studio though, and having The Grid there (which is Bitwig's own modular environment, introduced in v3) is just too convenient to use another one next to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> As a developer who is getting into the computer hardware tinkering / desktop building hobbies it is very surprising to find an absence of open source alternatives to the popular computer hardware info / benchmarking / stress testing tools used by the community, for the PC / x86 platform at least. Popular hardware info tools like CPU-Z, GPU-Z, HWMonitors are all closed sourced, and benchmarking tools like Cinebench as well.

The only open source alternative I was able to find was CPU-X, an alternative to CPU-Z:

[https://github.com/X0rg/CPU-X](https://github.com/X0rg/CPU-X)

Another example is I recently got interested in purchasing second hand GPUs and most of the cards found online would have their vbios modded for crypto mining, and to restore to a default bios most people would use the ATIFlash / NVFlash utilities from TechPowerUp. I got interested in how such a utility would work for modern GPUs and to no avail, I could not find any open source tools that would demonstrate the capabilities of these tools

<comment><USER51> A good reason why some of the benchmarking software is closed source is because it makes it harder for vendors to design ways to circumvent the point of the tests (which is often to test the speed of the hardware).

<comment><USER52> To me that sounds like just another flavor of security through obscurity, as some vendors will undoubtedly get their hands on the information since the stakes are so high, which defeats the entire line of reasoning. If the source was public, at least the playing field would be level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Uber/Seamless/Postmates/Airbnb or any other middleman service. There's no reason why they should be getting away with extracting 30-40% of the revenue for facilitating a simple transaction.

<comment><USER53> I think this is something that seems reasonable at first, but in practice would get incredibly unwieldy. There is much more to what they do than connect buyers and sellers. They also resolve conflicts, navigate different laws in countless locales, and handle payments/chargebacks to name a few.

These companies are also taking a giant cut _but still losing money_. Granted they are spending money on things that an open source alternative wouldn't necessarily spend money on, but I don't think very many of them are anywhere close to being profitable even without the extra spending.

<comment><USER44> In some cases they did pave the way and "resolve" legal challenges, which makes it a lot easier for an open platform to come in and take over.

All of these companies are following the ridiculous 0 to 1 monopoly model of growth and are wasting a ton of money trying to capture any market that they can get their hands on. It's not sustainable and the gig workers are paying the price. There's no doubt that they're providing a valuable service that could have spurred growth for the middle class, but instead they're using VC money to undercut existing businesses in hope of building the next Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Despite how great Inkscape is, it's no where near Adobe Illustrator or Affinity Designer (and you can't run them on WINE either).

<comment><USER38> Illustrator is such an amazing tool. It's my go to when I need to get an idea out of my notebooks into the digital realm. Website flats, sketching turns of an idea to get into blender, general art.

I love the work that the Inkscape team has done and it does do some stuff that illustrator doesn't do easily but it's no where near a replacement for illustrator. I haven't looked but I suspect it's not in their mission statement to be a replacement for Illustrator.

Hats off to Adobe for producing the world class tools they produce so consistently for basically the length of my adult life but man I think it would be good if there was something that was aiming to be an open source Illustrator alternative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Hotel PMS & operation.

We pay roughly $7000 per year. If I want api access it cost additional $700 per year. It took them 9 months to transfer the licence when I bought the property.

<comment><USER56> > We pay roughly $7000 per year.

Erm, nobody is going to jump up and down to replace that software if that's all you have to pay.

You can't get people to work on replacing Cadence, and that's a license that is on the order of $1 million per person per year.

<comment><USER57> I see some ~100 products at [https://www.cadence.com/en_US/home/tools/tools- a-z.html](https://www.cadence.com/en_US/home/tools/tools-a-z.html) \-- which one(s) did you have in mind?

<comment><USER56> Virtuoso is the VLSI layout editor/schematic toolset that is egregiously expensive. However, I believe that Allegro (the PCB suite) is above $100K per person per year.

A good example at the price range cited is ballroom dance competition software. Dick Douglas created it a number of years ago and people gripe what it costs (I think $1000 per comp or so) and the fact that it hasn't been actively developed over the years. It would be very useful as open source software--except that nobody seems to have the knowledge of what is needed (Dick and his wife Liz have high domain knowledge of ballroom scoring and competitions) and nobody is willing to take on the training/customer support task.

This is, in my opinion, where software, in general, breaks down. Everybody wants to be the developer of scalable software that doesn't scale support costs--unfortunately, that's the _exception_ , not the rule.

(Link to the ballroom software: [https://www.douglassassociates.com/](https://www.douglassassociates.com/))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> My dad aches after a good and powerful typesetting tool (for less technical users than *TeX is aimed at), in the vein of the Ventura Publisher of old. Nowadays it seems all about Adobe Indesign but the workflows seem inferior for many book-type workloads. Scribus needs a lot of help.

</comment><comment><USER59> I wasn't able to find an open source alternative to Newrelic APM for ruby.

Perforce is also something that's very useful for game development but relatively expensive.

<comment><USER60> Why's perforce not replaceable by git?

<comment><USER61> Perforce has a locking mechanism for files, which is important for the large binary objects that are used in game development. Git doesn't really have that concept, so it requires more out of band communication to make it work for that use case.

Git LFS might handle this, but it's just not something that Perforce shops have to even think about, train their people on, etc. It's just "there" and there's somebody that they can call and yell at if things go wrong.

<comment><USER62> > Git doesn't really have that concept

Of locking files? Sure it does; if two people modify the same piece of code, then there will be a merge conflict, and whoever's doing the merge will have the opportunity to reconcile those two versions. It's like a lock, but you don't have to think about it / explicitly lock and unlock the object you're editing. Combine this with rebasing (git-speak for "switch to the branch into which I want to merge and then try applying all the changes from my branch") and you end up with a pretty coherent idea of what changed and in what order.

Having used both branch-oriented (like Git) and locking-oriented (not Perforce specifically, but my current dayjob involves very similar version control schemes), I vastly prefer the former. Less ceremony around doing things in parallel, and less risk of development deadlocks (e.g. Alice locked A.cpp for editing, Bob locked B.dds for editing, Alice now wants to edit B.dds, Bob now wants to edit A.cpp, now Alice will have to revert her lock on A.cpp, wait for Bob to do everything he needs to do, then relock A.cpp and redo her changes all over again (probably also having to debug new things because of new bits and pieces Bob added) - or Bob will have to do so for B.dds - and cue fistfight in the breakroom).

\----

That all being said, binary files are indeed a weak spot for Git, so if you really do want to version control your textures and models and sounds and such, then sure, perhaps a different VCS tailored for that use-case would be more ideal. In my experience, though, that tends to be an anti-pattern; generally better to keep code and assets separate (I'm well aware that tools/engines like e.g. Unity don't play the slightest bit nicely with that separation), using separate version control systems tailored to the specific content.

<comment><USER61> Merge conflicts are definitely not the same thing as file locking. At the point where you're getting a merge conflict, it's too late. How are you going to resolve conflicts in an audio file?

File locking is a way to communicate _in advance_ that nobody should attempt to make changes to a particular file until the lock is cleared. Merge conflicts are communication in arrears (so to speak) and at that point, effort has already been wasted by at least one person.

<comment><USER62> > How are you going to resolve conflicts in an audio file?

By choosing one and discarding the other, or by creating a new audio file that incorporates both changes, just like one would do for any other file.

While I don't know if this exists, there's nothing theoretically preventing the creation of a diffing/patching tool for audio/video files, detecting insertions/deletions/replacements (perhaps by timestamp/frame rather than by line) the same way `diff` does for text.

> at that point, effort has already been wasted by at least one person.

A file lock doesn't prevent that time waste; there's nothing stopping someone from immediately overwriting it as soon as the first editor commits/releases the lock (in which case the first edit was a complete waste of time).

<comment><USER63> I don't quite think you understand how perforce works.

Locking the file is a signal not to work on it because someone else is modifying it. There isn't currently software that supports semantic merging of audio or video, so perforce says "someone is recoloring the asset, don't change the animation until they're done, or you'll just have to do the work again".

In the meantime, perforce prevents you from checking the file out. So you have to explicitly and clearly bypass your source control to do what you suggest, at which point someone rightfully yells at you.

<comment><USER62> > Locking the file is a signal not to work on it because someone else is > modifying it

I know how file locking works. Like I've said before, my day job involves using a locking-based version control system. My disdain for locking-based version control comes specifically from having to put up with it instead of using something sane like Git.

> So you have to explicitly and clearly bypass your source control to do what > you suggest, at which point someone rightfully yells at you.

And yet that will inevitably happen anyway, because someone's breathing down your neck to get that animation done and won't take "well I'm waiting for Bob to finish recoloring first" as an answer. Cue the aforementioned fistfight over whether Alice's animation or Bob's recoloring can happen first.

Or it'll inevitably happen due to the aforementioned risk of deadlock (Alice is tweaking animations in a different order than Bob is tweaking textures, and thus run into a situation where both are waiting on the other to release locks on files; cue fistfight).

I've seen both cases happen repeatedly. All of those cases would've been avoided had we used a version control system that used branches and merges instead of locks and unlocks.

<comment><USER63> > I've seen both cases happen repeatedly. All of those cases would've been > avoided had we used a version control system that used branches and merges > instead of locks and unlocks.

Well no, the failure modes would be different, but all of those things would still cause problems with branching and merging, mostly because you can't actually merge binary artifacts, only rebase.

And in a world where you can only rebase, locking actually makes sense.

<comment><USER62> > all of those things would still cause problems with branching and merging

The deadlock most certainly would not. One would get rebased on top of the other, in the worst case.

(In the best case, Alice and Bob would both be committing/pushing to their respective branches early and often, and could therefore look at each others' branches and see what changed between them; if you really want to emulate locking, you could do so pretty straightforwardly by checking if there are any changes to that file in commits outside of your own branch's commit history, and it should be doable to write automated tooling to that effect. All the "benefits" of locking without getting in the way of anything.)

> And in a world where you can only rebase, locking actually makes sense.

Even in a world where you can only rebase, locking is far more of a hindrance than a benefit, for the reasons already outlined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> \- HiDPI support in desktops

Open source makes it hard. Too many choices. Apple and Microsoft have an army and can decide an API from the top down and have an organization put resources into making a consistent experience. Windows 10 and macOS have absolutely beautiful scaling.

On Linux, fractional scaling crashes often. Wayland and Xorg having to handle it separately adds further fragmentation.

PopOS is nice: [https://system76.com/pop](https://system76.com/pop).

\- Mail clients with streamlined UI's:

Geary is as close as you can get to Airmail (macOS) and Mailbird (Windows)

\- Window snapping:

Aero snap in Windows, Magnet in macOS. Gnome doesn't want to do quarter scaling, despite it being a common sense request, and the extensions don't like gTile don't use the same behavior at all - so basically it doesn't exist.

(Correction, Gnome seems open to doing it but needs help? [https://www.reddit.com/r/gnome/comments/b7f3rl/any_future_pl...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gnome/comments/b7f3rl/any_future_plans_for_quarter_tiling/ejuj9si/))

On the other hand, Linux has amazing:

\- PDF readers. Every desktop environment seems to have its own PDF reader that does a better job than any proprietary one. Okular, evince, mupdf, xpdf. Any they're _lite_. Zero bloat.

\- Package management. Every distros package management experience and their stock beats any app store. They don't force you to login.

\- Terminals. Kitty is fantastic ([https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/](https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/))

\- Input: ibus and fcitx

\- Access / Installing shared libraries _and_ headers. No need to download xcode or grab Visual C++

\- Not open source, but Spotify, Chrome, Slack, Firefox, Steam all work good

</comment><comment><USER65> I feel Teamviewer needs an open-source alternative.

Many(all?) of the current remote access tools are nowhere near as simple/easy to use as Teamviewer, hence it continued popularity.

</comment><comment><USER66> Salesforce CRM? Hosted CRM, with software for customization, built in database, all that. Although I haven't looked around at alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER60> photoshop. Gimp has the functionalities, but its usability is poor.

<comment><USER67> One time I started working on one open source alternative, but one big problem I found was that their PSD file documentation was incorrect at a few places, and it lags behind what is currently available.

And though Photopea[0] is not open source, it can mostly get things done for my minimal use-cases.

[0] [https://www.photopea.com/](https://www.photopea.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Here's my list:

* Mood tracking software (e.g. Daylio [1]). Put owners in charge of their data for easy export and sharing

* Paper craft unfolding (e.g. Pepakura). Allow for 'automagic' unfolding but also user selectable joining/splitting of triangular islands.

* Machine learning oriented games (e.g. GWAP [3] (now defunct)). Open source games that allow for open data collection that can then be fed back into the community for machine learning.

* I've heard architecture software is abysmal and has no open source alternatives

* In browser CAD (e.g. OnShape [4]). In browser lowers the bar to accessibility.

* Photogrammetry/3d Scanning. There might be some open source alternatives but nothing that is as easily accessible as the David Scanner [5].

* Projection mapping. Again, there might be some open source alternatives but nothing that I've seen where I can buy a 'kit' with intuitive software to get up and running quickly (though I haven't looked too much in depth).

* Ultrasound machine. There's echOpen [6] but I don't know the status of that project.

* DNA sequencer. There was the Polonator [7] but it never became 'open source' and eventually died.

\---

[1] [http://daylio.webflow.io/](http://daylio.webflow.io/)

[2] [https://tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/](https://tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human- based_computation_game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human- based_computation_game)

[4] [https://www.onshape.com/](https://www.onshape.com/)

[5] [https://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaign/3Dscanner/overview.html?j...](https://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaign/3Dscanner/overview.html?jumpid=va_t1345uf8k6)

[6] [http://www.echopen.org/](http://www.echopen.org/)

[7] [http://arep.med.harvard.edu/Polonator/](http://arep.med.harvard.edu/Polonator/)

</comment><comment><USER69> Google Picasa - A photo organizer that works offline, and lets you run facial recognition on your photos to organize and tag them.

It has a bug, and sometimes gets labels swapped if you have more than one in a photo, which then metastasizes to corrupt the samples used to compare new photos against.

It was awesome, and now it's gone.

</comment><comment><USER70> Open-source data storage is full of gaps compared to its commercial/bespoke brethren. To give just one example, consider multi-tenancy/QoS. Very few OSS distributed filesystems or object stores even seem to have heard of the concept, and those few barely scratch the surface.

<comment><USER33> Can you give a better example of what you mean? There are plenty of multi- tenancy file systems. Do you mean QoS by user or over the network?

<comment><USER70> > There are plenty of multi-tenancy file systems

Name one. What I mean by multi-tenant is that the namespace, security space, capacity quota and I/O quota are fully isolated and managed _at the storage- system API_ , not via other facilities such as cgroups which aren't even applicable beyond a single-host level. Each tenant gets something that looks like a private service with predictable limits (appropriate for an SLA) regardless of what other tenants are doing, despite being on shared infrastructure. Commercial vendors like NetApp and all the "hyperconverged" crowd have support for this kind of isolation at the cluster level, as do some bespoke storage systems such as the one I work on at Facebook, but in the open-source world? Nada.

<comment><USER33> Ok sure in that context I can't think of any. The closest thing I know of (with a limited understanding of what you mean) is NFS4.2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> [https://helpwanted.apache.org/](https://helpwanted.apache.org/)

[https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/campaigns- summaries#hpp](https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/campaigns-summaries#hpp)

<comment><AUTHOR> It is about existing open source projects. It would be better to have some idea about new open source projects that are not started yet but needed by the community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Music production software. Any of the proprietary options is better than the best open source DAW like Audacity or Ardour. Even Reaper gets enough paying customers to have a good combo notation editor/piano roll in it. Open source has produced some good periphery stuff like Helm and MuseScore. LMMS is the best of the bunch when it comes to open source DAWs.

That's not to say the open source stuff is bad. I get that they don't have the resources to do as much UX refinement as the others. If you can't afford the proprietary stuff or prefer open source, then you can get by. The actual audio handling systems inside are probably world class.

</comment><comment><USER73> Qualitative Data Analysis systems. RQDA and QualCoder are under development, but the pace is generally slow and many features are buggy and remain untested on common operating systems. Some products out there on the market are better than others (I use MaxQDA) but come at a hefty price, even with a student discount.

Also transcription software. Not voice recognition, but software that assists with manual transcription. I'm amazed that no open source alternative to F5 exists out there, since it's a relatively simple mechanism (keyboard shortcuts to denote speaker, paste timestamp, include annotations, etc and ability spool back to rewind 2 seconds).

<comment><USER74> Hi, qualcoder developer here. Yes qualcoder has some bugs, and limited testing on Mac OS or Windows for now. However, thanks for the advice regards manual transcription with key shortcuts, I will try and incorporate that idea. There is another free qual web-based product called Taguette www.taguette.org which you might be interested in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> OneNote. There is only Xournal(pp) with a much smaller featureset and more bugs.

</comment><comment><USER76> Adobe Acrobat. Nothing in the open-source world has the same share of easiness in editing PDF files. (Sorry, Okular.) Also, the ability to use the scanner to produce multipage PDF files is unrivalled, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER77> Don't try to copy a closed-source project. Instead, invent something completely new (something that's 10x better than what it might "replace"), and make it open-source.

<comment><USER78> ... and half your potential user base will say "what the hell is this crap, it is totally unintuitive and doesn't do the things i need it to" ... sigh.

<comment><USER79> Focus on the other half.

<comment><USER78> She's busy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> A real alternative to Outlook/Exchange/Active Directory.

</comment><comment><USER80> Video editing. Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro. I guess the price might not be that high to justify, but still I have not seen anything like these as open source.

<comment><USER81> checkout "davinci resolve", "kdenlive"

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Clipboard manager

Given the hugely abstract data driven world we live in and the inability of the human brain to have long term cache it should be important.

Open source versions exist but they are simply not up to scratch to paid versions, they are simply crap to be honest. Most paid versions have demo modes to see whats good but even the paid versions could do with improvements.

Don't get bogged down in making it work online. Keep it simple, runs locally. Windows or maybe if possible Android.

<comment><USER83> Out of curiosity, what do you need out of a clipboard manager that Ditto (Windows) or CopyQ (cross-platform) don't offer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Object databases. Strictly speaking, Versant object database by Actian (iirc) is the only long standing player and the only actually working implementation.

<comment><USER85> YES! my first job used an in-house object database, and it was magical (though everyone else seemed to hate it.. I think they were just using it wrong.)

It had UML schema, Paxos replication, fine-grained transactions, cardinality checking, reversible upgrades, etc. Application code ran in-process with the database, and it made it really eady to do anything.

I'd love to contribute to an open-source version but probably can't since I've read its code.

P.S. It fell out of favor because the systems that used it tended to be monoliths that did too much to scale well. The "right way to do it," IMHO is to build a central stateful brain with it, kick all asynchronous work out to stateless worker microservices and read from active secondaries. If the brain's only job is to mutate state by applying business logic, you can scale quite far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> FPGA tools, with few exceptions (IceStorm, SymbiFlow)

<comment><USER87> Yeah, EDA ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_design_automation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_design_automation)) is way behind.

There are VHDL and some Verilog but from what (little) I understand, the industry has moved to SystemVerilog and there Free (as in Speech) tools haven't caught up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here are two projects which are doable, I think:

\- Paint.net: freeware windows mspaint replacement. Lightweight and simple UI, but powerful features and extensions system. I hate having to boot up GIMP just for editing a screenshot or something, but no other decent libre paint alternative exists

\- SketchUp: this is to blender what paint.net is to GIMP. Super easy and intuitive to create simple models. A joy to use.

<comment><USER88> There is an open source clone of Paint.net called Pinta, based on the original source code of Paint.net.

It's not actively developed anymore, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> I think businesses with complicated Excel spreadsheets using macros written in VBA may be reluctant to switch to an open source spreadsheet.

</comment><comment><USER90> Sketch, Figma

</comment><comment><USER91> The operating system/firmware which runs on Sonos devices.

There was an link on the front page yesterday about "recycle mode" bricking devices to prevent resale. I'm now slightly disgusted that I own one.

Sonos hardware has great speakers and great sound, but the software is flaky (especially near microwave ovens) and requires a connection to Sonos servers at all times.

</comment><comment><USER92> Graphics and Design:

* Photoshop, GIMP is great but still a bit rough.

* Illustrator, Inkscape is great, but rough.

* Maya, Cinema4D: Blender is technically pretty good, UX is improving but still clunky. Even something like Silo would be pretty sweet (a fairly simple, pure 3d modeling program)

* Video editing: Is there really anything good out there? Last I tried the programs just straight out crashed.

</comment><comment><USER93> One such program is Everett Kaser Software's Hero Mesh puzzle game engine. I have actually started writing Free Hero Mesh for this purpose, though (but it is incomplete).

Another is a good alternative to the Microsoft BASIC compiler for DOS. Although there are other BASIC compilers, they miss many things and don't work with real mode.

</comment><comment><USER94> DJ software! AFAICT Mixxx is the strongest player in this space, and it doesn't hold a candle to Serato/Traktor.

</comment><comment><USER95> Dual pane file manager with GUI, in other words: a proper alternative to Total Commander on Linux. Fast, simple UI, has all required functionality built in and can be extended using plugins. Krusader is probably closest one, but still has few minor paper cut issues.

<comment><USER96> Ranger is great. [https://ranger.github.io/](https://ranger.github.io/)

It supports single- and multi-pane modes.

[https://github.com/ranger/ranger/blob/master/ranger/config/r...](https://github.com/ranger/ranger/blob/master/ranger/config/rc.conf#L23-L28)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> GUI clients for SVN. There are plenty for git, but when I started working at an SVN company I had no luck finding a free one. Ended up paying for SmartSVN, which is okay but still not as good as even some of the OSS git clients.

<comment><USER97> Have you tried TortoiseSVN? A lot of IDE's have an SVN interface - Appcode, IntelliJ, Xcode, Delphi etc

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure how similar it is, but TortoiseHg is the best version control GUI I've used

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> There is no good FOSS or even just open source RIS (Radiology Information System).

</comment><comment><USER99> Video chat like Paltalk and CamFrog.

Specifically, one that will let you run your own server (Camfrog no longer allows this) and others may connect to it through a public directory or via direct IP address.

With unlimited camera feeds able to be opened.

</comment><comment><USER100> What do people use for self service embedded analytics in SaaS applications?

<comment><AUTHOR> What are the closed source softwares that are used for this purpose?

</comment></comment><comment><USER101> \- pdf editor

<comment><USER102> I've used xournal for rudimentary edits like preparing tax forms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> What's your scope? One obvious answer is Google search.

</comment><comment><USER104> kdb+ time series database. An installation can cost >150,000 dollars per year... for a 300 kB executable (yes, kilobytes). And it's worth it.

</comment><comment><USER105> SAP, other annoying enterprise software.

<comment><AUTHOR> Odoo is good alternative

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> Software for VJing, mapping images, light beams, etc to projectors, surfaces or screens.

<comment><USER107> Open Frameworks?

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> Simulink

</comment><comment><USER109> Microsoft Active Directory

</comment><comment><USER110> There was another thread about Aspera on HN the other day.

</comment><comment><USER111> Anyone know if any of the FL Studio alternatives are good?

</comment><comment> o-__-o Cisco Cloudcenter.

</comment><comment><USER112> Google Cloud Messenger/Firebase.

</comment><comment><USER113> A decent wysiwyg website builder.

<comment><USER97> Are there any? Why not square space and so on?

<comment><USER113> Isn't square space a paid solution? [https://www.squarespace.com/pricing](https://www.squarespace.com/pricing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> Confluence, Jira, Photoshop

<comment><USER115> Agreed for two out of three but I've never used Photoshop. I think it's worse for confluence. There are viable alternatives to jira but I've found nothing even "good enough" to replace confluence and it sets a very low bar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> Octopus Deploy

<comment><USER117> It's free for small teams, and we can invite you to the GitHub org if you are a customer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER118> foobar2000 (media player for Windows)

<comment> vladimir-y [https://github.com/DeaDBeeF-Player/deadbeef](https://github.com/DeaDBeeF- Player/deadbeef)

</comment></comment><comment><USER119> Google search

</comment><comment><USER120> sketch

</comment><comment><USER121> airtable

splunk

</comment><comment><USER122> airtable

</comment><comment><USER123> VLC

<comment><USER124> It's already a FOSS software : [https://www.videolan.org/vlc](https://www.videolan.org/vlc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER125> palo alto firewall features:

apply policy based on AD user or group membership

block/apply protocols rather than ports (allow ssh doesn't care what port ssh runs on)

advanced url categorization. allow Facebook but disallow Facebook chat

etc

</comment><comment><USER126> Jenkins ([https://jenkins.io/](https://jenkins.io/)), but specially most of its plugins.

I know it's already open source, but it lacks good FOSS alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER127> Microsoft Office because as soon as OpenOffice succeeded in supporting the formats Microsoft updated to pptx, docx, etc. because they know it's one of the few things keeping people stuck with Windows machines for business.</comment>


Meet Lil Miquela, the AI Influencer - <AUTHOR> https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/lil-miquela-cover-story-issue-16/ <comment><USER2> Doesn't appear to be any evidence that there is any 'AI' behind the account. It's simply a pretty greasy company[0] using CGI and copywriters to build a persona that the company can own and sell to brands as an 'influencer'.

Advertising just got a whole lot more sinister. Think about how AI could actually be used to generate micro-targeted virtual influencers. People don't even seem to care too much that Miquela is artificial, she echos back her audiences opinions, hardening their world views in such a convincing way that it's easy to forget that behind her profile is a business. I guess this isn't really too different from real life influencers who are paid to promote brands, but you have to bare in mind these virtual influencers can be spun up on demand to fill any need. The future is a strange, strange place.

[0] [http://brud.fyi/](http://brud.fyi/)</comment>


The Drug Revolution That No One Can Stop - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/matter/the-drug-revolution-that-no-one-can-stop-19f753fb15e0 <comment><USER2> Just think if many recreational drugs were not illegal. You would have access to safe(r), rated products, open testing of products, knowledge about use (and abuse) out in the open.

You would not have to jail people for illegal drugs and destroy their lives - usually much more than the drugs ever did. You would not be funding criminals who own the market now. It could even be taxed.

At some point in the future, this will happen.

<comment><USER3> First you need to get rid of criminals from the government

<comment><USER4> It does not take to be a criminal to support "war on drugs" and the like. It's enough to be a bureaucrat.

According to Shirky Principle, "institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution". Bureaucracy is very much about being a self- sustained and preferable expanding body. For that, it needs that the problem it is intended to solve to persist. If needed, it will sustain and even re- create that problem.

This is why we have so many forbidden and controlled things: so that those who check for compliance kept they jobs and could get a pay raise sometimes. And their jobs are not easy!

Note that this is not "evil" per se, there's no malicious intent, and the whole "war on drugs", much like the Prohibition 80 years before it, is entirely driven by (outwardly) benign, even noble motives.

Rather, this is a primitive form of life and natural selection. Life needs to self-sustain; its forms that fend off external threats better extend and persist. Any organization that had actually solved a problem it was built to solve has been disbanded, as something not needed any more. Any organization that offers solutions which perpetuate the problem is kept around to continue solving the problem.

This is (partly) why higher forms of life have a death trigger built in. Eukaryotes have telomeres. Similarly, presidents only have limited time in office. Problem-solving bodies should have something similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do not trust the accuracy of any article that calls Ketamine a tranquilizer. It is not, it is an anasthetic. People who fail to do research commonly repeat this completely inaccurate belief.

<comment><USER6> I've always heard it called a horse tranquilizer. What makes that assertion wrong?

The NHTSA labels it as a veterinary tranquilizer as well - [http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/job185drugs/keta...](http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/job185drugs/ketamine.htm)

<comment><USER5> Nope, anasthetic. People without any background in medicine frequently confuse the two.

<comment><USER6> Repeating yourself doesn't answer my question as to what makes the statement wrong. The more interesting question to me is why there are so many sources, including many government documents, referring to it as a veterinary tranquilizer going back almost 50 years if it does not have that effect.

<comment><USER5> Look two items up in that link, under "source", where it is correctly identified as an anasthetic.

People without training conflate the two.

<comment><USER6> I fail to see why I should believe that it is only an anesthetic (never anasthetic, as you consistenly keep writing) and not a tranquilizer as well when I can find thousands of documents on .gov and .edu sites supporting its use as a tranquilizer. Surely you can come up with veterinary medicine documents that explain why it's not usable as a tranquilizer rather than making unsupported claims - since it's mentioned as a tranquilizer always in veterinary and not human contexts.

<comment><USER5> iOS spellcheck has failed my pre-coffee fingers. :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps the availability of cheap mass spectrometers could mitigate some of the health risks involved (e.g. [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/903107259/scio-your- six...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/903107259/scio-your-sixth-sense- a-pocket-molecular-sensor-fo)).

<comment><USER8> I think that's a spectrophotometer

<comment><USER9> Near-IR spectroscopy can work for sample identification of organic compounds, but there are downsides with sample prep and interference from strong absorbers in the bands used, including water. The lenses and windows in the insurgents are made of IR-transmissive salt (often literally NaCl), which has to be kept dry and scratch free.

A better, and newer, option is to use Raman spectroscopy, which relies on the intrinsic molecular vibrations of a material (phonons) to shift the wavelength of interrogating light by a characteristic magnitude[1]. Once the Raman spectra is obtained, sample identification is a matter of finding the spectrum of the most similar compound in a database of known spectra. So in order to correctly identify something, it helps if it has been seen before and is present in the database.

Because Raman spectrometers are essentially a laser, some very narrow optical notch filters (band rejection at the interrogating frequency), and some fairly sensitive semiconductor detectors (often in the form of a mini spectrophotometer), the instruments can be made quite small. Some are even handheld and have integrated material databases[2].

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raman_spectroscopy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raman_spectroscopy)

2\. [http://www.thermoscientific.com/content/tfs/en/product/trusc...](http://www.thermoscientific.com/content/tfs/en/product/truscan- rm-material-verification-analyzer.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8748467](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8748467)

<comment><USER11> Thanks, I thought it was a repost.</comment></comment>


How to create an unfair coin and prove it with math - <AUTHOR> https://izbicki.me/blog/how-to-create-an-unfair-coin-and-prove-it-with-math.html

<comment><USER2> Hm... [http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/dice...](http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/diceRev2.pdf)</comment>


CNN reviews pull requests and fixes bugs of Spark - <AUTHOR> https://databricks.com/blog/2016/04/01/unreasonable-effectiveness-of-deep-learning-on-spark.html <comment><USER2> > Among its shortcomings are its inability to incorporate feedback other than > its own into its pull requests and its slightly worrisome trend to revert > many pull requests made by humans and favor those it has made.

 _checks date_

 _sigh_

Sounds like another "clever" April Fools gag to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Let me know if you have any questions .... :)

<comment><USER4> Did DeepSpark actually write this blog post?

<comment><USER3> Did it?</comment></comment></comment>


Hacking Product Hunt for App Launch - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@misbahspeaks/hacking-product-hunt-for-our-app-launch-edc4de66890

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking forward to hear your feedback and your way of approach for your product launch.</comment>


Donald Trump Jr suspended from tweeting after Covid post - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53567681 <comment><USER2> From the article: "While there is indeed much disagreement in the medical community about the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in treating coronavirus, there have been studies reported by mainstream outlets like CNN, suggesting that it may in fact by an effective treatment."

Is hydroxychloroquine's effectiveness questionable? Yes.

Should Twitter be the one to make that judgement call and block a video from medical professionals? No.

Can Twitter do this? Sadly, until Section 230 is reformed, Yes.

<comment><USER3> > Should Twitter be the one to make that judgement call and block a video from > medical professionals? No.

Why not? Their house, their rules.

<comment><USER4> It can be their rules, but then they should not be able to advertise things like this:

"Free expression is a human right. Everyone has a voice, and the right to use it. On Twitter, you should feel safe expressing your unique point of view with every Tweet – and it's our job to make that happen."

"Twitter stands for freedom of expression for everyone."

"We do not take sides. We show sides. Every side."

"We treat everyone equally: the same Twitter Rules apply to all."

"we allow strong opinions and controversial views."

<comment><USER3> I kind of agree with you, but also disagree somewhat. I think these statements are aspirational in that they reflect Twitter's general principles. But when the rubber hits the road, there are practical limits and exceptions that you make to preserve what you perceive as the greater good and to make sure that the potential harms that come with unrestrained freedom don't outweigh the benefits. I don't think Twitter wants their principles to constitute a suicide pact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let's run a poll. What kind of stuck on stupid does DJT most resemble because getting kicked off social media is a real achievement:

\- Kevin Cline's Otto in "Fish Called Wanda"

\- "The Zapper" from Futurama

\- The Duke from Doonesbury (bonus: who's his Honey?)

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been surprised that Trump has been so toothless in the contest against Twitter. I thought for sure things like this, or when they apply the different labels or restrictions to his tweets, would've set him off and made him do something against Twitter.

<comment><USER7> The problem is he needs Twitter as much as Twitter needs him. Lots of people have talked about getting his base over to some other app that will allow him to say whatever, but it just hasn't worked.

<comment><USER8> Curious, has the President really tried that hard? I can't imagine that he would fail if he made a clean break from Twitter when switching. Love him or hate him, he in a position to command endless press through whichever platform he chooses.

<comment><USER9> Interesting business case. I think yes, he single handed Ky could jump start a new social network. Millions of people would follow him just to argue about his posts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The WHO has been wrong many times.

<comment><USER11> The role of the WHO is to provide timely advice based on the best evidence on hand. Sometimes preliminary research is overturned by subsequent studies. Sometimes best practices are flawed and need to be updated. WHO is not omniscient; they're pragmatic scientists.

Scientists have been wrong frequently throughout history, but do you know who's wrong even more often? The people who ignore science.

<comment><USER12> Certainly, in the balance of probabilities the WHO's guidance is more likely to be correct than incorrect. It's certainly more likely to be correct than a layperson's.

But it's not SO overwhelmingly likely to be correct that all of the big 3 social networks (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) need to have a policy of aggressively removing anyone who contradicts them.

Even though I agree the WHO is probably right about most things, it's far below the level of certainty you'd need to justify these overreactions. It doesn't even have the intended effect of preventing irresponsible behavior by gullible people; the COVID19 hoaxers are getting way more ammunition out of the media's censorious behaviour than they would out of Trump Jr's bad medical advice.</comment></comment></comment>


How more productive did you get due to a change of programming language? - <AUTHOR> I often hear companies or projects change programming languages due to it being more productive. Just wondering how exactly were you able to monitor for this and how you could guide the adoption of a new programming language to be productive for the whole team or company. <comment><USER2> In my uni days, I was introduced to a variety of languages, from Fortran to LISP, Pascal to COBOL, PDP-10 Assembly to SIMULA.

In one case (in a production environment), I built a system using Turbo-Pascal in about 8 weeks and then came across Icon (Griswold). From getting the Icon system to rebuilding the Turbo-Pascal system in Icon was a total of three days. One of the problems that was encountered in the Turbo-Pascal system was a continual change in the input data being supplied. With Icon and its string matching facilities, that problem disappeared. Ease of use, language facilities provided and high level data structures, etc, have been the important features of Icon and later UnIcon.

In many of the varying jobs that I have undertaken over the decades since, my go to language has been Icon and since about 2000, UnIcon (Jeffery). Though it has some missing facilities (like lambda functions), it has many facilities that make many of the programming tasks I have had to deal with much simpler than many other languages.

If I have not been able to use Icon/UnIcon, then I have programmed in the available languages in as close a methodology to Icon/UnIcon as possible, which usually means building the various string scanning functions of Icon/UnIcon as I can and using them accordingly.

I have considered one of the Icon/UnIcon language features to be the most outstanding of all I have come across and that is "Failure is an option". I have yet to see other languages take this up to anywhere near what Icon/UnIcon normally supplies.

When you can write something like

if 0 <= x <= 10 then {....}

to mean that when x is between 0 and 10 inclusive do something

or even something like

if 0 <= (x | y) <= 10 then {.....}

when x or y is between 0 and 10 inclusive do something

you know you've got something to work with.

</comment><comment><USER3> time taken 6o developp a feature, number of people required to do so, memory consumption and hardware needed, but also number of bugs found in production, feedback from dev,...</comment>