5 ms·

I respect that ethical motivations of free software in an age of mass surveillance, retail tracking and the copyright war but I routinely use proprietary softwa

by alephu5 10y ago

I respect that ethical motivations of free software in an age of mass surveillance, retail tracking and the copyright war but I routinely use proprietary software. In practice when a free clone lacks a feature or has a bug that stops me, I have no choice. I seldom have the skills and time to pop the hood and fiddle with the code. If I need to read a document typed in MS Word that is unreadable in libre office, I'm going to download MS office viewer...

rglullis 10y ago
You "may not have a choice" at the exact moment that you need to do something that only a proprietary solution can provide, but those that really want to support free software can still adopt a strategy to avoid such moments: every time one "consumes" proprietary solutions, take a percentage of the value spent and donate to a free alternative. Imagine if every graphic designer that "has no other choice than Photoshop" decided to donate $10/year to Gimp, and that took one hour week to use it, provide bug reports, feature requests, etc. Imagine if every web developer that uses Apple "because it is a better desktop than Linux" decided to donate 5% of that to Canonical (or Fedora, or Arch) and took a few hours every month just to try to get their issues sorted out. Imagine that every company that is so invested in AWS (or GCS or Azure) realized that there are cloud providers that are based on free software solutions and have no lock-in, and that they made a commitment to make quarterly donations to them.
- mfukar 10y ago
  No, that's not the way it works. Consumers pay for services rendered, not for R&D.
  - rglullis 10y ago
    First, I am not telling all consumers to do it, but the ones that "really want to support free software" Besides, with software (and free software even more so), services rendered is R&D.
    - mfukar 10y ago
      So, if a consumer has the reasonable expectation to pay for something which fulfils an immediate need, they do not "really want to support free software"? Surely you must understand how that is a meaningless phrase? Software services are R&D _at some point in time_, which is also a meaningless phrase. Right now I can go buy Microsoft Office and fulfil all my document editing needs I'll ever have. However MSOffice to me is a product, not some distant R&D objective. Maybe FOSS could be better guided by focusing on what a product really is.
      - rglullis 10y ago
        If your focus is only on your editing needs and you buy MS-Office and stop there - then no, you do not really want to support free software. If on the other hand you have a document edit need that no free software can provide, and you understand that you can buy MS-Office to fulfill a need and also donate/support to LibreOffice or any other project you might be consider worthy of support - then you are at least walking the walk and doing something in support of FOSS. It seems to me you are making an either/or proposition: either you are a consumer or you are an contributor of software. It doesn't have to be like this.
        mfukar 10y ago
        It is an exclusive proposition for non-FOSS. As a customer, I can't contribute to MSOffice. However, I can contribute _and_ be a customer to FOSS. That's not what we're talking about, though.
        rglullis 10y ago
        To be honest, I think we both lost the point of the conversation. All I was trying to say is that those that (1) respect/value FOSS but (2) end up buying/consuming a proprietary solution due to the current shortcomings of the free alternatives can still support FOSS, which might lead to (3) not needing proprietary solutions in the future. I don't want us to be arguing past each other, so please help me understand what you mean by "this is not how it works". Does it mean that you think that such strategy can not work? If so, why not?
- st3v3r 10y ago
  "Imagine if every web developer that uses Apple "because it is a better desktop than Linux" decided to donate 5% of that to Canonical (or Fedora, or Arch) and took a few hours every month just to try to get their issues sorted out." You just illustrated part of the problem: There are so many different desktop environments, that it would make trying to pick one to be supported, and trying to pick one for writing software a fool's errand. One of the main reasons developers like MacOS is because it has the UNIX underpinnings and terminal power, AND it has a standard GUI toolkit and robust 3rd party software market providing high quality, pleasant to use tools.
  - rglullis 10y ago
    > There are so many different desktop environments. I described Linux distributions, not desktop environments, and the ones I listed are known exactly for having huge support from their communities and that can be easily picked up by anyone wanting to do so. > trying to pick one to be supported, and trying to pick one for writing software This makes no sense. If you are writing software that is multi-platform, anything that runs on some kind of VM, you don't need to know the internals of your development OS. Hell, even if you are developing an application that is specific to one OS, you still should not take your development distribution in consideration. A distribution is just a nicely packaged collection of software, there is no reason to tie your application to any of them. Also, bear in mind that we are talking about ways to have more free software, not to have "one winner alternative of software". Any kind of contribution helps, no matter what distro most people use. Using the excessive number of distributions compared to one single "MacOS" as a justification to not support free software is akin to complaining about going to the supermarket and complaining about too many kinds of healthy fruits and vegetables and using that as an excuse to pig out on Nutella. > developers like MacOS Yours is one of the thousand variations of excuses I heard from people that simply do not bother to even try to adopt free software. I can take you up on a bet that you will find absolutely zero "high quality, pleasant to use" tools that a web developer can only find on MacOS. From web browsers to server software, from compilers to text editors, from source code viewers to even file managers... I can bet that anyone claiming that a Linux-based distro falls short in providing tools has not touched a Linux-based workstation in at least a decade.
- jdboyd 10y ago
  What cloud providers are based more completely on free software than AWS? Aside from running your own cloud on your own hardware, I'm not aware of anything that is free software so I'm very curious what the better options are.
  - rglullis 10y ago
    Does Amazon provide source code so you can run your own S3, EC2, RDS, Cloudfront, IAM, etc, etc, etc on your own datacenter? They don't. They build their services on top of free software, but none of the services provided by AWS itself are free. OpenStack, on the other hand, is exactly that - a free software platform which gives no single "cloud provider" any kind of vendor lock-in whatsoever.

by alephu5 10y ago

rglullis 10y ago

You "may not have a choice" at the exact moment that you need to do something that only a proprietary solution can provide, but those that really want to support free software can still adopt a strategy to avoid such moments: every time one "consumes" proprietary solutions, take a percentage of the value spent and donate to a free alternative. Imagine if every graphic designer that "has no other choice than Photoshop" decided to donate $10/year to Gimp, and that took one hour week to use it, provide bug reports, feature requests, etc. Imagine if every web developer that uses Apple "because it is a better desktop than Linux" decided to donate 5% of that to Canonical (or Fedora, or Arch) and took a few hours every month just to try to get their issues sorted out. Imagine that every company that is so invested in AWS (or GCS or Azure) realized that there are cloud providers that are based on free software solutions and have no lock-in, and that they made a commitment to make quarterly donations to them.

mfukar 10y ago
No, that's not the way it works. Consumers pay for services rendered, not for R&D.
- rglullis 10y ago
  First, I am not telling all consumers to do it, but the ones that "really want to support free software" Besides, with software (and free software even more so), services rendered is R&D.
  - mfukar 10y ago
    So, if a consumer has the reasonable expectation to pay for something which fulfils an immediate need, they do not "really want to support free software"? Surely you must understand how that is a meaningless phrase? Software services are R&D _at some point in time_, which is also a meaningless phrase. Right now I can go buy Microsoft Office and fulfil all my document editing needs I'll ever have. However MSOffice to me is a product, not some distant R&D objective. Maybe FOSS could be better guided by focusing on what a product really is.
    - rglullis 10y ago
      If your focus is only on your editing needs and you buy MS-Office and stop there - then no, you do not really want to support free software. If on the other hand you have a document edit need that no free software can provide, and you understand that you can buy MS-Office to fulfill a need and also donate/support to LibreOffice or any other project you might be consider worthy of support - then you are at least walking the walk and doing something in support of FOSS. It seems to me you are making an either/or proposition: either you are a consumer or you are an contributor of software. It doesn't have to be like this.
      - mfukar 10y ago
        It is an exclusive proposition for non-FOSS. As a customer, I can't contribute to MSOffice. However, I can contribute _and_ be a customer to FOSS. That's not what we're talking about, though.
        rglullis 10y ago
        To be honest, I think we both lost the point of the conversation. All I was trying to say is that those that (1) respect/value FOSS but (2) end up buying/consuming a proprietary solution due to the current shortcomings of the free alternatives can still support FOSS, which might lead to (3) not needing proprietary solutions in the future. I don't want us to be arguing past each other, so please help me understand what you mean by "this is not how it works". Does it mean that you think that such strategy can not work? If so, why not?
st3v3r 10y ago
"Imagine if every web developer that uses Apple "because it is a better desktop than Linux" decided to donate 5% of that to Canonical (or Fedora, or Arch) and took a few hours every month just to try to get their issues sorted out." You just illustrated part of the problem: There are so many different desktop environments, that it would make trying to pick one to be supported, and trying to pick one for writing software a fool's errand. One of the main reasons developers like MacOS is because it has the UNIX underpinnings and terminal power, AND it has a standard GUI toolkit and robust 3rd party software market providing high quality, pleasant to use tools.
- rglullis 10y ago
  > There are so many different desktop environments. I described Linux distributions, not desktop environments, and the ones I listed are known exactly for having huge support from their communities and that can be easily picked up by anyone wanting to do so. > trying to pick one to be supported, and trying to pick one for writing software This makes no sense. If you are writing software that is multi-platform, anything that runs on some kind of VM, you don't need to know the internals of your development OS. Hell, even if you are developing an application that is specific to one OS, you still should not take your development distribution in consideration. A distribution is just a nicely packaged collection of software, there is no reason to tie your application to any of them. Also, bear in mind that we are talking about ways to have more free software, not to have "one winner alternative of software". Any kind of contribution helps, no matter what distro most people use. Using the excessive number of distributions compared to one single "MacOS" as a justification to not support free software is akin to complaining about going to the supermarket and complaining about too many kinds of healthy fruits and vegetables and using that as an excuse to pig out on Nutella. > developers like MacOS Yours is one of the thousand variations of excuses I heard from people that simply do not bother to even try to adopt free software. I can take you up on a bet that you will find absolutely zero "high quality, pleasant to use" tools that a web developer can only find on MacOS. From web browsers to server software, from compilers to text editors, from source code viewers to even file managers... I can bet that anyone claiming that a Linux-based distro falls short in providing tools has not touched a Linux-based workstation in at least a decade.
jdboyd 10y ago
What cloud providers are based more completely on free software than AWS? Aside from running your own cloud on your own hardware, I'm not aware of anything that is free software so I'm very curious what the better options are.
- rglullis 10y ago
  Does Amazon provide source code so you can run your own S3, EC2, RDS, Cloudfront, IAM, etc, etc, etc on your own datacenter? They don't. They build their services on top of free software, but none of the services provided by AWS itself are free. OpenStack, on the other hand, is exactly that - a free software platform which gives no single "cloud provider" any kind of vendor lock-in whatsoever.