At some point I was searching for an open source car pooling service. I realized there weren't any so I started developing one on my free weekends.
While I haven't made much progress so far, I have been observing how much as a society we have been relying on route planning software. Also, I cannot overlook the effect of such services on the planet (see Amazon, Uber, and many more).
With all this as a context, I have been asking myself the following questions:
- What would be the impact on society (especially inequality) if there were open source alternatives to such services?
- What would a common core look like? (i.e. what is the WordPress equivalent for transportation/route planning, is OpenStreetMaps enough?)
- What domain specific knowledge would it require to build such a software? (while in university I researched about the travelling salesman problem, anything else?)
- What safety protocols would we need to develop when there is no corporation insuring users? (i.e. if I order something from Amazon and it's dead on arrival, I get either a refund or a replacement shipped to me for free)
- What's the proper terminology to describe what I am describing?
Feel free to add any questions of your own. I created this post because I am free this afternoon and I wondered what it would like to discuss this with strangers instead of pondering on my own.
Edit: My free afternoon was taken away by an incident I had to respond to, it's now late o'clock here, but I will do my best to reply to all you magnificent people.
Interesting idea, but I think you currently buildung an operation's Plattform for a service that does not exist.
In europe there is something like BlaBla car wich is carpooling for already planned trips. Blabla car does cover it's passengers with extra insurance, wich is in turn basically it's service.
You have to grasp the jurisdiction problems. The driver need insurance and a way to get payed. This to its core is the principle of Uber. Somebody gets paid to drive you while Uber does the insurance and payment part as well as the Plattform.
What you could do is an open source platform that integrates all car pooling services and gives you the best option.
On the other hand you could partner up with a big insurance company and build an extra insurance for private car pooling and act as insurer and payment platform for a fixed fee.
Disclaimer: I am not trying to make any money out of this. I just hate big corps and like coding.
Interesting take! So far, my carpooling MVP has been about bringing people in contact, assuming they can handle money transactions on their own. As you mention, jurisdictions are going to be a huge problem, which I wouldn't dream of handling on my own.
Here in Greece, the most popular media for carpooling is a Facebook group, where people can post either offers or requests for trips. So I tried to think of an MVP that could provide help those people while (a) not having to use Facebook and (b) have an improved user experience.
Under those circumstances your idea is awesome.
I would add a Feature where you can add recurring trips. For instance every Wednesday I will get groceries and if somebody also need a ride there he/she can join the ride.