SSO proposal

[switchupcb]

• I have searched the issues of this repo and believe that this is not a duplicate.
• I have searched the documentation and believe that my question is not covered.

Proposal

This proposal includes a feature request that solves two open issues.

• Get sustainable funding #259
• Reach more users #368

Context

Time tracking is useful for reviewing how time is spent and optimizing accordingly. Retrospective Time Tracking software is superior over Input Time Tracking because it lets you automate context switches. RescueTime and TimeCamp perform retrospective time tracking with the ability to use input time tracking when time is missed. These time logs can be tagged, categorized (grouped), and used in various capacities (reports, third-party integrations, etc).

• RescueTime is oriented towards personal users and lacks collaborative features.
• TimeCamp supports both personal and enterprise (business) users due to its collaborative features.

ActivityWatch is an open-source alternative to RescueTime and is oriented toward personal users (due to a lack of collaborative features). With over 8,000 stars, it only has 13 active sponsors, one of which is a company with 7 people. ActivityWatch functions in a capitalist market that features large wealth inequality. Not to mention that most developers use open source to avoid payment. So it's not surprising that ActivityWatch isn't sustainable yet.

So how does ActivityWatch position itself to gain sustainable funding (#259)?

Collaborative (Enterprise) Features

Implementation

ActivityWatch needs to implement collaborative features to become sustainable. This implementation requires ActivityWatch to

1. Ask for money from the right people (businesses).
2. Give up some of your morals in data ownership while asking those people.

Code isn't economically valuable once it's free since there is no more labor to be completed. However, labor is still required to set up and run the software (compute), so support and hosting (compute) remain valuable. So if you want to keep code open source for whatever reason, but gain sustainable funding, then you should provide a hosting service that is enterprise ready.

Is ActivityWatch Enterprise Ready?

No. It doesn't even have a user feature.

Add the SSO Collaborative Account Management Feature to appeal to enterprise customers and earn money from ActivityWatch.

Forget iOS

Unless you plan to rival TimeCamp, close #751. iOS support will make it hard for you to stay feature compatible with other platforms due to an iPhone's "safety features". If your target market business owner wants to track time, they won't have issues giving their employees a supported platform (Linux/Windows/Mac/Android).

In addition, your current competitors indicate that there is no demand for cross-platform time tracking software that is compatible with iOS (due to some unknown yet fundamental reason). The TimeCamp iOS app is the exception and it only has 50 reviews with an average 3.0 rating. So the time tracking iOS app made by an enterprise company has few users and can't satisfy them.

Could you do better than them while also focusing on other features?

I don't know.

Focus on the features that bring you economical impact such as user accounts and SSO.

[github-actions]

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