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I'm not a programmer so I can't practically exercise my user freedoms. If I was a programmer, I also couldn't practically exercise my user freedoms for most of

I'm not a programmer so I can't practically exercise my user freedoms. If I was a programmer, I also couldn't practically exercise my user freedoms for most of the software I use. Maybe one programmer could maintain a fork of vim, but it takes a small company to maintain a true fork of larger projects like Firefox, Chromium, and LibreOffice. If you want control over your workflow, a program with a stable extensions API will go a lot farther than a free software license. I prefer free software because it is gratis and doesn't spy on me. Anyone here with some experience single-handedly maintaining a fork of a large project?

eternityforest 5y ago
Not a fork, but I'm building an application on my own that's roughly meant to be equivalent to Home Assistant, on account of some entertainment related projects with very low budgets, and some big complaints about how Home Assistant treats SD cards. Even though it's not a fork, I have constant problems with trivial changes in libraries between versions. I'd think a fork could be even worse. I suspect someone with an hour a day, or a few hours a week, could maintain a fork of LibreOffice and keep it in sync with upstream, if they didn't change too much, but it would suck. The ability for small companies to do forks is where the real benefit is IMHO. I'm using Kiwi Browser on Android, which seems to get security updates within a few days of Chromium, and supports extensions on mobile.
sho_hn 5y ago
Having the option to exercise your freedoms (or, say, contract someone to do so, or band together with other users to do this) is an important protection for you as a user, even if you will not directly exercise it yourself. It can for example inform the relationship the original vendor has with you, and how they treat you. "But I'm never going to patch it anyway" is a bit like "Privacy? But I have no secrets", which implies you will never have secrets and don't want to have the option to, even if external factors not under your control change. By the same token, just the mere existence of free alternatives does a lot to keep developers of non-free software honest in some cases, even if they don't gain competitive market share. OTOH, ironically the existence of free software has also let the developers of non-free software off the hook in important ways. For example, if you look at any large proprietary software maker, you will often find that their most skilled engineers are the ones with experience developing free software - because they have additional years of high-density experience that companies fail to provide an equivalent environment for (low incentives to mentor, more extreme specialization, etc.). So proprietary development shops have had to be far less sustainable wrt/ training and recruiting because the community has picked up the slack. Which I'm not sure is a good thing - healthy teaching relationships and learning opportunities for experts on the one hand, business models and competitive salary on the other, rather than both in one spot.
car_analogy 5y ago
> If you want control over your workflow, a program with a stable extensions API will go a lot farther than a free software license. You underestimate the effect of other programmers having that freedom. Even without being a kernel hacker myself, I get the benefit of an OS that does not spy on me. That's why the freedom to redistribute modified copies is so key - the resulting ecosystem of free software is in many ways more important than the individual rights from which it results. So it's a mistake to think you don't benefit from the software freedoms, just because you individually don't exercise them.
smoldesu 5y ago
I have a couple private forks of software that I maintain for one reason or another. I've got a fork of a Discord theme with minor CSS changes I keep around and update once every few months, as well as the GTK app Password Safe with all of it's UI/UX changes pinned the way they were before GNOME took it over. The experience is pretty fine all things considered. I rarely ever need to hop in to change stuff around unless an update is pushed that I really want to ingest, and when it does happen it rarely takes more than an hour to get things sorted out and working again. It's not half as scary as it sounds, really.

eternityforest 5y ago

Not a fork, but I'm building an application on my own that's roughly meant to be equivalent to Home Assistant, on account of some entertainment related projects with very low budgets, and some big complaints about how Home Assistant treats SD cards. Even though it's not a fork, I have constant problems with trivial changes in libraries between versions. I'd think a fork could be even worse. I suspect someone with an hour a day, or a few hours a week, could maintain a fork of LibreOffice and keep it in sync with upstream, if they didn't change too much, but it would suck. The ability for small companies to do forks is where the real benefit is IMHO. I'm using Kiwi Browser on Android, which seems to get security updates within a few days of Chromium, and supports extensions on mobile.

sho_hn 5y ago

Having the option to exercise your freedoms (or, say, contract someone to do so, or band together with other users to do this) is an important protection for you as a user, even if you will not directly exercise it yourself. It can for example inform the relationship the original vendor has with you, and how they treat you. "But I'm never going to patch it anyway" is a bit like "Privacy? But I have no secrets", which implies you will never have secrets and don't want to have the option to, even if external factors not under your control change. By the same token, just the mere existence of free alternatives does a lot to keep developers of non-free software honest in some cases, even if they don't gain competitive market share. OTOH, ironically the existence of free software has also let the developers of non-free software off the hook in important ways. For example, if you look at any large proprietary software maker, you will often find that their most skilled engineers are the ones with experience developing free software - because they have additional years of high-density experience that companies fail to provide an equivalent environment for (low incentives to mentor, more extreme specialization, etc.). So proprietary development shops have had to be far less sustainable wrt/ training and recruiting because the community has picked up the slack. Which I'm not sure is a good thing - healthy teaching relationships and learning opportunities for experts on the one hand, business models and competitive salary on the other, rather than both in one spot.

car_analogy 5y ago

> If you want control over your workflow, a program with a stable extensions API will go a lot farther than a free software license. You underestimate the effect of other programmers having that freedom. Even without being a kernel hacker myself, I get the benefit of an OS that does not spy on me. That's why the freedom to redistribute modified copies is so key - the resulting ecosystem of free software is in many ways more important than the individual rights from which it results. So it's a mistake to think you don't benefit from the software freedoms, just because you individually don't exercise them.

smoldesu 5y ago

I have a couple private forks of software that I maintain for one reason or another. I've got a fork of a Discord theme with minor CSS changes I keep around and update once every few months, as well as the GTK app Password Safe with all of it's UI/UX changes pinned the way they were before GNOME took it over. The experience is pretty fine all things considered. I rarely ever need to hop in to change stuff around unless an update is pushed that I really want to ingest, and when it does happen it rarely takes more than an hour to get things sorted out and working again. It's not half as scary as it sounds, really.