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The vast majority of open source software is a clone of a closed-source alternative. I currently having issues with thinking of a widely adopted, consumer-orien

The vast majority of open source software is a clone of a closed-source alternative. I currently having issues with thinking of a widely adopted, consumer-oriented software that has no closed-source alternative. What is your favorite software that has no real closed-source equivalent?

saagarjha 6y ago
QEMU, maybe?
- hvasilev 6y ago
  how is this widely adopted, think in the scale of Linux or Gimp.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    In addition to being useful in its own right, QEMU powers or has powered a number of virtualization projects, including VirtualBox's software-based virtualization, parts of Xen, Android Studio's emulator, …
    - hvasilev 6y ago
      If this is the best that you can do, the community has bigger issues than I previously thought. The world is not QUEMU, friend. I feel like the reason that the open source community has issues with innovation is that all of the brain power is absorbed by adhering to cultist nonsense, while in reality people are using their brains to solve real issues, build businesses, etc...
n4r9 6y ago
TeX... ?
ttt0 6y ago
vim?
jeltz 6y ago
I feel you are shifting the goal posts by adding “consumer-oriented". There are plenty of areas where open source is what advances the state of the art. E.g programming languages (almost all are open source), compilers (LLVM and GCC is where a lot of innovation happens), GIS databases (PostGIS is the leader,the commercial ones follow) and in operating system kernels Linux is probably the most advanced while innovation at the same time happens in experimental kernels which are also open source. Plus some of the most complex beasts in software, web browsers, are all open source. Your snark against open source feels so 2005. Open source dominates quite many areas but has admittedly some issues producing consumer facing products (but there are exceptions like Blender and vlc).
- Const-me 6y ago
  > has admittedly some issues producing consumer facing products Not just them. Open source community has issues with complex software that needs substantial amount of R&D, UI/UX design, manual QA, hardware design, or pretty much everything else that's not coding. Multimedia codecs aren't user facing, yet only PNG was invented as open source, the rest of the wide spread ones (gif, jpeg, MP3, MPEG2, h264, h265, AAC, etc) - were made by companies. Open source developers made their Vorbis, Theora and others, were not good enough.
jcelerier 6y ago
we are literally discussing LaTeX which definitely has no relevant closed-source equivalent.

saagarjha 6y ago

QEMU, maybe?

hvasilev 6y ago
how is this widely adopted, think in the scale of Linux or Gimp.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  In addition to being useful in its own right, QEMU powers or has powered a number of virtualization projects, including VirtualBox's software-based virtualization, parts of Xen, Android Studio's emulator, …
  - hvasilev 6y ago
    If this is the best that you can do, the community has bigger issues than I previously thought. The world is not QUEMU, friend. I feel like the reason that the open source community has issues with innovation is that all of the brain power is absorbed by adhering to cultist nonsense, while in reality people are using their brains to solve real issues, build businesses, etc...

n4r9 6y ago

TeX... ?

ttt0 6y ago

vim?

jeltz 6y ago

I feel you are shifting the goal posts by adding “consumer-oriented". There are plenty of areas where open source is what advances the state of the art. E.g programming languages (almost all are open source), compilers (LLVM and GCC is where a lot of innovation happens), GIS databases (PostGIS is the leader,the commercial ones follow) and in operating system kernels Linux is probably the most advanced while innovation at the same time happens in experimental kernels which are also open source. Plus some of the most complex beasts in software, web browsers, are all open source. Your snark against open source feels so 2005. Open source dominates quite many areas but has admittedly some issues producing consumer facing products (but there are exceptions like Blender and vlc).

Const-me 6y ago
> has admittedly some issues producing consumer facing products Not just them. Open source community has issues with complex software that needs substantial amount of R&D, UI/UX design, manual QA, hardware design, or pretty much everything else that's not coding. Multimedia codecs aren't user facing, yet only PNG was invented as open source, the rest of the wide spread ones (gif, jpeg, MP3, MPEG2, h264, h265, AAC, etc) - were made by companies. Open source developers made their Vorbis, Theora and others, were not good enough.

jcelerier 6y ago

we are literally discussing LaTeX which definitely has no relevant closed-source equivalent.