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What OSS Programs are Still Needed?
suso asks: "I was thinking yesterday about how much open source software is out there already. Most categories are filled, but I wonder about what pieces of software still need to be written. What programs would you like to see in OSS form that are currently not available?"
Anything to put Diebold out of business, thank you. Auditable, open-source, tested. Please. Before the U.S. Midterms.
A hero is someone who knows when to run away. I am a hero. -Trent the Uncatchable
Having been on linux 100% for the last 3 years, I've never had an audio mixer work right (even on a sound blaster live! value) out of the box.
The channels are not labelled correctly, the fader doesn't work on most of them, the inputs are changed on the back of the card (i.e. from rear out to line in!).
The only reason this is so important to me is the 5.1 surround setup I have has no volume control. The volume is at whatever level the computer sends to it. I'm sure this is not the standard setup so it doesn't get much attention.
Get paid to code OSS
Serious CAD software. There are a few projects that do some 2D drafting. That is not sufficient. A serious CAD package can not only serve as an end application, but the backend to many tools.
I have thought on more than on occasion of starting a foundation to get such an effort off the ground. I felt then as I do now that there are many places that would contribute serious money to the effort of an OSS CAD. Organizations spend serious money on CAD. Additionally, there is lots of out of work talent that would be willing to devote serious time to such a project if it were financially possible for them.
I know I'm probably dreaming, but I'd love something like an Open Source alternative to Director or Flash.
Alex.
I've tried netscape etc, but I would sure like to see a web designer that will allow me to drag a picture anywhere inside a box, and build a table that positions it correctly relative to the other elements in the page. For instance something like this. If OSS can design a PhotoShop killer (GIMP), why not a truly WYSIWYG web designer?
Oh, and while we're dreaming, how about a desktop HIG standard? So each time I load a new distro I don't feel like I'm learning a new OS? While that's cool for hobbyists, it hurts corp adoption because Linux continually feels "unpolished." Why can't some consortium develop, decide on the lowest common denominator, and make it a standard that shrinkwrap developers and trainers target? And then you can leave the other stuff for preference panels.
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$tar -xvf
... that's cross-platform and lets you reserve conference rooms, schedule meetings, etc, etc, etc. Haven't found anything quite like that yet, not that can be used on coworkers' windows machines too, anyway.
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
CAD
Good IDEs
Movie/animation editing
Professional DVD menu editing (Look, it's complicated)
Graphical LOGO
Macromedia Flash or Shockwave editor (or editor of something similarly good)
Vector-based drawing
With an open system, copying the unencrypted stream is always possible (via /proc/kcore even).
You need something secure from the driver up to support crap like Digital Restrction Management.
There's 2 defences that the media companies have. One is the law. Two is heavy watermarking of movie files. If you cant guarantee to prevent copying, put the peoples' name and computer hardware information inside it.
Oh, and while we're at it, a gui-based stats package along the lines of PASS or SPSS would be nice too.
I have a Macintosh and I've seen no good modern mapping software for either Mac or for OSS Unix-likes (I don't mind BSD/X Window). In theory, it should be easy to take the USGS TIGER roadmap data set and combine it with local road data from governments and user-submitted manual road additions.
Especially if it's open source, there are some interesting possibilities with it: automatically download USGS's free satellite photos (probably hosted by a certain company's TerraServer), add GPS tracking and maybe automatic road additions, add routing and proper speed-limit data, make a nice 3D perspective view from some point, etc.
A Mathematica replacement, please.
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Kwanza is not a Polish holiday!
Unfortunately, you can't open-source DRM. At a fundamental level, you can't prevent the computer from having enough information to decrypt a file, without the user also having enough information to decrypt the file. The only way to do that would be to store the key in the decryption hardware in a write/decrypt only location. Even then you'd have to have special hardware to intercept the decryption key as it is transmitted to the machine and before it hits the processor, in order to deflect it to the proper area without the machine having any say. Even then you have man-in-the-middle attacks, which would require a layer of communication encryption that the processor doesn't have control over, etc.
In other words, you fundamentally cannot give the user full knowledge without relinquishing full control.
The ______ Agenda
WTF? If you have 64,000+ rows, doesn't that suggest that gnumeric/OO/Excel are not the right tool to be using?
...no, not urdu to engrish or klingon, I mean GUI to CLI then to AUI. I'd really like to see a program that would let me see what any random button mashing or input in a GUI interface *does* in the form of a normal scripting command and also to see the hierarchial tree of files accessed in real time. It can be "focus" based on the other apps. This is a learning tool. An exploration tool. A linux useability and make-more-practical tool.
And I'll second the request from down the thread, a speech to text and text to speech, eventually leading to speech to speech,diggit, the dang talking computar. Audio User Interface. You get one of them babies, you'll be set, in like flint, leet, topdog. People freeking talk to each other, they DON'T stand next to each other and type at each other. We are audio visual creatures, tactile is down the list of senses. And don't forget the aging of the population and how arthritis and whatnot screws up your typing ability, let alone how it even affects younger folks who do it a lot.. Big ole useability hint there to anyone looking for an actual folding money market of some kind.
I used to have a little mac classic proggie, forget the name, but actually worked well, you could request apps on and off, etc, verbally. Something like that, but *more*. First, the speech to text, because THEN not only is it handy for those with disabilities who want to compute, but you could use the text output to run the computer.
but I would really like to emphasize this. Linux needs decent quality DVD authoring (read GUI... not dvdauthor) and transcoding software. K3b is probably the easiest place to integrate transcoding (they already have support for DVD -> DivX), but I am talking about MPEG2 -> MPEG2 to make dual layer DVDs fit on 4.7 Gigs. This is the place where I feel that linux is lacking the most. That and ATI's drivers suck, but that's not our fault, right? ;)
Going from TuxPaint to the Gimp is literally like jumping between kindergarten and college. Is there nothing inbetween for simple drawing and photo touch up?
Free the West Memphis Three!
DVD authoring with OSS still takes a computer science degree and LOTS of time to get right.
I'm in a Unix state of mind.