Ask HN: Which project does not have any good open-source alternatives? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Which project does not have any good open-source alternatives?

#141

Post by fake-name » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:24 PM UTC

kwk1 wrote: post #98

sansnomme wrote: post #84

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…

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.…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Which project does not have any good open-source alternatives?

#142

Post by m_ke » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:24 PM UTC

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

Re: Ask HN: Which project does not have any good open-source alternatives?

#143

Post by based2 » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:26 PM UTC

A real alternative to Outlook/Exchange/Active Directory.

Re: Ask HN: Which project does not have any good open-source alternatives?

#144

Post by safwan » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:26 PM UTC

starpilot wrote: post #64

SAP, other annoying enterprise software.

Odoo is good alternative

Re: Ask HN: Which project does not have any good open-source alternatives?

#145

Post by chadcmulligan » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:29 PM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #113

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.

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

Re: Ask HN: Which project does not have any good open-source alternatives?

#146

Post by bsder » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

newhotelowner wrote: post #103

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.

> 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.

Re: Ask HN: Which project does not have any good open-source alternatives?

#147

Post by chadcmulligan » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:32 PM UTC

realcr wrote: post #83

A decent wysiwyg website builder.

Are there any? Why not square space and so on?

Re: Ask HN: Which project does not have any good open-source alternatives?

#148

Post by jbay808 » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:34 PM UTC

ufmace wrote: post #87

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…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Which project does not have any good open-source alternatives?

#149

Post by krilly » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:37 PM UTC

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.

Re: Ask HN: Which project does not have any good open-source alternatives?

#150

Post by sansnomme » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:37 PM UTC

mamcx wrote: post #88

mwattsun wrote: post #78

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...

This is my pet peeve. I'm already working in a relational language ( 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 nee…

Be very careful if you are going to invent your own programming language. The Eve creators had similar noble goals and ended up burning VC money and achieving nothing.