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Ask HN: what are examples of successful "open-source alternatives"?

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Re: Ask HN: what are examples of successful "open-source alternatives"?

#141

Post by r3db34rd »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #129
legacynl wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this sound really spoiled. I think if your first experience with this kind of software is librecalc you'd be perfectly fine with it. Especially because you mention usability. Expectations are very important for perceived usability, but librecalc is a different program so at some level you will have to use it differently. If any of those differences touch on your workflow, you will be biased towards calling it unusabl…

> this sound really spoiled. Spoiled in that I can afford to pay for office when I need it for a moneymaking business, sure I guess. But it is not being spoiled to judge an alternative by the same metrics as the incumbent, if it doesn't meet my requirements it doesn't matter whether it's paid or free. > Expectations are very important for perceived usability, I grant you that the UI is laid out differently and things…

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: what are examples of successful "open-source alternatives"?

#142

Post by r3db34rd »

fwn wrote: post #119
Yawrehto wrote: post #76

Wait, has no one mentioned LibreOffice yet? 200 million active users (!) seems like it's successful enough. Admittedly, it hasn't really challenged Microsoft Office yet, but it's growing, and also it's hard to look at something with 200 million active users and say 'that's a failure'. Definitely an alternative though. There's also uBlock Origin, but I don't know if it's the largest adblocker yet. It should be, though…

> uBlock Origin I think the market share of ublock Origin helped limit the success of so-called "acceptable ads" schemes, where adblock makers took money for excluding certain ad providers. But I don't have any data to back that up either.

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: what are examples of successful "open-source alternatives"?

#143

Post by adastra22 »

asadotzler wrote: post #137
adastra22 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is open sourced Netscape Navigator 5.0.

No, it's not. We tossed that code 6 months after the open sourcing and started fresh to build the Communicator clone which we then tossed aside for the entirely new Firefox. Firefox is not Navigator 5. That's plain inaccurate.

In the context of this question, I think it's perfectly accurate. Firefox did not start as a grassroots developed open-source project, like Linux did.

Re: Ask HN: what are examples of successful "open-source alternatives"?

#145

Post by tpoacher »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #122
Yawrehto wrote: post #76

Wait, has no one mentioned LibreOffice yet? 200 million active users (!) seems like it's successful enough. Admittedly, it hasn't really challenged Microsoft Office yet, but it's growing, and also it's hard to look at something with 200 million active users and say 'that's a failure'. Definitely an alternative though. There's also uBlock Origin, but I don't know if it's the largest adblocker yet. It should be, though…

Opening LibreCalc just once was enough to prove to me that it's not a viable alternative to Office. Both usability and performance were bad, performance egregiously so.

I had the same experience too, probably around the same time as you!

(namely a decade ago)

Things change.

Re: Ask HN: what are examples of successful "open-source alternatives"?

#146

Post by n8henrie »

codegeek wrote: post #48

I like Bitwarden [0]. Backend in .NET. [0] https://github.com/bitwarden/server

Came to make sure Bitwarden had been mentioned. Have spend years on LastPass and 1password, now pretty darn satisfied with a couple years on Bitwarden.

Re: Ask HN: what are examples of successful "open-source alternatives"?

#148

Post by BrandoElFollito »

commercialnix wrote: post #131
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wireguard had no user management (or rather, some kind of identity you can cancel). This is not useable in an entreprise environment without some kind of complicated backend. Something like tailwind. I live WG though, a magical product. Same for openVPN, though there are some extending that help. Compare this with a commercial VPN that will directly plug into your identity system.

Wireguard layer-3 tunneling identity (public key) is for machines, not human users. Rolling out Wireguard in an "enterprise environment" for over 600 user laptops and desktops (mix of Linux and some macOS* and Windows*) with our existing configuration management (SaltStack/GitOps) was extremely easy to do. Where additional layer-3 tunnels that were user or group specific were necessary, we did some very light scripti…

Thanks for the feedback.

How did you manage the IP assignment, keys revocation, ...?

How did your ZT environment worked with WG on the network level? (zScaler creates its own tunnels for instance)

Re: Ask HN: what are examples of successful "open-source alternatives"?

#150

Post by [deleted] »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #148
commercialnix wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wireguard layer-3 tunneling identity (public key) is for machines, not human users. Rolling out Wireguard in an "enterprise environment" for over 600 user laptops and desktops (mix of Linux and some macOS* and Windows*) with our existing configuration management (SaltStack/GitOps) was extremely easy to do. Where additional layer-3 tunnels that were user or group specific were necessary, we did some very light scripti…

Thanks for the feedback. How did you manage the IP assignment, keys revocation, ...? How did your ZT environment worked with WG on the network level? (zScaler creates its own tunnels for instance)

[deleted]
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