this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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Basically, what the title says. Do you use any app, that is proprietary, but either has no OSS alternatives or they're all not good enough? If there is an alternative, what keeps you from switching?

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[–] [email protected] 68 points 2 months ago (2 children)
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[–] lemmy_eat_world 60 points 2 months ago (11 children)

Bitwarden. Most people think that their application is open source, but more and more of their code has shifted from the GPL/AGPL licensed code to code in their SDK, which is under a proprietary license. This led to their new Android app being disqualified from being hosted in F-Droid repos.

Keyguard was supposed to be an open source Bitwarden client, but the dev chose to use a custom proprietary license, so that is source available as well.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago

Oh!! I didn't know that … :/

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

Well fuck me.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

I've been a paying bitwarden customer for years but i through they were moving more towards free software and not away from it... Makes me consider quitting my subscription. Why do they do this?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Just yesterday I deployed it locally, and was about to migrate from my keepasDX (+syncthing)...

[–] lemmy_eat_world 19 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Don't get me wrong: BW is still a pretty good service, and the proprietary code is still readable by anyone, but the fact that they're moving a bunch of their previously open source licensed code to something that's source available is definitely unfortunate.

KeePass, on the other hand, has tons of actually open source clients, which definitely gives them an edge for people that don't mind syncing their own DB.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They are remaking all apps as native apps so maybe this problem gets addressed too.

[–] lemmy_eat_world 21 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Their new, native android app is also using more and more of their proprietary SDK. It's not something they're trying to fix.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Vaultwarden ?

Edit: Nvm, that's just the server part

[–] lemmy_eat_world 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's actually a good point too: Vaultwarden is fully open source. The official Bitwarden server also has proprietary components.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Pedantic, but Google Messages' RCS. And it's all Google's fault because they are holding the API hostage, probably because they want to create familiarity with the app so that people don't switch once they finally open up.

[–] lemmy_eat_world 18 points 2 months ago

Not pedantic at all. Google lied about RCS being an open standard.

The pedantic point would be saying that RCS, the protocol, is technically open, but the specific implementation that Google is pushing and being adopted is proprietary 🤓

So yeah. Totally fair point and fuck Google for their RCS bait-and-switch.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

For anyone wondering:

RCS

Rich Communication Services. It is a protocol designed to enhance traditional SMS. RCS allows users to send messages that can include high-resolution images, videos, audio messages, and group chats, as well as features like read receipts, typing indicators, and location sharing.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Google Pay/Wallet

Right now tap and pay is completely and hopelessly corporate

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The issue is that the digital tap-to-pay cards are actually reissued cards with their own unique numbers. They also require significant security measures to protect from cloning attacks.

So banks need a party that they can safely issue a digital card to, knowing that the card data will be stored safely.

Even a FOSS app that covers all the user's needs is going to have a lot of trouble actually getting a card loaded into it under current standards.

I hate to say it, but crypto wallets are likely the closest thing we're ever going to get to a FOSS tap-to-pay system. Banks are inherently corporate and capitalist, so it's not really in their nature to make things open source.

Perhaps if there were an industry standard for issuing digital cards, instead of banks partnering with centralized wallet apps, we could procure our own digital cards to load onto our phones and watches, or integrate into other devices. But that's a whole other battle that nobody is fighting right now.

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[–] DarkCloud 27 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (10 children)

Dating apps.

We need an open source completely free dating app.

No paying for matches, no limits ...just they're in your town, you look at their photos, you can talk, anyone can block anyone.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't really care for online dating, but I remember coming across this. They claimed to be open source.

https://alovoa.com/?lang=en

[–] noughtnaut 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm honestly pleasantly surprised to see that this project seems to be rather actively developed.

Which is completely separate from having a meaningful user base (near you), so 🤷

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[–] noughtnaut 7 points 2 months ago

I'm with you, but see a million obstacles (aka. reasons for why things require payments).

You would need some form of moderation, to weed out illegal content as well as simply bots, spam, and dead profiles. Also for message content. I've given it some thought and suspect it can be crowd sourced to some degree, but also needs counter balances. Instead of limiting a profile to be live/banned, you could have a percentage score of peer-reported subjective legitimacy (ditto for message responses, heck you could even have a section of outright reviews of the person's behaviour - although that, again would be subject to abuse and moderation).

Hosting, traffic, etc. would be an unavoidable cost, but can be mitigated with low resolution photos (VGA should be "good enough" for an initial impression, no?)

For sure, an open source solution would offer way more fine grained filtering.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (1 children)

MicroG works really well

A free-as-in-freedom re-implementation of Google’s proprietary Android user space apps and libraries.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

MicroG works well if you let it leak some data to Google.

I would like a free-as-in-free-from-Google Google Play Services reimplementation that lets me use any app that depends on it without hitting any Google server.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (3 children)

OP asked about Open Source not about privacy.

MicroG minimises connections to google servers, here you can read what addresses it still connects to and why: https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/wiki/Google-Network-Connections

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (6 children)

A keyboard with swipe typing, multilingual autocorrect and speech to text support that actually works.

Other than that, my only proprietary apps are from commercial services I use and pay for (banking, Spotify, Carsharing and public transport). I'd love for them to become open source, but it's probably not ever gonna happen, cause they rely on verifying my identity.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I've had a good experience with HeliBoard

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[–] FuryMaker 7 points 2 months ago (11 children)

I went with FUTO Keyboard. It's the only keyboard that ticks all my boxes to replace GBoard so far.

I wish the swiping predictions were a bit better though.

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[–] SaveMotherEarthEDF 15 points 2 months ago (6 children)

There are so many. By usage however:

Smart Audiobook Player: None of the apps I tried had all the features in one, like reading my complex audiobooks folder structure and auto grouping the books based on that. Timer to pause audiobook that is automatically reset by moving the phone.

Maps: No foss solutions work better where I live than GMaps

YTMusic: So this is a tough one to beat because of the nature of the platform itself.

Notes: I am looking for a P2P syncable note app that can also have a web interface or atleast a Linux version of the App. Allows drawing your notes on an android phone or tablet using stylus, and other usual features. Can also use cloud storage as a backup or sync source. I know this one is a really tall order.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

I'll mention organic maps and rimusic.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I'm not sure if this fits but here is mine:

I want to get away from Samsung but the "Sound Assistant" app let's me control the volume of every app, kind of like a mixer. Sometimes an app doesn't have a mute option, I can set the volume of that app to 0 without effecting the volume of whatever music I'm listening to.

I also like to listen to my local police scanner and music at the same time. I can set the volume of the scanner app low enough to not really bother the music but loud enough that if something happens I can still hear it and pause the music.

I can't believe Samsung and their app is the only way, but I haven't found an alternative.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

My Motorola has it built into the sound settings so you should be able to find other alternatives

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Symfonium. There are plenty of music apps, and I've used a lot of them, but none combine the UX and functionality that Symfonium offers to anywhere near the same quality :/

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Poweramp

There's nothing else out there that's really an equal, foss or not. The closest it gets is neutron, and that's a hot mess of an app.

It's the sound quality that's standout. It doesn't hurt that it's a decent player in every other way too, but even apps built for audiophiles don't match it in real use, in every situation.

None of the foss players are worth a damn sound wise; might as well use whatever comes with the device on that factor alone.

[–] SaveMotherEarthEDF 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I can't say I've ever noticed any significant audio quality difference between this and something like Vinyl even on very good headphones.

But I would say that I've been trying to find equivalent equilizer functions that this app has on desktop. The bass boost function is the best one I've ever used. It even turned my very neutral etymotics er3se into solid thumpers.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

File Manager Plus:

It connects to all my SFTP servers effortlessly, and it's an absolutely stellar file Manager.

JuiceSSH:

Manages all my SSH servers and identities, and has an extremely usable terminal. It's got extensions too.

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[–] helpImTrappedOnline 10 points 2 months ago (10 children)

Nova launcher.

I Haven't found one that works so well with KLWP or has good app drawer organization. I like having folders and tabs to split everything up. Having one big list of apps (70% I dont use often and another 10% bloat) isn't useful.

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[–] sga 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (7 children)

Whatsapp. I know signal, simplex, matrix, (a billion other things), etc exist that are much better, but where I live, no one uses them, for context, basically everyone, like if you have a phone, you use whatsapp, some government things even happen through whatsapp bots, when people say the word message here, they mean whatsapp. There are about 20-30% (among younger folks) who use telegram, but that is mostly for easier piracy, and larger file sharing (before whatsapp allowed 2 GiB, now they do it habitually). My mom has about a 1000 contacts, and less than 10 of them actually use signal (there are many more who signed up(there was another thing, basically when elon said "just use signal"))

At this point it is not worth getting everyone to switch, the best i have done, is just reducing the number people i communicate with (on whatsapp), and try to just meet in person

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[–] ronflex 10 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Honestly, Google Keep notes. Trilium server runs as a UWA on Android but it's pretty ass. And things like Obsidian are way too much for something me and my (non-technical) SO use to share notes

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (5 children)

OpenCamera is good, but could do better. But I'd say video editing is the biggest void.

Also, gesture typing keyboards are an empty niche of foss alternatives. HelioBoard requires loading some proprietary blob unfortunately.

I guess the most heavy machine learning use cases are not filled in.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (3 children)

People have hit on most of them here, but here is another big one:

Fitness apps. Mainly calorie tracking, workout tracking and heart rate tracking

Health app

Sleep as Android

(No, gadget bridge is not a replacement for 99% of cases and doesn't even support the gold standard for heart rate tracking, polar H10)

For calorie tracking, the massive food databases required, barcode scanning, and crowd sourcing are generally not compatible with the open source community's privacy ideals. OpenNutriTracker has promise though!

For workout tracking, none of them have any device support and most of them are dead and abandoned. Not to mention heart rate zones, stats and training trends, etc... FitoTrack and Opentracks are good starts though.

And then a google fit alternative. Something that can integrate sleeping, workouts, heart rates, sensors, etc.. Data all in one aggregates place. It is a huge task and it makes sense that there is no open source alternative for it. Especially when the components aren't individually there to aggregate.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Tasker: I haven't used it, but I've seen useful automations over the years from people online and I would probably use a good FOSS alternative.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Bank clients. Taxi aggregator clients.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Basically every app that is related to a proprietary service. Amazon, Battle.net and Steam authenticators, banking apps, Spotify, etc.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I really need a libreoffice calc on my android phone. Not just opening (where currently only Microsoft Excel on Android works for me) but also editing and saving to my connected nextcloud (where I have also problems with Excel)

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