I had discussed this on here for like 7-8 days ago but I can't get to know the reason why. I have thought about it for hours, thinking I have finally understood the reason why, but it seems that the only thing I know is that I know nothing.
My question is simple. Why are people uneducated about foss and how to really change that.
I have thought about what might be the best way to spread the word about foss and it seems that the best way is via advocating things like f-droid and linux mate/flatpak/ making things so simple that there is no reason why not.
Yet then I think that the reason why people are still not interested is that it becomes too boring.
Am I really in control if all my moves are being tracked. I am not sure. Do people not know this?
I want to raise awareness about oss since its something I am passionate about. Yet I can't seem to know how. I feel heard talking about these issues, its so easy convincing people sometimes to use signal yet they still don't have it. Its mixed bag.
I feel like my generation has left me a lot more too, we have stopped even questioning it and we are all so polarized by algorithms tracking us all.
I feel like in a world of such polarization, using open source can help to slowly raise awareness about it so that we can then move away from extreme privacy invasise ragebaits inducing algorithms to something better, so that then we can lessen our senses and stop with oh its the end of all and nothing matters nihilism or yeah who cares kind of idea.
Sometimes I feel like my ideas don't matter, maybe you could say things like youtube are a mic for people like my ideas but its not. I don't want to create any lore about me, I just want to tell people about stupid simple foss things like f-droid and leave in my opinion so that I could then work on/help other pressing issues in open source.
People also feel entitled to good quality open source software, like if that's what you expect, either be so kind to thank the developer and kindly ask them an solution or join their community and kindly ask there or maybe donate to them/contribute to it yourselves. I see people who are entitled and its :/
I thank every open source developer, its like something so elegant to me, we can have forks and so many other things and we all learn from each other and its sometimes refreshing. Yet it saddens me that it doesn't receive donations, that people don't use it, that people feel entitled sometimes asking for a feature.
This rabbit hole is so deep but if we want to share it with the masses, then we need to discuss the priorities of what to share and what not to for begineers. We need a genuine wiki to get started into the open source lifestyle. I don't know how I started, maybe by just using linux and then searching for any software and writing alternativeto X open source something and so many other things...
Awesome-privacy helped me out a ton in the beginning as well. I actually read it whole and privacyguides.net and so many others, there are so many good guides yet they still don't get attention.
So should people create another guide to split the attention even more or should they actually redirect attention to lists which we might discuss is good enough for everyone. I have so many questions.
We can have better things and that gives me hope. But the problem is that, it doesn't require myself to change but the world in the process a little as well and that confuses me.
Do I have the power to change the world in this direction or not? Do any one of us have it? I feel small in this system yet I know giving hope would be mixed too. I don't want to be sad for something out of my control, but that is the question, is this thing out of our control or not? I feel like I don't know its answer. I just don't know which is why I am asking here. But I still want to be hopeful y'know.
Have a nice day and looking forward to each and every one of your comments!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I
The original reading is that the bad guys are IBM and people who make you type on the command line and learn assembly language and such but if you roll it up to 2025 maybe the bad guys are the drones who have the latest iPhone and iPad and iWatch and AirPods and iPad Pro and Macbook and Mac Studio and Vision Pro and the real liberators write AVR8 assembly for the Arduino.
Now I for one like that it doesn't have a gui. I can script with it/tinker it with more.
But lets for the sake of general population agree that yes, most people want a good gui.
So lets go to the operating system that general population has. Android.
Now they can install termux and then go be one of us but then again not gui/cognitive load.
So there is f-droid. Also, its not that hard finding some genuinely cool foss stuff
I wanted a pdf reader on android and I searched open source pdf editor and tried 2-3 and some had poor UX and UI but then I found MJPdf (as an example) https://github.com/mudlej/mj_pdf/ and I found it to be the most superior UI/UX I have seen for a pdf editor.
Same goes for my browser. Zen-browser has the best UI/UX for browser based system. Its just so cool. I love it with Ublock origin.
I can give you some software I can personally vouch for the good UI/UX and compile a list but would that really matter?
I just thought of this idea, also another idea for a good gui is that its kind of hard and requires a language like dart/kotlin which I am not familiar with/ don't actively like (I haven't tried them)
I want to make good android apps in golang but I know I sort of can't make it or its a bunch of hacks/(not worth it?) but there are apps which do that too.
Also I am not sure how you can have marketing for open source apps when the devs sometimes if the app is a service run them at a loss financially and invest their time into it. If we can't expect donations to be made to them, I don't think we can expect this as well, can we?
The incentives system for foss is broken imo but I am not sure how changing it can happen.
People care about the license because if the license is, let's say source available and a commercial license on the side, then the problem is that the software stops being permanent and relies on that company.
Why so? Because if the company let's say enshittens the project in one version, and the community starts using the last version that wasn't enshittened, they inevitably lose out on bug fixes / qol updates etc.
now you might say that people should fork it. But nobody really likes forking a repository with source available license either because of the license or because the company itself would benefit more from the code updates that they write and use it themselves or sell their version as well due to the commerical offerings or the dev's would simply be less willing to due to all of such things.
I am not a license purist. I like https://anticapitalist.software/ (Acap license) the most, its because I don't like some commercial usage which would've just taken my labour for it is and not donate to me if I write some software
In general, the ACSL is a good match for software that would have otherwise been permissively licensed under MIT, ISC, or BSD but with restrictions against corporate usage. Here is an excerpt from ACSL:
The ACSL is right for you if you want your code to empower students, artists, hobbyists, collectives, cooperatives and nonprofits to survive under capitalism while not contributing free labor to corporations.
The ACSL is right for you if you reject the status quo, believe better things are possible, and want to act on your beliefs.
The ACSL is right for you if you carry a new world in your heart, and in your code.
That being said, I don't mind licenses that much, source available can be fine too for a peace of mind at-least. If there is any source available license which requires a one time license or something,I think its okay. So I am not sure how somebody is selling the license. The license is a little important, but the battle is against proprietory vs source-code available. The battle is between complete black box vs something you can look inside and have peace of mind.
This is true, and by design: >>45025116
> Now give your relatives FDroid over their iPhones and Android devices and see which one they would prefer. Give them an M series MacBook Air that runs quiet and cool with a battery life of 15+ hours.
Supporting freedom requires some compromises. Any improvement in quality of life for the people can only come with huge efforts. Some people aren't able to spend these efforts due to the personal problems. It doesn't mean they don't care.
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/docs/community-wiki/-/wikis/F...
> The AGPL is the least “free” license compared to something like the BSD license they gives people the ability to do anything they want with the code.
AGPL is the license forcing the code to be open forever. It's the most free license, unlike BSD, which allows closing it and turning into proprietary software.
This is false, >>45571842
> The original code is free for developers and users.
But the modified code may not be.
But as far as just getting it merged upstream is not that simple depending on who the maintainers are or the nature of the change.
I actually have an anecdote. I use to work at AWS Professional Services and I was on a a rag tag team maintaining and adding features to am open source project that started off as a code sample in blog post. But got more and more popular over time in its niche and added features.
It was so popular that when I left AWS, that the interviewer asked me what project I was most proud of and when I mentioned it, the questions basically stopped and they made me an offer two days later.
AWS has a lot open source initiatives and GitHub organizations. The easiest organization to release products in with the lowest overhead is AWS Samples.
https://github.com/aws-samples
The process to get approved is dead simple and once I knew the process, I was able to turn around getting my own code that was sanitized from customer projects in there in less than two days. I had eight of my own projects in there that I legally, ethically and with approval allowed me to take some of my code with me that I used across two other companies.
But back to the main point. This other project where I had commit rights, I could easily fork it, make modifications for a customer, submit my pull request after testing it and get it merged in within less than a month, as could a former coworker who was retired and made and submitted changes for some non profits who he was working with for free.
Then the project became so popular and more strategic for AWS that while it stayed open source, it was moved to be an “AWS Solution”.
https://github.com/aws-solutions
Even I who was still on the internal team at the time had to wait months and go through a series of justifications to get anything merged in to a release. I doubt now that even though I am still friends with the Principal Architect on the project among others could get a change merged in even though before I left I was still the third highest contributor because of all of the red tape.
On a happy note though. I saw what was going to happen before it got put under the AWS Solution group and I added as my last pull request an extension mechanism that allowed you to register Lambda extensions to extend the project without modifying the base code.
>Companies should cater to customers who want something like FDroid?
Yes. Why not? Can you give me reasons why not because I can give the reasons as to why.