HACKER Q&A
📣 hpen

What are some free software tools you want?


I'm looking to build out my portfolio with free software. What are some tools you would like to have that aren't currently free.


  👤 doomrobo Accepted Answer ✓
I'd really like a self-hosted videochat solution that had a native client. Basically something like Mumble (https://mumble.info) but for video.

The reason I want it is because most large videochat solutions have a really high variance in latency and reliability. If I just want a small group chat with friends, I'd have far fewer issues if I just self-hosted. I've already found this to be true for Discord audio versus self-hosting Mumble.


👤 zzo38computer
I would want stuff that many things to do without needing the web browser, working by free software based command-line operations.

In many cases, I would want to access remote data sources using the SQLite command line, by SQLite extensions which provide them as virtual tables so that SQL queries can then be performed on them including joins with other data sources, copying them to local files, etc (all of this comes "for free" once it is implemented as a virtual table; SQLite does the rest).


👤 gitgud
A codebase tool to check for duplication.

Something that can find repetition in a codebase, which could be extracted. Fuzzy matching for duplicated code would also be a great feature too. Not sure if exists, but it's something I've always wanted


👤 wenc
I'm glancing at my phone for apps/services that I paid for because they were better than the free alternatives. Here's sampling: Dark Sky, Dropbox, Quizlet, FiLMiC Pro, Camera+, Zoom (but recently canceled).

I paid for Anki iOS app but the interface is so clunky (even though experts swear by it) that I never really got good use out of it.


👤 jdlyga
Text to speech software that can convert a text file to an mp3 using modern high quality voices (think Alexa, Google, Siri, or Cortana). Free software that does this does exist, but typically with only the voices included with the OS which usually aren't that great.

👤 coderintherye
Perhaps a lame example, but I'd love it if someone would build a good PHP SDK library for Box.net. There are two libraries out there which are unfortunately disjointed and relatively unmaintained and unfortunately Box engineers won't create an official SDK in PHP.

👤 rckoepke
I'd like rustlings to work on repl.it

I'd also like an app that I can take a picture of a recipe on paper and then scale all the ingredients by some multiple (half, triple, etc) (obviously also converting ounces/tablespoons/cups/etc).


👤 jackhalford
I'd live a tool like grafana but with minimal to no javascript, whilst keeping the plethora of backends compatibilities. Just simple graphs from any tsdb with fast page loading speed.

👤 techdragon
An alternative to the Dropbox SDK for applications. Yes I can use NextCloud, and sync files with WebDAV... but now I’m forced to use WebDAV and must be careful of all of its foibles. Where as if I want to use Dropbox. I add the sdk, hook it up, user grants permissions, and boom, files get synced into an application specific sub folder like magic.

👤 ianwalter
A really good, full-featured (Heroku-level) PaaS you can deploy to your own Kubernetes cluster.

👤 econcon
I want ecom software which rivals Shopify but it's free and self hosted like Discourse.

Payment method support: stripe and PayPal are enough.

But must have shipment tracking maybe through integration from some service.

All Shopify alternatives suck.


👤 efferifick
I'm looking for source to source interprocedural C slicers. If anyone knows of any freely available let me know please. :)

👤 croo
A gant chart and project planner, like MS Project but good.

👤 noble_pleb
I need a simple seo tool to find keyword rankings and check backlinks without going through the complex routine of google adwords or costly keyword platforms. Will you be able to build such a tool and make it open source?

👤 justaj
I'd like Bitwig Studio to be open source :(