Nice to see some data 2 years later to back this up https://ecc-comp.blogspot.com/2020/08/80-of-software-is-usel...
Time Till Open Source Alternative
21–30 of 340 posts
Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative
#22>All software will be open source, and no one will make money with software. I'm really not convinced. The chart shows Photoshop having an alternative in with GIMP in 1998. And 24 years later, people are still paying lots of money for Photoshop. Pretty much all of these examples are similar. Yes open source has replaced some categories of paid software like VCS, but in a way it just opened up more paid software in th…
Well on one hand OSS did make Blender which is moving towards a defacto standard in game making at least. Otoh nothing prohibits another OSS software appearing and stealing an OSS incumbent's thunder. See Krita and Gimp.
Krita is great but has a different use case than gimp.
Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well on one hand OSS did make Blender which is moving towards a defacto standard in game making at least. Otoh nothing prohibits another OSS software appearing and stealing an OSS incumbent's thunder. See Krita and Gimp.
Krita is nothing like GIMP
In a good way. I’ve certainly completely replaced Gimp with Krita for my uses.
Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative
#24> All software will be open source, and no one will make money with software.
This is simply a very utopian claim and just isn't going to happen. One example is Microsoft Office which has been replaced by Google Docs / Office Online, etc and little to no-one installs LibreOffice directly.
Unfortunately, closed-source software is here to stay and the only absolute here is: There isn't any.
Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Krita is nothing like GIMP
To an extent, yes. But as someone who likes to draw and not edit pictures, they fill a similar niche. I mean I heard people use Blender as a Gimp replacement. Because it can edit huge number of files in a batch.
People will use anything instead of gimp to be honest. Haven't tried it in a while but everytime I did in the past I can't help but question if it's developers actually use their own software.
Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative
#26While I am a big proponent of open source, a few are not good enough yet. The most important one being CAD. No CAD is good enough for serious mechanical engineering except commercial ones. The creative software (GIMP, inkscape) can replace Adobe but they are much harder yo use with worse integration between them. In the other direction, some OSS software are just way better than the commercial solution (I'd put OBS i…
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Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative
#27When is there going to be OSS alternative to Windows? No, Linux doesn't count. It's good for servers but terrible desktop experience.
Very good question. The answer doesn't exist today, unless somehow billions of dollars pours into ReactOS for it to be compatible with Windows 11, but another utopian and unrealistic chance of that happening.
We are looking for a full desktop open source to Windows so GNU/Linux doesn't count as an alternative, and neither does Wine. But the closest to answering that is ReactOS despite it not being a realistic alternative for the end user today.
Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative
#28When is there going to be OSS alternative to Windows? No, Linux doesn't count. It's good for servers but terrible desktop experience.
Funnily enough, Linux may be one of the few projects in the "alternatives" column that _is_ viable :)
Yeah. I've been hearing about Linux Desktop for the last 20 years. It's 31 year old.
I think either desktops will disappear (replaced by commodified computers like Androids/Chromebooks); Or a large company will set some kind of standard what Linux OS is; Or some other OSS OS will not make same mistakes Linux did and guarantee a saner target for app development than current Linux.
I want (3) to happen (e.g. Serenity OS blows up and just devours Linux marketshare). I suspect (1) will happen - Microsoft/Google/Apple just make their locked down garden and Desktop computers go the way of the Dodo.
Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative
#29What exactly is "software" though? Is it just the code, or does it include the whole tech infrastructure that runs it, or even all the business agreements that makes the service possible and makes it all available to the end user? For the average user, the perception of software is increasingly shifting towards the third definition.
I agree the first definition can be cloned fairly quickly, but the second is tougher, and the third requires cloning of practically the entire company operations. Imagine how hard it would be to, say, make an open source clone of something like Netflix, INCLUDING the vast majority of the video content provided -- all legally, of course!
Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative
#30When is there going to be OSS alternative to Windows? No, Linux doesn't count. It's good for servers but terrible desktop experience.
It's the year of the Linux desktop!