Request creation of free software missing from the 🄯ommons 🗽🐧🐏

20 readers

3 users here now

This is a place to ask whether free open source software exists for a particular purpose. If it’s non-existent, specify your software requirements here so your dream can be well articulated for everyone to either laugh at or share the dream and give moral support for you to create it yourself. Or you might even to pitch the idea so well that a developer loves the idea enough to run off and build it for you.

No other community exists for this purpose but there are some loosely related ones. If existing software closely delivers what you need but is missing a feature, you might post a wishlist/feature request here or in !bugs@sopuli.xyz.

The FSF has a software directory that can help with finding software.

Loosely related decentralised communities generally for FOSS:

There is also foss@beehaw.org but I don’t recommend it because the mod is trigger happy with censorship. E.g. if you post about FOSS advocacy it will get removed as it does not relate to any particular FOSS application. There are also many more FOSS forums duplicated in centralised places which are not conducive to the digital rights spirit of free open source software, so they are omitted.

founded 5 months ago

MODERATORS

nonserf@libretechni.ca

🕵 (for privacy & offgriders) A smartphone download manager (📲) that takes orders from a PC to fetch docs/websites, files, Youtube, etc. Perhaps Aria2 front-end needed. (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 months ago by debanqued@beehaw.org to c/foss_requests@libretechni.ca

0 comments fedilink hide all child comments

the problem

The web is littered with enshitified Tor-hostile resources generally deployed with the naive idea that Tor users are criminals. The Tor community can barely function. The web is broken in countless ways and it’s not always obvious whether Tor users are targeted by the marginalisation because firewalls never state why they are blocking. Sometimes they block based on geolocation or user-agent strings, and sometimes a resource is simply down for everyone. Tor users are left assuming their exit node IP is the culprit.

Also a problem: some people actually have no Internet at home. For some it is temporary and for others it is a permanent way of living a mostly analog life.

the solution (for many cases)

Use the clearnet at a cafe with open access. Of course it’s unreasonable to haul a desktop computer into a cafe or to carry a laptop at all times, so it would be useful to send fetch orders from your PC to your phone. When the phone connects to public Wi-Fi, you tap to execute the queue of fetch orders. Then when back at your PC you download the fulfilled orders from the phone.

This could even be useful within the home, since the block or malfunction can be a number of things. A smartphone could try to execute fetch orders over Orbot, which may or may not fail. And if it fails, it remains an unfulfilled order to retry in a cafe.

Aria2 would be perfect for the underlying heavy lifting because it supports many protocols (HTTP, FTP, bittorrent), and it exists on both the PC and Android. The Android code is apparently just a backend. It’s broken or useless on its own and needs a controller such as the app proposed here.

insufficient alternatives

The usual workarounds have compromises. A VPN may or may not work but it’s still a bit far from anonimity. The VPN provider is essentially like another ISP who can snoop on you.

Download managers already exist on smartphones, but there is no seamless PC interoperability. And (AFAIK) they are just for simple files, not for webpages or Youtube videos.

There is Newpipe but it has no PC interoperability. You must search YT using the Newpipe UI.

no comments (yet)

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

there doesn't seem to be anything here