The image editing part is already solved. The problem is the massive library of templates, which are copyright some unknown person, hence a legal liability. If you need to upload your own template you may as well use GIMP - it’s not like it’s hard to create a few text layers after adding the template. Prepositioning them and scaling them isn’t that big a deal.
I thought about creating something like that and the major problem that I see is that lots of meme templates do have copyright and the font that’s typically used for memes, Impact, isn’t free either. Well, and it isn’t done by merely developing a software and offering it for download. You would need to host the meme templates or some editor webpage, which is a whole 'nother skillset.
If we say that users bring their own meme template, and it can be a free font that looks similar to Impact, and it’s not to be hosted as a webpage, then it would be quite doable.
You would “just” need to call the ImageMagick library with the right parameters. Still not trivial, but the path to get there is fairly straightforward. I could imagine that something like that already exists as an open-source project…On android I use Pocket Paint and MemeTastic. They are both on F-Droid.
Might be overkill (since it’s a Figma alternative), but try Penpot.
I’m waiting for the day someone decides to challenge the behemoth that’s Canva with an open source alternative. That’d be dope.
Gimp
Gimp/krita/script it with imagemagick/python + pillow
Unless there’s something I’m missing, its just text on an image. Any editor will do.
It’s mostly about ease of use. You don’t really want to spend more than a few minutes on a silly meme. As such, having a database with meme templates, the right kind of font and easy text placement, can make the difference, whether you’ll bother creating a meme or not…
Sincerely a selfhostable service to create memes using a base image you choose from like a dropdown or something, some text, and some basic positioning could be nice, with the option to add new images on the fly. I’d definitely use it, so that I don’t upload my own photos to someone’s server.
What’s wrong with imgflip ? You can upload your own picture and caption it
It’s not opensource.
What’s your threat model to need a quick online image caption to be opensource?
Why does it need to be proprietary?
It might just be that if there’s an OpenSource option they prefer to use and support that, no need to have a threat to use something open.
Alternatively, maybe they want to create memes with their own personal images or text that they rather not upload anywhere. The reason for why they prefer some OpenSource option, maybe something to selfhost, is irrelevant to the question by OP.
