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

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

#251

Post by ldevs3b »

As a developer who is getting into the computer hardware tinkering / desktop building hobbies it is very surprising to find an absence of open source alternatives to the popular computer hardware info / benchmarking / stress testing tools used by the community, for the PC / x86 platform at least. Popular hardware info tools like CPU-Z, GPU-Z, HWMonitors are all closed sourced, and benchmarking tools like Cinebench as well.

The only open source alternative I was able to find was CPU-X, an alternative to CPU-Z:

https://github.com/X0rg/CPU-X

Another example is I recently got interested in purchasing second hand GPUs and most of the cards found online would have their vbios modded for crypto mining, and to restore to a default bios most people would use the ATIFlash / NVFlash utilities from TechPowerUp. I got interested in how such a utility would work for modern GPUs and to no avail, I could not find any open source tools that would demonstrate the capabilities of these tools

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

#253

Post by jmercouris »

ldevs3b wrote: post #251

As a developer who is getting into the computer hardware tinkering / desktop building hobbies it is very surprising to find an absence of open source alternatives to the popular computer hardware info / benchmarking / stress testing tools used by the community, for the PC / x86 platform at least. Popular hardware info tools like CPU-Z, GPU-Z, HWMonitors are all closed sourced, and benchmarking tools like Cinebench as…

A good reason why some of the benchmarking software is closed source is because it makes it harder for vendors to design ways to circumvent the point of the tests (which is often to test the speed of the hardware).

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

#255

Post by mxuribe »

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.

I'm curious, what is "PMS" in this context? Would you kindly explain a tiny bit more?

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

#256

Post by 7952 »

Mizza wrote: post #90
spectramax wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source projects tend to emerge when there is general access to the purpose of that project. You can't expect an open source project for Ocean-based Wind Turbine simulation or molecular synthesis of Organochloride compounds. They're niche industries that require tremendous amount of upfront investment, in both physical assets to realize the utility of the open-source project, and knowledge-base required to operat…

I actually respectfully disagree with this. In my travels, I have encountered many situations where very niche, industry-specific software is completely Free and Open Source, and I have encountered situations where commonly-used, widely useful software is proprietary with no Free solution. On the Free side, I think one reason is the copyleft nature of the GPL. Another pattern indicator is how modular the software is…

I think AutoCAD has an Excel like quality within a lot of industries. It is ridiculously versatile, but often used in a very primitive and risky way. And often you end up with a "drawing" that lacks any of the properties of high quality data. It is used like a really advanced pencil with a thousand nebulous features. That is not a good basis for an open source tool, it is just not well defined enough.

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

#257

Post by codr7 »

jmercouris wrote: post #253
ldevs3b wrote: post #251

As a developer who is getting into the computer hardware tinkering / desktop building hobbies it is very surprising to find an absence of open source alternatives to the popular computer hardware info / benchmarking / stress testing tools used by the community, for the PC / x86 platform at least. Popular hardware info tools like CPU-Z, GPU-Z, HWMonitors are all closed sourced, and benchmarking tools like Cinebench as…

A good reason why some of the benchmarking software is closed source is because it makes it harder for vendors to design ways to circumvent the point of the tests (which is often to test the speed of the hardware).

To me that sounds like just another flavor of security through obscurity, as some vendors will undoubtedly get their hands on the information since the stakes are so high, which defeats the entire line of reasoning. If the source was public, at least the playing field would be level.

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

#258

Post by nwmcsween »

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.

Many ERP systems do this and are open source, look at odoo for example

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

#259

Post by zzo38computer »

One such program is Everett Kaser Software's Hero Mesh puzzle game engine. I have actually started writing Free Hero Mesh for this purpose, though (but it is incomplete).

Another is a good alternative to the Microsoft BASIC compiler for DOS. Although there are other BASIC compilers, they miss many things and don't work with real mode.

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

#260

Post by ufmace »

afarrell wrote: post #128
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…

> with no company standing behind it One misinterpretation of this mindset I have heard: "They just want someone who they can sue if things go wrong." If my business depends on something, I want to know that attention is being paid to it.

"They just want someone who they can sue if things go wrong." is true, but phrased in a rather hostile/negative way. The more positive way to say the same thing is, that because the company building the software knows they can be sued, and is not some fly-by-night operation that will vanish at the first sign of trouble, they have a strong incentive to make sure their software is high-quality and free of critical bugs. That incentive has proved to work well in the commercial world.

Much better than, well this open source software has a critical bug, I sure hope somebody feels like opening a PR to fix it before our deadline. Or we could spend a few million bucks to spin up an in-house software development department to fix it ourselves, when that isn't our primary line of business. Or we could just spend a few thousand a seat to buy something proven, that somebody we can trust, and who is liable to be sued and has something to lose, is standing behind. Dirt cheap compared to the other options.

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