anyone know a proprietary software which doesn't have an open source alternative yet? I'm looking for a good project idea.

Photoshop, Adobe Experience Design, ..? 😉

@JoshBent gimp, paint.NET? I believe both are open source.

@Wozza365 "A bobby car is a great alternative to a real car, they both work, right?" - I don't know if he meant just any alternatives or actual alternatives, but if gimp can be an acceptable open source alternative, so is any html5 canvas drawing then too.

@JoshBent better just alternatives, since imo gimp is a pretty good alternative for most people. I'm also definitely not able to create something as good as gimp.

@maxsers There's a site called AlternativeTo (https://alternativeto.net/). As you've guessed, you use it to find other software similar to the one you want to use. You might want to check there to get some ideas.

@maxsers it's hard to find any propr. software that does not have an OS alternative - if it's not complicated to recreate. You should rather tell your languages and what direction you want to go.

clone www.balsamiq.com

Or you could contribute to an existing open-source alternative software ! 😉

thanks for all the great answers. I'm using Rust as its my fav language. I also want to contribute to projects, but find it difficult to get started with that.

@JoshBent gimp and paint.NET are both great alternatives that would work for majority of non professionals that need a little extra than Paint. I love gimp, don't understand the hate.

@maxsers definitely agree with that, hard to start. Might help to work on it with a friend, trying to fix an issue in a software you use.

Actually, a post on how to start contributing to open source might bring useful advices !

@JoshBent kritia

@Tvax do you mean krita?
@Wozza365 I agree, I was bit harsh, was early in the day, gimp and co can be alternatives to photoshop for some, what I meant was that none of those can actually replace the professional workflow or functions photoshop offers.

Game? We have very rare open source games.

QLab, please, I'm suffering!

@JoshBent most of the free alternatives are generally not as good particularly for professional users for any software. I've not found an all round IDE as good as visual studio yet. At least not for the languages I use. Complex software just can't get the devs to create a free and open source version I guess (with some exceptions)