High Priority Free Software Projects

http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects

by Flenser • 15 years ago

67 51 15 years ago

"Some of the most important projects on our list are replacement projects. These projects are important because they address areas where users are continually being seduced into using nonfree software by the lack of an adequate free replacement."

Why is having a free program that solves a problem that's already solved more important than creating programs that solve new problems, but that also happen to be free?

I find it hard to believe that the most important free software project in the world is a player for passively consuming content in a proprietary format (Flash), that is A) dying and B) more for eye candy than anything useful.

tjr• 15 years ago

Because lack of such free software can hinder people who might be otherwise interested in switching to a free operating system from actually doing so.

A free replacement for Flash is likely to become less useful in this situation, as other non-proprietary solutions are becoming prevalent.

kbutler• 15 years ago

The point is that a clone makes it so people "can" switch, if they want.

A "unique to free software" solution makes it so people want and need to switch.

Between the two, I think creating incentives is more powerful than removing obstacles. (Given strong enough motivation, people will overcome obstacles. Lacking strong motivation, why bother?)

greenyoda2• 15 years ago

Why would a lack of a GPL Flash replacement hinder someone from switching to Linux? Flash is already available for Linux (I've run it under Ubuntu), and while it's not "free software", it's free of charge.

gamegod• 15 years ago

Agreed - It shows tremendous lack of vision and leadership on the part of the FSF to continually push for "clones". The pursuit of mediocrity that is endemic in open source originates from them.

Let's innovate people...

ajross• 15 years ago

I think that's vastly overgeneralized. By that logic we'd have no free compiler, no free kernel, no free userspace. It's all clones. True innovation is rare (and it certainly does happen as free software).

The goal of the FSF is to promote the use of free software. If people won't or can't use free software because they need some proprietary program, then the goal of the FSF becomes to eliminate that need.

Sometimes this involves writing software that is better than proprietary equivalents (c.f. emacs and gcc in their early days). Sometimes it means just cloning what's there so you have something to use (most of coreutils falls into this category).

cbs2• 15 years ago

>Why is having a free program that solves a problem that's already solved more important than creating programs that solve new problems, but that also happen to be free?

Because their goals include that everything possible should be possible for to do with free software. It is by definition a game of catch-up.

gurraman• 15 years ago

Another project I would like to be high priority is GIMP.

Photoshop is the misruler and needs to be dethroned. It's a terrible piece of software that, more or less, forces people to use non-free operative systems. It has to be replaced and/or get some real competition that would force Adobe to get their act straight.

worldimperator• 15 years ago

The piece of software that forces people like me to use non-free operative systems is not Photoshop, but Gimp. And more horribly, Inkscape.

aw3c2• 15 years ago

That sounds backward. How could some software that is merely available for free drive you away from something? Also, have you tried alternatives? There is not just GIMP...

wazoox• 15 years ago

can you elaborate? I see people constantly bashing GIMP, and though it isn't without problems it's good enough for me for all web stuff, and good enough for a bit of print stuff.

stonemetal• 15 years ago

The only problem I have with making a GIMP replacement is, I wouldn't know what to build. All of my image editing needs are filled by programs that shipped with my OS. I have used the GIMP before it was confusing(which would probably be resolvable if I spent time learning the app), but capable of what I needed. Yet every time I see it brought up it is usually called inadequate, with most of the problems called out looking like "doesn't work exactly like Photoshop so I am not even going to try it" sort of problems.

So my question is: Is there something actually wrong with the GIMP other than the fact that it is ugly? I don't consider the fact that it works differently from Photoshop a problem worth fixing.

japhyr2• 15 years ago

One of the biggest drawbacks of GIMP is its lack of adjustment layers.

mvts• 15 years ago

A free alternative to Oracle Forms? That's a pretty neat idea since in my opinion OF actually serves the developers instead of enslaving them.

tghw• 15 years ago

I'm kind of dismayed at the lack of innovation, or even appreciation for innovation, in this list. It seems a waste to spend good developers time cloning something like Google Earth, which is marginally useful to begin with, already free (as in beer), just so that it can also be free (as in speech).

Instead, why not spend time working on projects that will attract people to free software because it's only available as free software?

DanielStraight4• 15 years ago

Agreed.

The free software approach seems to assume that what a computer should be and do has already been decided and they just need to make free versions of everything. Like there's a certain set of programs that defines a complete system and their goal is just to get from 60% or wherever they are now to 100%.

Apple, on the other hand, reinvents computing every 5 years or so (yes, that's hyperbolic). If a FOSS advocate had created the iPad, the most popular device in computing today would be FOSS. The most popular computers and electronics in the world aren't Apple products because Apple made an Apple version of everything. The most popular computers and electronics in the world are Apple products because Apple innovated.

bryanlarsen4• 15 years ago

The most popular computers and electronics in the world are Apple products because Apple polished everything to a sheen.

Sure apple created some cool stuff, but the open source world created some pretty darn cool stuff too. Remember, the first web browser was open source.

bct2• 15 years ago

> The free software approach seems to assume that what a computer should be and do has already been decided and they just need to make free versions of everything.

That's really not the case.

> The most popular computers and electronics in the world are Apple products because Apple innovated.

That's part of it, but there were also huge quantities of marketing and money involved.

No technology wins on its own merits.

cbs2• 15 years ago

The free software approach seems to assume that what a computer should be and do has already been decided and they just need to make free versions of everything.

When you you look at their goals, they are by definition playing catch-up. You're also glossing over every single innovation that has come out of the open-source space.

The most popular computers and electronics in the world aren't Apple products because Apple made an Apple version of everything.

Actually, the fact their operating system is just an Apple version of unix is the primary reason I even considered purchasing my mac. The same rings true for most of the technical people I know who have macs.

rhizome31• 15 years ago

> The most popular computers and electronics in the world are Apple products because Apple innovated.

I wonder on what basis you're saying this. When I look around me, I see very few Apple products. Maybe that depends on what part of the world you live in.

nitrogen2• 15 years ago

If a FOSS advocate had created the iPad...

Well, there was the Linux-based CrunchPad before the iPad was even announced. Who knows what the world may be like if Fusion Garage hadn't severed ties with Arrington and released the overpriced Joojoo.

bryanlarsen4• 15 years ago

There's a lot of innovation in open source software: most University projects are all about doing new things, and a relatively large percentage of University projects are open source.

But what you're asking for is nonsensical. This list is the list of things that are preventing people from going "fully free". I'm not prevented from switching to free software because something that does not exist is not free software.

DanielStraight4• 15 years ago

Every piece of software we use today will eventually be obsolete anyway. Photoshop, Google Earth, even BIOSes will eventually look old-fashioned and quaint. If you (in the impersonal sense, not you personally) want to get converts, make the software that makes today's software obsolete. If you don't make it, someone else will, and when they do, your FOSS version will be obsolete as well.

gbhn• 15 years ago

As a Chrome developer, I'm biased, but I think a lot of very important and innovative work is happening on the web platform, and virtually all of it is open source.

naner• 15 years ago

Stallman and the FSF are approaching this from an philosophical standpoint (closed source is harmful, free software is liberating, etc.) so their efforts aren't often very strategic or even practical to most of us. And when trying to provide people alternatives to closed source software they are not going to be doing the kind of innovation you are thinking of, they are instead dedicating so many resources just trying to catch up.

That being said, I don't know why Google Earth is in there. I understand applications like Flash and Skype but on a list of top items I can think of quite a few more things that are more useful than Google Earth.

kanwisher• 15 years ago

Octave should be higher, program is really far off from being any kind of competitor to Matlab. Even the installation is daunting on OSX. Language has a lot of idiosyncrocies to matlab. With ML/Computer vision becoming bigger, could help a wave of new startups.

hogu• 15 years ago

when I needed a free version of matlab, I switched to python and have never looked back. better for me in every way. I think that python is a much better direction for that type of computing anyways.

Jach• 15 years ago

Those are my thoughts, but I also want to learn some more R as well. (I hear stories of people going from Python, to R, back to Python, but I don't see why one couldn't use both.) When you have two such powerful tools that can both be extended and embedded fairly easily, why would one need Matlab anymore?

kkwok• 15 years ago

Any suggestions for good resources for learning how to use python to replace matlab (scipy, numpy, etc)?

wwrap• 15 years ago

Are there any idiosyncrasies besides the ones detailed here:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MATLAB_Programming/Differences_...

I say this because I'm learning Octave mainly to get familiar with the Matlab-ish world (kinds of coding used in real world academia) and I wonder what I'm missing.

joelthelion2• 15 years ago

What a weird list:

- Flash is slowly dying, so is Gnash really that high a priority? Also, Gnash seems to be far from being a good flash replacement; by the time it will be, flash will be irrelevant. I'd argue work spent on Gnash is mostly wasted.

- GNU Octave is far behind Python + Numpy/Scipy/Matplotlib. Better abandon it and focus on the succesful platform.

Peaker2• 15 years ago

For people who only know how to use Matlab, Octave is one less reason to go non-free.

joelthelion2• 15 years ago

I disagree. It's one reason for them to try a free software package, decide that it sucks (it lacks most of the interesting libraries), and go back to using Matlab forever.

If on the other hand they were introduced to the python stack, which has a superior language and a lot of neat libraries (though not yet on par with Matlab), they might have a chance of sticking to it.

tmcw• 15 years ago

It's OpenStreetMap. Not Open Street Maps. You can use as reference the domain http://www.openstreetmap.org/, the logo with the word OpenStreetMap, or the title element of the page, which says (wait for it) OpenStreetMap. Maybe cut and paste that text, or line the browser windows up to reference.

/end ragefest. But come on, guys. It's not 'The Wikipedias'

Sniffnoy• 15 years ago

Regarding Skype, you're not going to get Skype users over to a free alternative by making your own voice-chat program; you need to actually reverse-engineer the protocol and make your own client so they can switch without having to convince other people.

(Of course, someone did reverse engineer Skype however-long-ago-it-was-now, but looking it up, apparently it might have been done by decompilation and so of questionable legality, which is why nobody's making a Pidgin plugin to use it. Annoying.)

High Priority Free Software Projects

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