Is there any closed source android app that you wish had a good open source alternative?

federino@programming.dev to Open Source@lemmy.ml – 207 points –

I'm currently looking to develop an open source app that can help somebody. I'm currently out of ideas, so I'd like to heard if from you guys.

Sorry if it seems to lazy to ask for ideas like that, I just thought that I could do it since the result will be a free app.

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Discord. I hate that premium costs so much and all the ads they put in place to sell useless junk features.

Google maps. So open street maps but with reviews like maps has. A few days ago people suggested apps, but they lack reviews. I disagree that they are useless.

Discord needs to die in a fire, so much knowledge lost... But their momentum is something awful.

Discord has an alternative called Revolt that is open source. It has all the premium features in discord for free, but is still in early stages I'd say.

I would just love it if I had the bus routes for my city readily available in open street maps, like how goog|e maps does it. I think goog|e maps might be my answer to the question if I can't find anything worse.

I use Mumble + XMPP with an IRC gateway to cover everything voice & chat related …but there are plenty of options to replace Discord, you just need to let folks know you don’t want an ad-filled proprietary experience & that you wish to be contacted in a manner where your privacy is a priority.

Google’s reviews have a lot of junk in them except the ones stating business closed/moved (OSM you can literally delete or move the POI, but less users). The integrated crowd-sourced images of establishments however is missing which makes it hard to understand POI in comparison—a picture is worth a thousand words.

Matrix?

Alternative messenger exist, I should've been more precise. At this point an alternative would require at least the same features than discord, to get people away from it. I don't see that happen.

complete feature parity isn't a good goal, or the alternatives will always be behind. Partial parity, with some features Discord doesn't have (e.g. E2EE) is an achievable goal which does successfully encourage migration

Speaking of reviews, aren't there special review websites in most of the countries?

It's about a quick glance on a location and reading some reviews quickly. There is a workaround with open street maps integrating google reviews but it's again relying on google at this point.

Well if openstreetmaps implemented the same thing it would be useless because there are not many people using it

It would grow. Just to have the ability would be nice. A lot of people also would start to write reviews to be the first etc. We got to start somewhere, same as with the Fediverse. We could even combine it.

Yea having the ability would be nice. I'm not sure it's possible to implement without sacrificing privacy though