[HN Gopher] Software possession for personal use
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Software possession for personal use
Author : mpweiher
Score : 115 points
Date : 2024-08-20 15:22 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (olano.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (olano.dev)
| entrepy123 wrote:
| > The biggest challenge, then, lies in re-imagining applications
| like Google Docs
|
| This is a big one for me. AN APPEAL: Does know here know of a
| FOSS that offers an equivalent "experience" (visual appeal, time
| latency) to Google Docs and Google Sheets? Pretty please?
|
| To explain, I have tried NextCloud-based Collabora and
| OnlyOffice. Neither comes close to the Google Docs & Sheets
| "real-timeness" and "visual acceptability".
|
| To explain, this is less a rant and more an explanation, so bear
| that in mind please: For FOSS like Collabora and OnlyOffice, when
| "actually used" with the intention of replacing "Google Docs and
| Google Sheets", both
|
| (1) the literal edit-lag (click, type, enter, wait, see screen
| update) and also
|
| (2) the looks-bad (ugly dark rectangles, fonts, etc.)
|
| are showstoppers, especially when combined.
|
| There are things the FOSS software tries, to work around these
| issues best as possible. For example, one mode "runs" the doc on
| the server and hence sends changes to cloud first, hence the lag,
| while another mode save changes locally since it "runs" in the
| browser, but then isn't as real-time (if at all) for "other
| users" . And neither of these issues addresses the simple visual-
| appearance issues (painting a spreadsheet that doesn't hurt one's
| eyes).
|
| If there is a FOSS Google Docs & Sheets replacement that is "good
| enough", the above description in mind, please, pray tell. It
| need not be feature-complete. Just replicating a Word and Excel
| '97 type of usability, but self-hostable FOSS with "real-time
| collaboration that is rather seamless, i.e. not noticeably bad an
| any way that interferes with actually using it", would be a most
| amazing find, IMO.
|
| Thanks.
| j45 wrote:
| In the meantime, one could stream a desktop app to a browser
| that are both local.
| keepamovin wrote:
| This is what you get if you run BrowserBox on your device.
| You could also self host BrowserBox on your own VPS. Then you
| have data syncing without needing to be signed in to Google
| because your data is on your own server, accessible anywhere.
|
| Also we specifically license it free for personal non
| commercial use.
|
| If you wanted to do this personally for commercial stuff, you
| can purchase a yearly or perpetual license currently at
| around $80 and $250 respectively
|
| Most of our clients are organizations, but we do have a few
| individuals who have personal licenses.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| A streamed desktop app does not provide first-class
| collaboration, where multiple users can simultaneously edit
| the same document.
| remram wrote:
| My problem with this is that the opensource desktop apps are
| often unusable, for example LibreOffice Calc.
| timomaxgalvin wrote:
| Google docs, office 365 etc.. are all trash. I nobody who uses
| them to edit documents.
| rpdillon wrote:
| I don't know if these will suit the latency requirements that
| you're outlining, but they might very well be what you're
| looking for.
|
| https://etherpad.org/
|
| https://ethercalc.net/
| pessimizer wrote:
| > an equivalent "experience" (visual appeal, time latency) to
| Google Docs and Google Sheets?
|
| When people say something like this, in my experience they will
| not be satisfied with anything but a high quality, nearly
| visually identical knockoff of the product that they're used
| to, and, after complimenting it, they'll find some intangible
| reason to dismiss the knockoff (at the least, for being "just a
| knockoff.")
|
| > (2) the looks-bad (ugly dark rectangles, fonts, etc.)
|
| You may think your "looks bad" is universal, but that's an
| illusion caused by using the exact same products from the same
| product lines as the people around you. "Looks bad" is an
| unfalsifiable excuse. You know you shouldn't be selling
| yourselves to these companies, but you have to figure out a way
| to blame it on the only people offering you a way out.
|
| > (painting a spreadsheet that doesn't hurt one's eyes)
|
| How fragile are we? Your eyes hurt from spreadsheets and word
| processors.
|
| > the above description in mind, please
|
| Nobody has time to figure out what you think looks bad,
| especially when whatever the current dominant, consumer-hostile
| product is fits the bill. Just use Google Docs and Google
| Sheets, and don't feel guilty for not being someone you're not.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > When people say something like this, in my experience they
| will not be satisfied with anything but a high quality,
| nearly visually identical knockoff of the product that
| they're used to, and, after complimenting it, they'll find
| some intangible reason to dismiss the knockoff (at the least,
| for being "just a knockoff.")
|
| Because the small details _actually matter_ in the
| experience.
|
| Take Mastodon for example: I can barely see a visual
| difference after a repost in the icon because the "active"
| and "inactive" colors are very VERY similar to each other,
| and there is no change in the number next to the repost icon
| either. As a result I have to very carefully go near the
| screen before I repost something, and that makes a pretty
| annoying experience.
|
| UX/UI _in general_ is the largest issue that FOSS projects
| have, because the people actually knowing their shit are
| expensive to hire and the experiments needed to figure out
| what works better cost serious money if you want to go beyond
| "run a/b tests and piss the hell out of your users who are
| unwittingly being used as guinea pigs in a code farm".
| rubymamis wrote:
| > UX/UI in general is the largest issue that FOSS projects
| have
|
| Couldn't agree more! As a FOSS developer[1] that tries to
| strive for good UX/UI in my apps.
|
| [1] https://www.notes-foss.com/
| amatecha wrote:
| 100% on-board with local-first software.
|
| There's a software directory called "zero data" that aims to
| catalogue software/sites/etc. that allow you to completely own
| and control your data in respect to their usage:
| https://0data.app/
| vunderba wrote:
| On that note, the recent proliferation of "progressive web apps"
| has been pretty irritating to me lately.
|
| PWAs give this deceptive illusion that you're installing an
| actual application, when in reality, it's just a bunch of
| ephemeral data thrown into the user data folder of the respective
| browser. Yeah good luck migrating that to another computer
| particularly if the original website goes down.
|
| There's also a baffling amount of praise around PWAs, but wrap
| that same damn app in Electron (giving me the ability to run it
| offline as well as archive the installer in case the website goes
| down among other benefits) and people lose their collective
| minds.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| It's almost like what snobby self-important dev communities
| like vs dislike is as arbitrary as they are in any other group.
| It's just that for some reason developers are delusional enough
| to think that they're actually smart.
| keepamovin wrote:
| This is a fantastic article!
|
| High level thinking. It should be top of HN today
| hosh wrote:
| I was not even aware that the narrative around local-first
| focused on realtime collaboration. By the time I had come across
| it, I had been deeply looking at local-first food systems, so
| local-first software made sense to me for similar reason:
| resiliency, decentralization, and the foundations for rebuilding
| local communities. I suppose the roots from CDRT makes the real-
| time collaboration narrative make sense.
|
| It did just also occur to me something ironic. I had been working
| on remote-first teams long before COVID, and that is what I
| insist upon when recruiters come by with local job opportunities.
| leetrout wrote:
| I make it a point to explain I have worked remote since 2012
| and "pandemic remote" is/was not "remote".
|
| Even for in-person teams there are so many benefits to leaning
| into async processes.
| hosh wrote:
| Looking back now, I don't think async software development
| would have worked so well without one of the older local-
| first software -- before CDRT -- git.
|
| Sure, we synchronize at a central point of collaboration
| (github and gitlab). It is having that option to do either
| that allows for both flexibility and reach.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It worked just fine with Subversion.
| hosh wrote:
| I used subversion. Subversion required too much
| synchronization with the central server. The point is,
| git lets us use github, or not github. Branching is
| cheap, which enabled a kind of collaboration that
| subversion did not.
| nradov wrote:
| It worked just fine with Subversion. As long as the
| central server was fast and reliable there were no major
| synchronization problems. Branching was cheap, we did it
| every day.
|
| Git is generally better for most workflows. But let's not
| pretend that it was ever really necessary for remote
| asynchronous development work.
| hosh wrote:
| I was comparing git as a local first software, and
| earlier in the thread, comparing it to local-first food
| systems. One of the properties of such is resilience.
| Maybe there are different ideas on what local-first
| means. However, when that subversion server went down,
| that halts synchronization. If the network was not fast
| or reliable enough, it slows things down. Those kinds of
| interruptions are exactly what was called out in the
| article posted by the OP.
| nradov wrote:
| In theory, perhaps. In the real world of team software
| development, Subversion server reliability was way down
| at the bottom of our list of tooling concerns.
|
| And today most organizations drive their automated
| workflows from a centralized Git service. If that goes
| down then they can't deliver anything to customers, so
| they haven't really gained much resilience.
| vunderba wrote:
| _I don't want to live in a world where every 6 months I need to
| add an extra hop to find an album on Spotify, where Google
| abruptly retires applications I came to rely on, where Microsoft
| places ads in my taskbar, where Apple keeps me from running the
| software I want and Amazon acquires companies to let their
| products, which I use, rot to death._
|
| This also brings up another point which I think is sometimes
| missed - open vs closed _DATA_ formats. Obsidian is a good
| example. The software is entirely proprietary but the files it
| uses are standard markdown, so if the software "rots" it is not
| nearly as much of an issue.
|
| Contrast this with some inscrutable binary format (cough _PSD_
| cough) where its significantly more difficult to ingest the files
| without reverse engineering the format.
|
| My acceptable criteria are either:
|
| - Open source and open format
|
| - Closed source and open format
| Log_out_ wrote:
| Where some interface designer from hell redesigns shortcuts for
| gateway applications like firefox..
| braden-lk wrote:
| Huge obsidian fan, but I do think it's interesting how the
| plug-in ecosystem interacts with the open format idea. The
| plug-in system is a huge draw for many people, but you can bit
| rot your own vault by applying plugins that define their own
| syntaxes. The format is still technically open, but you can
| inadvertently create your own custom protocol that only works
| in one place. Probably a worthy trade off for the flexibility
| and Freedom, but it's an illustrative example of the influence
| of human factors on software design.
| rpdillon wrote:
| This is an extremely good point that I don't see mentioned
| often enough, and is the primary reason I have not settled on
| Markdown for my notes. Markdown is a pretty thin format, and
| for anything sophisticated you have to have some kind of
| extension, and that immediately locks you into that
| particular tool, even if that tool is open source. For what
| it's worth, I ended up using TiddlyWiki because it's
| completely open source and self-contained. And so it doesn't
| require the upgrade treadmill that other software does. But
| I'm just as locked-in to TiddlyWiki as other users are to
| Obsidian since its syntax is unique.
|
| But I'm reasoning from first principles. Is there anyone out
| there that has used Obsidian extensively with plugins and has
| successfully migrated to any other tool?
|
| The main reason I don't vocally object to Obsidian is that
| it's a bootstrapped company, they're passionate about their
| product, and they don't have a need for ultra-rapid growth
| because they haven't taken any venture capital funding. They
| seem like good people with the right incentives.
| braden-lk wrote:
| Yeah, their approach to the business is great; I find it
| very inspiring and hope to do something similar with my own
| product if it's financially feasible.
| vunderba wrote:
| I get what you're saying though I'm not sure I fully agree
| that it truly "locks you in" - principally because the
| plugins are, unlike Obsidian, source readable JS files.
|
| Meaning worst case scenario, you could just adapt these
| plugins to a different ecosystem.
|
| Markdown transformers/parsers are relatively easy to write.
| Case in point is I have a custom obsidian plugin that
| converts a markdown note (related attachments) into a HTML
| ready for a static site generator.
|
| I will agree this is likely beyond the "ken" of your
| average user though.
|
| But I guess it really depends on the plugins you use. On a
| quick glance I have Admonition, Another Quick Switcher, and
| Mousewheel Image Zoom installed. Most of these are
| "renderers" rather than extending the regular markdown
| format.
| kkfx wrote:
| It's not enough: if you use Obsidian and you loose it yes, you
| can formally use your notes, but you miss the tool, or the
| workflow on them.
|
| We simply need FLOSS at all level, hw included, because we have
| already lost decades of progress due to pro-commerce choice of
| some.
| fnord77 wrote:
| > The biggest challenge, then, lies in re-imagining applications
| like Google Docs in a context where there isn't a server acting
| as a centralized authority, mediating client interactions.
|
| cloud-served software makes client interactions easy because
| everyone is running the same version of software. In local-served
| software there's added complexity to make sure different versions
| of the software can still work together.
| timomaxgalvin wrote:
| I don't get this at all. You have been able to
| collaborate/simultaneously edit on documents on the LAN in
| office for donkeys years.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Are you suggesting that if a Microsoft Word document is
| stored on a file server on a network that's disconnected from
| the internet, two instances of Word running on separate
| computers can simultaneously edit that document?
|
| I don't believe that's accurate.
| j45 wrote:
| I'm not sure why this is the project that raised this thought,
| but what's neat about something like this is one could see it
| being self and privately hosted from one's phone or mobile
| device, assuming it could run it.
| jiehong wrote:
| That's actually something Apple does not get enough credit for:
| notes, pages, numbers, Freeform, reminders, and so on, all work
| locally first, with synchronisation to the cloud for
| collaboration.
|
| Although, not true of consumption apps like Apple TV or Music
| (but you can still sync your local music in that case).
| Wingman4l7 wrote:
| ...on hardware that's soft-bricked if you have any issues with
| your account.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| If you signed in with an account, which is optional.
| stavros wrote:
| I feel like we need to clarify that "optional" isn't really
| optional when the alternative means a big chunk of
| functionality doesn't work.
|
| It's optional like having a house is optional. Yes, you can
| technically survive while homeless, but housing isn't a
| nice-to-have.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| There are some good ideas in this document. Locally working
| software is a good idea. But, I think that it is better to not
| use formats and protocols that are too complicated. Furthermore,
| you are not necessarily limited to only one protocol, nor
| necessarily one file format. Multiple implementations are also
| possible; someone can make a separate implementation for a
| different computer system, too, according to their own
| preferences.
| eamonnsullivan wrote:
| I think I've been operating this way for a long time: My notes,
| software and wiki are almost all in plain text -- source,
| markdown or org mode in Emacs, usually -- and open image/video
| formats (jpeg, mp4) and synced with a replaceable combination of
| services (git, Dropbox, Syncthing, etc.). It lets me switch the
| conduits/pipes regularly, to whatever works best for my needs at
| the time.
|
| When the zombie apocalypse finally hits (or the Internet
| implodes), I still have everything important, in plain text.
| edpichler wrote:
| For those who like independent software and open protocols, I
| would like to share the https://indieweb.org/
| etskinner wrote:
| > There are things we can do now--things we need to do now, like
| video conferencing and real-time collaboration--that couldn't be
| done with traditional desktop software.
|
| This is not at all true. You could have desktop software with
| networking that could do things like real-time collaboration. In
| fact, that's exactly what happens now in Office; I can
| collaborate with others on a Word doc right in the desktop app.
| It's just not how it happened since we decided to focus on
| webapps instead
| vinceguidry wrote:
| We'll never get to live in this world while people are still
| obsessed with walled gardens. Apple actively intervenes to keep
| itself at the center of our lives. Everybody else just lives with
| it. And this will continue as long as the US grants privileges to
| the tech sector by refusing to apply standard anti-trust
| enforcement that it applies routinely to every other economic
| sector.
|
| Nothing would make me happier than a world without Apple. I'd
| settle for a world without iMessage.
| aniviacat wrote:
| > I'd settle for a world without iMessage.
|
| Come visit Europe ;)
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _Europe_
|
| Where people without Zuck-owned messaging system are like
| once those with undisclosed numbers.
| epidemian wrote:
| Or South America :)
| vinceguidry wrote:
| Visit? What would that accomplish? I'd have to move.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| There is still SMS. :)
| muscomposter wrote:
| we are right now in the stupidest era of software
|
| reality must surprise me for this to get worse than I fear
|
| however in my view, the underlying problem is not exclusive to
| software but extends all all kinds of digital assets. in short,
| digital property has brought out the worst of capitalism; marx
| had no idea.
|
| assuming it does get a lot worse; human life will abandon city
| life. I like to imagine this is why Einstein allegedly said that
| in a fight between humans and technology, humans were going to
| win. then again, maybe in the future the city will be rid of
| humans same as we are (were?) trying to destroy all insects
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| >We gave up ... data durability...
|
| Wait, what? You think my mom backs up her computer? All my kids
| baby photos got uploaded to iCloud years ago. The drives they
| were on, including the backups, no longer function. (Actually one
| works but I forgot the password - because I didn't have an online
| password manager then either).
| levkk wrote:
| This could change if power users were willing to pay for
| software. There are enough of us out there to create a market to
| build us tools.
| plg wrote:
| once.com is an interesting recent step towards this
| Animats wrote:
| LibreOffice? I've used that for a decade.
|
| The last thing I bought from Microsoft was Word 97.
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