North American Open Source Community

Lately, I haven't really felt the urge to build custom software, and since my schedule is packed with work deadlines—you know, the usual grind to pay the bills—I’ve been scaling back on my coding projects. While free time is hard to come by, I am absolutely determined to make sure the little bit I do have is put to meaningful use! That’s why I had this wonderful idea where you—the visitors and members of this community—can pitch ideas for programs that would be genuinely useful to you and everyone else. Basically, if there is a specific tool you need, just drop a suggestion here, and we will do our absolute best to turn that concept into a fully functional application.

Under my vision, everyone is encouraged to get involved in the development process of these programs. I truly believe there is no reason why every single member couldn't contribute in their own unique way! It honestly doesn't matter if you are a seasoned developer, a talented graphic designer, or simply someone who loves tech, because a brilliant idea is such a massive contribution to any project. So, please don't ever think to yourselves, "I'm not skilled enough for this, so I'll just pass." Even your active participation in discussing these projects is a huge help.

Depending on what kind of software we tackle and what it needs to do, we will utilize various programming languages and different sets of tools. All of our software will be released under the GPL license, which means everything will be completely free, open-source, and accessible to all. We might explore other licenses down the road, but the main goal remains the same: regardless of the specific license used, these programs will always stay free and open-source for everyone to enjoy.

If there is enough interest, we will likely set up a centralized wiki and a dedicated forum to host our discussions, especially since I plan to share this message across several different sites and forums in hopes of gathering a great crowd. As I sit here typing this out, it is becoming incredibly clear to me that my true goal is to build an amazing open-source community made up of people from all over America and beyond.

Once again, I am inviting everyone who is interested to share their suggestions, and even more so, to jump in and actively help us bring them to life!

Thanks so much.

Best, Erling Haaland

I’m just throwing this out there as a compliment, and honestly, it’s pretty interesting that nobody else has chimed in on this yet. I truly believe that people with tech backgrounds could find work in basically any industry. In the past, it felt like software devs only jumped into stuff like this if they were looking to build some niche indie games or small desktop apps.

To give you a real-world example—I work for an engineering firm that handles electrical blueprints required for building permits; most of the time, those plans are actually used for the construction itself. We used to do everything by hand, but nowadays, almost everything is done in AutoCAD, with the rest spread across Word and Excel. The real headache—if you can even call it that—is that we’re working "raw" in AutoCAD. We aren't using any specialized plugins or automation tools; we're basically just drawing and copy-pasting our way through. Plus, since we rely heavily on old project files as templates, it's way too easy to accidentally miss a detail from a previous version. And don't even get me started on how much of a mess it is trying to keep everything synced between AutoCAD, Word, and Excel.

If there was a high-quality, specialized program that tied all of these moving parts together, our lives would be so much easier and we'd stop making silly mistakes. Even just one little tool to smooth out one part of the workflow would be a game-changer. If such a thing were free, I bet every other firm in the industry would jump on it, which opens up so many doors. My colleagues and my boss don't really bother looking for solutions like this—they don't have much ambition, really; they’re more of a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" kind of crew. But if I walked in and showed them a finished product ready to go... man, that would be a different story.

I'm not sure if you were thinking strictly about simple software, like basic accounting programs or database management, but I wanted to highlight a problem in my own field that would definitely require something a bit more complex. Maybe this will encourage others to chime in with their own ideas, too.

It was a good run while it lasted...