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Open Source

Ask Slashdot: What Would You Pay To See Open Sourced? 483

Posted by EditorDavid from the crowdfunding-code dept.
jbrase writes: It's in the interest of the open-source community to make open-source development as profitable as possible. One potential means of making money from open source is crowdfunding, [but] proprietary vendors aren't likely to be enthusastic about using their flagship product to try out a relatively untested business model. Crowdfunding the open source release of legacy technologies of historical significance could provide a low-risk way for vendors to experiment with making money by crowdfunding: The product has already turned them a profit.

With that, I'd like to ask Slashdot readers, what would you pay to see open sourced?
Slashdot reader jonwil left a comment suggesting old games ("where the game is no longer being developed/worked on and where the engine/tech is no longer being used for anything"). But the sky's the limit here, so leave your own best answers in the comments. What would you pay to see open sourced?
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Ask Slashdot: What Would You Pay To See Open Sourced? More

Ask Slashdot: What Would You Pay To See Open Sourced?

Comments Filter:

  • Photoshop (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pestilence669 ( 823950 ) on Saturday August 19, 2017 @10:05PM (#55050403)
    ... no, Gimp is not an adequate replacement.

    • Re:Photoshop (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19, 2017 @10:53PM (#55050609)

      You're doing it wrong. [krita.org]

    • Re:Photoshop (Score:5, Funny)

      by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Saturday August 19, 2017 @10:56PM (#55050631)

      ... no, Gimp is not an adequate replacement.

      GIMP 1.x was social experiment intended to test how far people would go to use an application. They ended quietly ended the experiment after avid GIMP fan was found in another GIMP user's apartment by police after a neighbor reported gruesome screams. The developer had been cutting off the fingers of there users who did not utilize every keyboard shortcut for GIMP. Shortly thereafter the GIMP 2.x series was released with an improved GUI that was just good enough to not drive people insane. The results of the experiment were recorded and they pushed forward on their new larger social experiment: GNOME 3. The intervention of outside parties improving Gnome 3 was unforeseen and ruined the experiment. However, the project was revived by a the Nazi scientist, Lennart Poettering. Project "EWONTFIX" continues to this day a scale greater than ever before. ;)

    • Photoshop + Excel and there is no reason to have Windows at work.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Would of course be nice, but I'd rather take a Linux port of the entire Creative Cloud as it stands. It would bring a lot of professionals over and give Linux a much higher standing as a workstation OS. If I were to spend money on getting the source code for a blob it would probably be for compatibility, like say the source code for MS Office or DirectX or nVidia's graphics driver. Then again, not very likely they'll sell it for any reasonable amount.

      Looks like there's some progress though, you can now play

      • I'd rather take a Linux port of the entire Creative Cloud as it stands.

        Fuck no. SaaS is unacceptable for desktop applications. People need real programs that don't depend on phoning home.

        • You clearly have no idea what Creative Cloud is....

          It's the entire Adobe collection of "Creative" applocations. Including, but not limited to, Photoshop, Illustrator, Animate, Acrobat (pro), etc.

          It is very loosely coupled to a cloud storage service, but you do not have to use it.

    • Rather than open source Photoshop, I'd want to see a "close enough to work alike" set of OSX emulating libraries that would make it trivially easy for anyone who writes for Mac OSX to cross compile their product to be able to run under Linux. Also, to the extent that Wine isn't there already, it'd be good to have something similar for WinXP.

      Truthfully, between Picture Window Pro (now free to use [dl-c.com]) and Adobe Lightroom (for those times when nothing but adjustment layers will do) I find little need for a full

  • BeOS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheRealMindChild ( 743925 ) on Saturday August 19, 2017 @10:08PM (#55050413) Homepage Journal
    BeOS

  • Windows 7 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19, 2017 @10:10PM (#55050417)

    M$ lock-in is the worst thing about Windows 7. It's a great desktop OS in most ways. I paid $300(AUD) for it anyway - it would have been nice to pay $300 for it to be free instead.

  • Picasa (Score:5, Informative)

    by RoscoeChicken ( 73509 ) on Saturday August 19, 2017 @10:10PM (#55050419)

    Nothing else currently available on Windows comes close.

  • Nvidia Drivers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ARos ( 1314459 ) on Saturday August 19, 2017 @10:13PM (#55050429)

    Nvidia sucks.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cb88 ( 1410145 )
      Java... and the JVM (several implantations actually not just the Sun / Oracle one) are open source.

      Google got sued because they didn't make a compliant Java implementation.... and instead just reused parts of Java in Android.

      • If that were why they got sued they would have lost. They got sued because Oracle saw them making a bunch of money with Java and wanted some.

        Am I internetting right?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cb88 ( 1410145 )
          Yes and no.... got sued for those reasons, but the didn't lose because the parts they were using were basically headers which are a grey area.

  • The source code to slashdot (Score:4, Funny)

    by thinkwaitfast ( 4150389 ) on Saturday August 19, 2017 @10:14PM (#55050435)
    Oh wait. Too close to home?

  • Easy (Score:5, Informative)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Saturday August 19, 2017 @10:26PM (#55050481)

    macOS

  • ... stream it?

  • I need to bitch slap some chickens... (Score:3)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Saturday August 19, 2017 @10:31PM (#55050507)
    A modern version of Dungeon Keeper 2 [wikipedia.org].

  • Cell Phones (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19, 2017 @10:32PM (#55050511)

    Top to bottom, we should have a DRM-free open-source cell phone, including hardware and software.

    • Unlikely to happen. By the time the patents expire on 20-year-old radio protocols, the spectrum licensees have moved on to protocols several generations newer and sunset service using the old protocol. Case in point: Neither analog cell phone service nor D-AMPS TDMA works anymore on U.S. carriers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jonwil ( 467024 )

      I would LOVE to see the source code to more parts of my Nokia N900 Linux phone be released. Don't care that the radio firmware is proprietary, what I want to see open sourced would be the various proprietary audio components, the browser UI, the various binary components that handle WiFi (including the various WiFi encryption bits) and any hardware related items that remain closed source (e.g. the cellular services daemon that sits on the linux side and talks to the cellular modem)
      So much more could be done

  • AutoCAD (Score:5, Interesting)

    by digitect ( 217483 ) <digitectNO@SPAMdancingpaper.com> on Saturday August 19, 2017 @10:34PM (#55050525)
    There are no open source CAD softwares capable of producing the drawings used in architecture, engineering, design, and manufacturing. Yet, that same, expensive proprietary package continues on with the same performance hogging, unstable, fluff enhanced software that hasn't really changed in 15 years.

    • BrlCAD. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If it was good enough for the army...

      The only bad part about it is that it is a total pain to build on linux. Older versions UI was literally from either the 70s or early 90s, and it has a high learning curve.

      Latest versions even include gcode solvers for end to end design, modelling, and gcode output.

      That said, AutoCAD or 3D Studio Max would be awesome just for exporting the Star Trek ship models available into another format. It really sucks how all the coolest ships are only in max format so anyone unwil

    • It's not Open source, but I've had great success with their new cloudified product Fusion 360.

    • Re:AutoCAD (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday August 20, 2017 @12:26AM (#55050911)

      FreeCAD [freecadweb.org] works for me. I especially like scripting in Python. AutoCAD uses Lisp for scripting, but it is buggy and not included at all in the "lite" edition for students.

      Even if AutoCAD was free, I would prefer FreeCAD.

      • Holy shit is FreeCAD slow though. In fairness I don't know how it compares to AutoCAD since I've not used that. The only major project I've done had a lot of parameterisation via the spreadsheet like thing. I was replacing the OpenSCAD model because the injection moulding place wouldn't take high res mesh models, and I needed a surface model so I got it done in FreeCAD in the time it took the SolidWorks distributor to take my life story and etc.

        Even slow, it was not very fast.

        But it did work, and the produc

  • ..it would be like having everyone's DNA unravel all at once, and all that would remain would be spaghetti code filling every corner of the conceivable universe!
  • Not disagreeing with the autocad comment.

  • ... for Windows Freecell.

  • Toady won't live forever. Moreover, what he has produced is very difficult to build on without his participation (specifically tracking combat). As a superior talent in a number of fields, I'm sure there's plenty of lessons to be learned from the code about scaling very large, application development, from a solo developer perspective.

  • CorelDraw! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pcjunky ( 517872 ) <walterp@cyberstreet.com> on Saturday August 19, 2017 @11:10PM (#55050667) Homepage

    Should be easy as they ported to Linux several years ago.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tsa ( 15680 )

      Oh, a Mac version of Corel Draw would be fantastic! I now use Inkscape, which works but lacks a lot of CD's functions.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jonwil ( 467024 )

        You would be far better off spending money to pay people to add the missing things to Inkscape than paying whoever owns it these days to open source Corel Draw.

  • Games that need a central server (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19, 2017 @11:27PM (#55050721)

    Any game that customers paid for that requires a central server that the parent company shuts down after a couple years, bricking the game. Seriously, this shit should be illegal, but it's growing..

  • Demcratic elections voting infrastructure (Score:5, Insightful)

    by evanh ( 627108 ) on Saturday August 19, 2017 @11:28PM (#55050723)

    This seems to me to be an obvious first port of call. The weak points become well documented so also become well protected. Couldn't get a better demo of the security obtained.

  • I miss the old days.

  • If there is any piece of software that needs to be auditable and have options for self-hosting it is password managers. Especially now that 1Password is backing off of their support for hosting your database file somewhere other than their servers.

    Unfortunately, I haven't found any open source password managers that pass the WAF, which requires seamless browser integration and syncing on all major platforms.

  • My country's future (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I would like the future of my country to be decided by the people and in the open. No more back-room dealing and secrecy.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Visual FoxPro. Would be great to have a 64 bit version. FoxPro was really great at data manipulation.
  • I know that not all of OS/X is opened sourced beyond Darwin (unless things has changed in the last few years when I last looked). Surprised no one brought up OS/X so far.
  • Presto is (was) the rendering engine used in Opera versions 7-12. They even talked a little about open-sourcing it after the switch to Chromium/Blink, but unfortunately nothing ever came of it. It would need a rewrite for multiprocessing and ... well, all the new stuff in the web in the last few years, but at the time it was sppedy and flexible. If we're being realistic about thing that could be open-sourced, that's the top of my list.

  • Total Commander - there isn't a comparable File Manager, although DoubleCMD and MultiCommander at least try.

  • Clippy! (Score:4, Funny)

    by darkain ( 749283 ) on Sunday August 20, 2017 @12:28AM (#55050917) Homepage

    Clippy! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • I would release a distro called Gnu is Now Unix

  • Google's Picassa had unmatched facial recognition, and I've got 500Gb of photos to organize... but there was a bug, and it started getting confused... then they discontinued development and support.

    I'd also like Google Reader to come back

  • Solidworks
    AutoCad
    Xilinx ISE and Quartus ,Mentor Graphics's stuff etc....
    Simics
    Visual Studio
    KiCAD is good enough at the moment so no real needs there.
    eASIC's design suite (they want like 15k or something insane for it)
    WinAMP
    A decent drawing program ala Corel something something... (I have an artistic sister)
    I don't need office... I just need people to stop using proprietary formats.

  • Google Assistant (Score:3)

    by RhettLivingston ( 544140 ) on Sunday August 20, 2017 @02:15AM (#55051119) Journal

    In imagining the future computing world, I've always imagined it would include personal AI assistants. I never imagined that they wouldn't be running directly on my home computer and accessing the net as my proxy.

    I believe the most critical open source need today is a strong AI assistant. Missing it is like missing the addition of Linux to open source.

  • Genetica [spiralgraphics.biz]

    Unfortunately, the developers seem to have largely abandoned it, and no new work has been done on it in some time. The website it needs to connect to in order to download any needed content seems to be keeping maintained, but the forums, once booming with activity with questions from users and fast responses from the development team have all but dried up completely.

    While it was once (and still is) commercial, open source seems to me like the only way that project can get any new life at this

  • Adobe Flash (Score:5, Funny)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday August 20, 2017 @02:37AM (#55051157)

    I have no interest in building or running the software... but I imagine reading the code comments would be hilarious and enlightening.

  • AppleScript (Score:3)

    by myid ( 3783581 ) on Sunday August 20, 2017 @02:43AM (#55051179)

    AppleScript. I absolutely need AppleScript.

    Apple has paid so little attention to AppleScript, at least in public recently, that I'm concerned that they might stop including it in macOS some day. I sure hope not.

    If they do stop including AppleScript in macOS, I hope they'll open source it, so that people who need it can keep on using it.

  • Authorware was an interesting multimedia development tool by Macromedia, after the company was sold to Adobe it eventually was discontinued. It had a flowchart metaphor that allowed non-technical people to produce decent e-learning modules, including animations etc. In addition it had an interesting scripting language to create more powerful routines. I always thought that the program could have a future if maintained and expanded towards web based learning output etc (back then you could technically run it
  • CAD software! And not that fucked up shit from Autodesk that insists you have an account, and you must be logged in.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )
      There's qcad which isn't bad for 2D stuff.
      For 3D or if you are going anywhere near FEA since you've got to wrap your head around things anyway an ancient interface like brlcad isn't going to add a lot to the learning curve.

  • Winamp and Picasa (Score:5, Interesting)

    by johannesg ( 664142 ) on Sunday August 20, 2017 @04:55AM (#55051387)

    After reading the other article, why not open source winamp? Surely it would be more useful than it is rotting away... Same for Picasa.

  • There's some IBM stuff that became abandonware when they sold it off to Nuance which makes it look like there's now nothing at all for download or money that will do speech to text on powerpc.
  • Otherwise, it's not open source. Donations are only meant to fill in the gaps and not to be used as motivation. If you want to get payed to be "creative," get a Patreon account.

  • Old/dead things I would pay to see as open source (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Sunday August 20, 2017 @07:17AM (#55051649)

    1.ZTree. Its a clone of the old XTree file manager for dos except ZTree is a 32-bit Windows app with support for a bunch of windows things (copying to the clipboard, long file names and more). I use it all the time because it has ways to do things that would require a lot more effort to do using other methods and it would be good to see it updated to modern standards (e.g. make it 64 bit, add more features, stuff like that)

    2.C&C Renegade from Westwood Studios. I have been reverse engineering C&C Renegade for more than 15 years and I probably know more about the internals of the game than anyone else on the planet at this point but there are still many holes in my knowledge. Having the original source code to Renegade (and the level editor, 3ds max export plugin and other tools) would allow all the mysteries of the engine to be sorted out once and for all.

    3.Other C&C games from Westwood Studios and EA. Having the source code to the older games (C&C1, Red Alert 1, Tiberian Sun, Red Alert 2 and maybe Generals) would allow the people who have been reverse engineering (or trying to reverse engineer) those games to stop doing that and work with the original code instead. Source code to console ports of the games (e.g. the Nintendo 64 port of the first C&C) would also be great to see.

    4.LEGO Mindstorms RCX. I own the original yellow LEGO Mindstorms RCX brick. I would love to see the complete source code for everything that runs on the device as well as the complete source code to the drivers and software so it can be made to work on modern operating systems (Windows 7 in my case).

    5.WinAmp. I still use it as my audio player of choice and if whoever owns it doesn't plan to continue development, opening it up and letting someone else take over would be nice.

  • Thanks for buying and killing it, Autodesk. Really. No. Actually, I can't hate you enough.

  • Silverlight with .NET Core and XAML based ui framework would be a great alternative to JS/HTML/CSS for rich browser based apps.

  • Google Pagerank (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Nuitari The Wiz ( 1123889 ) on Sunday August 20, 2017 @09:35AM (#55052049)

    I think Google Pagerank is what defines what most of us see whenever we search for something on the web. Being such an important gateway between someone and the information. Does it have biases? How much censorship does it do ? How many false positive happen for the spam filtering? and so many other questions.

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