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The answer is to push the "application vendors" back into the browser. None of them are really writing anything that needs to be running natively, it's almost a

by swiley 6y ago

The answer is to push the "application vendors" back into the browser. None of them are really writing anything that needs to be running natively, it's almost all just a front end to some service on the internet. Real computer applications are almost universally developed by researchers and the open source community and look exactly like this. No "application" just tools you install into your system that are watched by the community for breakage/malware or worst case offered as a git repo/tar for free.

throwaway17_17 6y ago
Can you explain what definition of application you are using in this post. The only application I use that is just a front end to a web service is a client tracking software I am required to use for State level reporting purposes at work. All the rest of my software, ranging from development, to digital audio, video, and art, rendering and 3D work, etc, are all native and local. Some are open source, but many are not.
tsimionescu 6y ago
Are vim and Emacs not real applications? How about gimp? Firefox? Thunderbird? The gnome people could have used an Emacs or vim window instead of gEdit. But they didn't, because more or less the same incentives that prevent commercial entities from developing components instead of apps exist in the open source community as well. Hell, even GCC is essentialy an app, even though parts of it would have been extremely useful as share-able components, as clang showed. And I really don't know what researchers produce apps. The closest I can think of is maybe Coq?
throwaway936482 6y ago
I see comments like this occasionally and I ask myself, what do people who make them actually do? Genuinely? My three main hats are developer, accountant and 3d designer and while most of my accounting work these days is done via web based services none of my dev work or 3d design work. Sure I consume a lot of stuff on the internet but the vast majority of actual creation is done via native software. Some of it is open source especially dev tools, but the most content creation tools are closed source and with the exception of Blender there are no or at least very few open source content creation tools that are widely used professionally in any field that I'm aware of. (Before the OSS fanatics start what abouting about gimp, Krita, openscad etc. please note the caveats of professional and widely used)

by swiley 6y ago

throwaway17_17 6y ago

Can you explain what definition of application you are using in this post. The only application I use that is just a front end to a web service is a client tracking software I am required to use for State level reporting purposes at work. All the rest of my software, ranging from development, to digital audio, video, and art, rendering and 3D work, etc, are all native and local. Some are open source, but many are not.

tsimionescu 6y ago

Are vim and Emacs not real applications? How about gimp? Firefox? Thunderbird? The gnome people could have used an Emacs or vim window instead of gEdit. But they didn't, because more or less the same incentives that prevent commercial entities from developing components instead of apps exist in the open source community as well. Hell, even GCC is essentialy an app, even though parts of it would have been extremely useful as share-able components, as clang showed. And I really don't know what researchers produce apps. The closest I can think of is maybe Coq?

throwaway936482 6y ago

I see comments like this occasionally and I ask myself, what do people who make them actually do? Genuinely? My three main hats are developer, accountant and 3d designer and while most of my accounting work these days is done via web based services none of my dev work or 3d design work. Sure I consume a lot of stuff on the internet but the vast majority of actual creation is done via native software. Some of it is open source especially dev tools, but the most content creation tools are closed source and with the exception of Blender there are no or at least very few open source content creation tools that are widely used professionally in any field that I'm aware of. (Before the OSS fanatics start what abouting about gimp, Krita, openscad etc. please note the caveats of professional and widely used)