Free Software: 3 Major Projects That Haven’t Happened Yet.
The following things do not yet exist, but I can't help but wonder why. I think if they did exist, perhaps Free Software users would have a little more pull online.
This list might expand a bit when I think of other software.
1. A Free Software Search Engine
Peek, the Free Software Search Engine
After the recent hullabullo about Ubuntu switching from Google to Yahoo/Bing as the default search provider, this lead me to wonder: What if someone were to just create a FOSS search engine that indexed Free Software/Open Source-friendly websites, as well as free content licensed under the various Creative Commons licenses? Suppose it also indexed OGG Theora videos using a bit of HTML5 code? I tell you, the benefits are endless, as it would nicely tie together all the major FOSS communities together.
By the way, that's just a mockup because I was bored.
2. OGG Theora-Based YouTube-like video sharing site
It's no secret that a lot of people are upset at YouTube for various reasons. Whether it's the poor implementation of the DMCA takedown notice procedure which is severely misused, or the fact that complete freedom of speech is blocked from YouTube, or the fact that the supported HTML5 codec is only h.264. Whatever your reason, YouTube currently is flawed when it comes to Free Speech, Free Software, or Creative Commons content. So why not just start from scratch and make something new?
3. FOSS Social Network
This idea in particular intrigues me. We already have identi.ca, and quite a lot of work has been put into OpenSocial. However, there is no FOSS centric community that has a functionality similar to Facebook. Granted, social networking platforms DO exist, and with some tweaking could even plug into identi.ca in a similar way that Twitter plugs into Facebook. Mugshot used to be a FOSS network by Red Hat, but it's not around anymore.
February 2nd, 2010
For 1. Although there isn’t quite an “open source google” I think the CC guys have a search engine for CC works.. It’s a good idea, although having all-purpose search engines be foss friendly is arguably more useful in the long run
2. There are quite a few of these actually, just none of them as well marketed.. TinyOgg, TheoraSea, there’s a whole list of them on xiph..
3. I think a social network for foss users is a bit contradictory, aren’t we all scaly hermit anti-socialites
? Seriously though, I think a lot of different projects are looking into this, and the “go where the people are” is a less risky approach than the “build it and they shall come” one
February 3rd, 2010
1. Fair point, but it’s really more of a web crawler that just indexes other search engines as far as I know.
2. TinyOgg hasn’t been working for me, and TheoraSea only aggregates OGG videos at best. It still requires you to host them elsewhere.
3. I can’t see why a social network for FOSS users would be a bad thing necessarily. Just look at the success of identi.ca, and that’s just a microblogging site. There are plenty of Social Networking CMS’es out there that are GPL or BSD-licensed, yet there’s no real rallying point for any of them.
February 3rd, 2010
Well, why did Mugshot fail?
February 3rd, 2010
I honestly don’t know, it just never really caught on like identi.ca did. A quick Google search came up with this bit of information: http://danny.damours.net/wordpress/index.php/archive/redhat-quietly-kills-off-its-mugshot-social-networking-site
February 4th, 2010
Too bad Wikia Search never made it
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10207896-2.html