Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#1

Post by bkmn » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 10:16 AM UTC

What is 'positive impact', you ask. Well, I'm eager to hear your ideas but I'm thinking software that tackles the big challenges: energy usage, preventing armed conflicts, reducing poverty, STEM training, improving access to sustainable environments, implementing AI, et cetera.

I would argue Wikipedia continues to be a very important software project (albeit with an emphasis on the database on content than the wiki software itself), and Linux as this specific piece of software serves as a platform for many other applications and services.

What do you see?

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#2

Post by fsflover » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 10:54 AM UTC

1. https://qubes-os.org, security-focused operating system, relying on hardware virtualizaton.

2. Various mobile operating systems targeting GNU/Linux phones, e.g., Mobian and PureOS. They have convergence by design (running desktop apps) and absolute freedom without walled gardens for the user.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#3

Post by idontwantthis » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 11:01 AM UTC

Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)

Actually take a dent out of cyber attacks by unifying cyber, physical, and personnel security all in a single program that can record every type of incident and automate responses ahead of time.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#4

Post by brailsafe » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 11:43 AM UTC

macOS and GDAL. macOS because it gets out of the way and helps people generally get their work done faster, so they can do much more important things than their work sooner and more often. GDAL because it's the most powerful mapping toolkit I'm aware of. Anything that fills that space is going to be the most critical bit of any impactful software for the next 10 years.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#5

Post by ISL » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 11:46 AM UTC

A keybase equivalent that gains widespread layperson adoption.

If you extend from five years to fifty, then the answer will be climate-related.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#6

Post by riidom » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 11:51 AM UTC

Now I'm not sure about the biggest potential, but let's say, some positive impact, then I'd throw OpenStreetMap into the list as well.

Also, in terms of AI, reducing the energy demand and solving the black box problem.

Not exactly software, but the concept of eco-certified software can surely have a positive impact as well, when it gains traction beside KDE's PDF-viewer Okular.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#7

Post by akavel » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 11:55 AM UTC

Oh, easy - https://enso.org, of course!

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#8

Post by kaetemi » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 11:56 AM UTC

An imaginary power user build of Windows that doesn't include all the builtin cloud nonsense and other useless distractions. And custom themes support instead of forced white menu bars that override the system pallette because some designer thinks they're clever.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#9

Post by benjaminwootton » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 11:56 AM UTC

I know crypto will be a controversial one, but in terms of potential surely even a skeptic would acknowledge it.

Decentralised Finance in particular could take a huge chunk out of retail banking, investment banking and insurance.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#10

Post by tjansen » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 11:59 AM UTC

I think Unikernels like NanoVMs (https://nanos.org/) will become more important. They are more efficient and more secure than than full operating systems. Right now, I think there are no good monitoring solutions available (or at least I am not aware of any). You can't just ssh to your server, so if something goes wrong, it can be hard to debug. And they are certainly not integrated into bigger monitoring solutions like Dynatrace. But once the infrastructure is available, I would expect a large percentage of Linux servers to be replaced with unikernels.