Decided I’d give a sneak peek at something I’m working on:
Since building my home server I’ve constantly been on the lookout for a decent frontend to manage my files, etc. I initially tried file browser, but it was always really buggy for me, and honestly I hated it.
Since my server is headless, a PiKVM and the like wouldn’t really work for me the way I wanted, so I decided to just build what I was looking for on my own.
And with that, I’d like to introduce: redox_os TBD
It’s an emulated OS built in react with a node+express backend. It’s made to be as fully customizable as you want. You can create new “apps” for it very easily. Anything you can make in react/JavaScript can be loaded as an “app” with just a simple config file.
It’s still very much a work in progress, but I figured it was complete enough for a little show and tell.
Current features:
- a desktop with icons/etc
- a file browser
- text editor (complete with syntax highlighting)
- a full featured terminal
- a picture viewer
- a music player
- a video player (capable of live-transcoding to an html5 compatible format)
- a file downloader (for downloading files to the server from the web)
- full drag and drop capabilities (even drop files from outside your browser to upload)
- downloading files from the server to local
- full mobile/touch support
I’m also still very much deciding how to handle the release. It’s mostly functional already, but I’d really want it to be polished before a proper release.
Since I also have a full time job, that may take a while. Contributors would definitely help, but I’m also a little split on whether I should make if FOSS. I’m definitely leaning so, but idk.
Definitely open to any feedback, suggestions, criticism, etc.
Edit: Thanks to everyone for the feedback! Looks like I’ll definitely be going FOSS. Also I’ll be changing the name 😄
Not sure what to call it now though. Maybe reDOS? Lol
I still wanna tidy everything up a bit before making the code public. Maybe go back and start adding some comments/documentation as currently there is none. I’m really terrible about that.
Also definitely a bit shy to open up my code to public scrutiny haha. I’m sure there are plenty of mistakes and bad practices.
I see you wrote that you’re thinking about making it FOSS. What’s the alternative? Paid software/non-free license + Open Source or proprietary? If you’re low on time and don’t have the capacity to maintain (bugfixes/reports from users) yourself then I say proprietary is a no-go. Then about the license - IMO (though I don’t have hard data on that on hand) people much more likely contribute to FOSS as opposed to locked in license + open source model.
Truly appreciate the feedback!
I am definitely leaning open source, but to be completely candid, I could also see this being a marketable product. If I could somehow turn maintaining this into my full time job and quit my current job without any significant drop in my salary, I would be completely stoked.
To be honest, I’m not super familiar with licensing or really anything regarding the release of software, but I would like to maintain the possibility that I could eventually sell/monetize it if it turns out to be a success, and I’m afraid that once it becomes FOSS, that possibility is gone.
Like I said though, I honestly have no idea, so I would love any feedback or suggestions.
AGPL + CLA would potentially be an option? Then you can sell licenses to those who want to make proprietary modifications. It seems to work for other projects.
I will absolutely look into this. Thank you :) definitely looks like I’ll be opening source though. I didn’t realize there were already so many FOSS alternatives. Suppose I should have done more research, but I guess I figured they would be more popular/ talked about on platforms such as this.