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Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

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Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#601

Post by arendtio »

redwards510 wrote: post #486
AsyncAwait wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope Purism's Librem5 pans out for this very reason. A third alternative. I don't want Windows Phone, since that would not buy me much more privacy than Android with today's Microsoft, so having an open 3rd party mobile platform would be the solution here, I think.

I agree it is an exciting phone, but what are the privacy gains versus an android phone with lineageOS and f-droid foss apps? AFAIK it's just the baseband code. Convincing regular users that opensourcing the baseband will solve any problems seems pretty DOA when you have the very visible google play services tracking issue and no on cares.

It is not just about privacy. With Android phones, you will sooner or later end up in a position where you can't install newer LinageOS versions, simply because your kernel is too old and the required binary drivers cannot be ported to newer kernel versions. Maybe project Treble helps to solve that problem, but it will still take a few years until we will find out (unless Fuchsia kills Android).

Nevertheless, I hope that Purism will be able to deliver a product which is as easy to use as a "normal" Android device with those privacy/sustainability features as a bonus. That way I might be able to give the people who ask me which phone they should buy next some good advice.

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#602

Post by zapzupnz »

ZZT. I think a modern ZZT would make for a great educational tool to teach coding. A lot of existing, popular tools exist at either end of the spectrum of difficulty: too easy or too hard. ZZT was simple to design, fun to draw in, and the coding wasn't too complex.

Megazeux, a spiritual sequel by another lot of people, I always found far too complicated. It's not that different to ZZT, it just manages to be fiddly without a good enough pay-off in my view.

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#604

Post by AsyncAwait »

mprev wrote: post #555
AsyncAwait wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope Purism's Librem5 pans out for this very reason. A third alternative. I don't want Windows Phone, since that would not buy me much more privacy than Android with today's Microsoft, so having an open 3rd party mobile platform would be the solution here, I think.

I hate to be so blunt but it won’t pan out in any meaningful way. Why would it succeed where FirefoxOS and Ubuntu Mobile could not? Not enough people value openness to make the trade off versus iOS and Android. Does iOS not provide the privacy you need?

> Why would it succeed where FirefoxOS and Ubuntu Mobile could not?

I think Purism would be satisfied with much less initial adoption on the overall market than somebody like Mozilla/Canonical. In short, they'd probably consider it a success much sooner. Also, both FirefoxOS and Ubuntu Touch were essentially adopting the same philosophy as Android in terms of having a closed-hardware approach and a software stack that while open in principle, was largely restricted on-device to run just the apps available in the respective app-stores, made for the platform specifically, which weren't that many.

Purism is making it so that practically any Linux app can be installed out of the box and with a small amount of work, any GTK3/4 app can be made touch friendly as well. I think this could provide them the app ecosystem head start they'd need.

> Not enough people value openness to make the trade off versus iOS and Android.

I think you're, sadly, right. However if PurismOS becomes a solid choice in its own right and then you have the privacy advantage on top, it might sell.

> Does iOS not provide the privacy you need?

Kind of, that's what I use now, however I have to trust Apple on keeping its word, which may be difficult considering they're moving more and more into "services" == rent seeking. Also, I have serious problems with the war on general purpose computing Apple is involved in and the closed nature of their software, where they have the ultimate say in what I can run on a piece of hardware I paid thousand pounds for to own, not rent.

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#609

Post by jimmaswell »

eldavido wrote: post #363
bhauer wrote: post #156

* Windows Phone. We need a third viable option in the mobile space. This week we are concerned about the loss of a browser engine, recognizing this is unhealthy for the market. Windows Phone was terrific in many ways and recent concepts by fans such as @boxnwhisker (Harry Dohyun Kim) [1] show how beautiful the Metro design could be today. * Microsoft Image Composer. A little known sprite-oriented graphic arts program…

> As a broader concept, a return to prevailing use of on-device processing and computation I don't think anyone ever liked developing for the web. It solved three problems pretty well: - Data portability: log in from anywhere, have your data at your fingertips. - App model: no broken installations of programs into desktop environments, dependency problems, DLL hell - No concern about the mostly broken Windows desktop…

The Windows desktop is "mostly broken"? That's news to me.

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#610

Post by DanBC »

zapzupnz wrote: post #602

ZZT. I think a modern ZZT would make for a great educational tool to teach coding. A lot of existing, popular tools exist at either end of the spectrum of difficulty: too easy or too hard. ZZT was simple to design, fun to draw in, and the coding wasn't too complex. Megazeux, a spiritual sequel by another lot of people, I always found far too complicated. It's not that different to ZZT, it just manages to be fiddly wi…

I posted a link about ZZT a while ago, and I learned some stuff from people: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17656822

And a friendly person emailed me this link: https://github.com/jdque/char

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