4 ms·

That -apart from being a brilliant idea- seems to be easy to replicate in open source software. Replicate not in being compatible but as a different system alto

That -apart from being a brilliant idea- seems to be easy to replicate in open source software. Replicate not in being compatible but as a different system altogether. Or has that already happened?

eruci 8y ago
Yes. I've built one of them. https://3geonames.org https://3geonames.org . Open source. Works offline. No database is needed. Based on geonames.org. I also know of at least 2 other open source alternatives (what3ducks and what3fucks).
- mcguire 8y ago
  It's weird that I'd never heard of this before, but there seems to be a vibrant community of parodies.
  - eruci 8y ago
    I think it is an important problem since it has gotten the attention that it has.
simias 8y ago
The added value here seems to be the curated, per-language word list. You'd have to be careful with homophones, they say that they use simpler, more common words for populated locations (and locations where the target language is more used) etc... After playing a bit with their interface I can't really tell if they're successful but it does seem like it would be relatively complicated to come up with such a word list in many languages. That being said, it could probably be crowdsourced.