Problems to Solve in Free and Open Source Culture
Here are some current problems that need to be solved.
You might ask, 'where is the money'? Well, Google is a billion dollar company built on Linux. Look at the companies programming for Linux. There is some money going around.
FOSS Quickbooks
Last I checked, there was no good FOSS Quickbooks. I will have to look again.
Dolibarr - No bank synchronization. GnuCash - Not designed for multi-user. Odoo - Bloated software. Does way too much that is not relevant to finance. Is CRM/ERP/Kitchen Sink. (I should carefully look at the source code). todo: evaluate all other software
A 3D Printing Sharing Site that Includes Source Files
Printables, the Prusa 3D printing sharing site, which is supposedly the most OSHW of all of them, does not require any STEP, or Source code files. This means you get STLs, mostly. That is a fail. Even the name - printables - evokes the trash food of lunchables. Almost, but not quite all the way to a meal. Nice try Prusa. Almost, but no cigar.
Stop the Spread of Discourse
All forums are being mutated like Systemd did with init, into Discourse forums. Options are good. Choice is important.
FOSS Antivirus
I don't think anyone considers ClamAV to be viable as a Windows AV Replacement. Thinks like HijackThis were on the right path. Maybe it would be a FOSS AV Forum, with tools. Instead of trying to detect every piece of malware, instead work on detecting how they break the system. Somehow synced up to something like Virustotal.
FOS Chemistry Resource
There is the Science Madness website, but it's not developed to any serious degree. It's a wiki and a forum. Needed, is a wikibook of chemistry recipes, that are verified. What we are getting instead is dozens of proprietary AI chatbots that steal all the info from Chemistry textbooks, without references and turn it into money. If there was one FOSS AI Chatbot that gave chemistry info that was referenced, then it would be sharing not stealing. For all practical purposes, what you have now is Libgen and annas archive. And the LLM's that scrape from those. But digging through 100+ pdfs on a given subject is not trivial and the LLMs won't cite their sources.
Never-Ending Software Projects
One difference between 90's software and 2010's software, is that in the 90's things were finished, and released. You bought a CD, and you had software. This has changed, to where programmers now become slave to the code, with endless features and LOC.
In 'some' ways, this is justice, because the programmers demanded subscriptions instead of releases (though maybe it was the suits demanding subscriptions). They didn't realize that this also meant, that they would never stop working on the software.
The users don't own the software anymore. And the programmers never finish the software. Everybody wins.
But mostly, this is just a general failure of programming culture. Everyone has become a tryhard. The money came in, and the competition followed. It's a rat race. Something like Wireguard that doesn't update, is seen as an outlier. That is not right. Software should be allowed to be mature.