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I am a big FOSS proponent (I almost exclusively use FOSS), but I find it difficult to not become disillusioned recently. It seems the large corporations like FA

I am a big FOSS proponent (I almost exclusively use FOSS), but I find it difficult to not become disillusioned recently. It seems the large corporations like FANGs are largely pushing OSS to use volunteer work to make software a commodity, while trying to accumulate more and more data, which they consider their main value. At the same time we have companies like pine, who seem to support FOSS through relatively open hardware, but which to me seem increasingly more about a way to make a profit of the FOSS trend by using volunteer work without any investment from their end. I question if they are actually interested in their devices actually being functional for regular use. See also this article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32330043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32330043 Finally we have distributions like Manjaro who seem more interested in growing their slice of the pie at the cost of other distributions instead of growing the whole Linux ecosystem. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hxpj87/change_in_manjaro_team_composition_announcements/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hxpj87/change_in_man...

bruce511 4y ago
I feel like you're inferring qualities in OSS that don't (explicitly) exist. This is not uncommon. Specifically; >> It seems the large corporations like FANGs are largely pushing OSS to use volunteer work to make software a commodity Why would you expect them to do anything different? Companies are driven by profit, not some sense of morality. OSS licenses allow them, even encourage them, to trade volunteer (aka free) labor in return for source code availability. >> which to me seem increasingly more about a way to make a profit of the FOSS trend by using volunteer work without any investment from their end. There's often serious investment from their end, but that's irrelevant. They absolutely want to leverage FOSS to make a profit. And that's explicitly allowed by OSS licenses. To put it another way, your disillusionment is because of a "bug" on your end, not on theirs. They are behaving exactly as OSS is designed. Your _expectation_ of their behavior is inaccurate, and so does not match reality. Not surpisingly this makes you sad :(
- cycomanic 4y ago
  > I feel like you're inferring qualities in OSS that don't (explicitly) exist. This is not uncommon. Specifically; > >> It seems the large corporations like FANGs are largely pushing OSS to use volunteer work to make software a commodity > Why would you expect them to do anything different? Companies are driven by profit, not some sense of morality. OSS licenses allow them, even encourage them, to trade volunteer (aka free) labor in return for source code availability. Apart from the fact that companies and corporations can act ethically despite driven by profits, I did not say I'm desillusioned with the corporations, but the FOSS community. Essentially it is us as users&developers who let this happen. > >> which to me seem increasingly more about a way to make a profit of the FOSS trend by using volunteer work without any investment from their end. > There's often serious investment from their end, but that's irrelevant. They absolutely want to leverage FOSS to make a profit. And that's explicitly allowed by OSS licenses. Again I don't say that companies shouldn't make a profit, but when OSS started to become more mainstream many (including myself) believed that it would be a way to break the stranglehold of large monopolistic corporations on the software world and create an ecosystem of relatively small software companies that would customise OSS software for specific needs on a relatively even playing field. Instead what happened is that OSS might have accelerated the concentration of the software world, by making small jobs essentially unviable. Regarding investment, I expect that FANGs still very much come out on top, just imagine what they had to pay in licencing cost for their datacentres if no oss operating systems existed. Also much of these investments are towards use cases with very little benefit for normal users. > To put it another way, your disillusionment is because of a "bug" on your end, not on theirs. They are behaving exactly as OSS is designed. Your _expectation_ of their behavior is inaccurate, and so does not match reality. Not surpisingly this makes you sad :( I think you misunderstand me, my disillusionment is with the idea what FOSS could have achieved (and people imagined) but didn't. I sometimes wonder if FOSS has made the world a better place, like many hoped it would. You might not care about it but I do.
  - analognoise 4y ago
    I mean I think FOSS is objectively bad for humanity. But I'm an outlier.
    - 4y ago
3np 4y ago
Your last link is 404ing
- cycomanic 4y ago
  Weird it's working for me.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - 3np 4y ago
    Yeah it's back now. Was briefly missing on the altfronts as well so not just here.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  Something wrong with your browser or internet connection, it works for me.
stew-j 4y ago
It seems to me (having sworn to not ever publish another line of free software after many years of doing so) that a kind of serfdom has been established in free software similar to the one working directly for FAANG. The difference is free software doesn't pay enough to live on ramen, if they even notice your project at all. [I noticed the stump of the pine tree, which apparently was cut down after a fire, in the picture at the head of this article--maybe why the author left Pine64? :)]
stjohnswarts 4y ago
The funny thing about manjaro is it would be abandoned in months if arch devs (for whatever reason) just disappeared. I suspect that Canonical could survive such a thing with debian, but manjaro could not.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  More than 95% of Ubuntu packages come straight from Debian. Ubuntu would not survive a day without it.
goodpoint 4y ago
> corporations like FANGs are largely pushing OSS to use volunteer work to make software a commodity Corporations has been coopting Free Software for two decades by opposing GPL, calling it Open Source and essentially turning it into unpaid labor. Yet community-driven FOSS is still possible and thriving around things like mastodon. Remember to use a license that protects your contributions, your community and your users.

bruce511 4y ago

I feel like you're inferring qualities in OSS that don't (explicitly) exist. This is not uncommon. Specifically; >> It seems the large corporations like FANGs are largely pushing OSS to use volunteer work to make software a commodity Why would you expect them to do anything different? Companies are driven by profit, not some sense of morality. OSS licenses allow them, even encourage them, to trade volunteer (aka free) labor in return for source code availability. >> which to me seem increasingly more about a way to make a profit of the FOSS trend by using volunteer work without any investment from their end. There's often serious investment from their end, but that's irrelevant. They absolutely want to leverage FOSS to make a profit. And that's explicitly allowed by OSS licenses. To put it another way, your disillusionment is because of a "bug" on your end, not on theirs. They are behaving exactly as OSS is designed. Your _expectation_ of their behavior is inaccurate, and so does not match reality. Not surpisingly this makes you sad :(

cycomanic 4y ago
> I feel like you're inferring qualities in OSS that don't (explicitly) exist. This is not uncommon. Specifically; > >> It seems the large corporations like FANGs are largely pushing OSS to use volunteer work to make software a commodity > Why would you expect them to do anything different? Companies are driven by profit, not some sense of morality. OSS licenses allow them, even encourage them, to trade volunteer (aka free) labor in return for source code availability. Apart from the fact that companies and corporations can act ethically despite driven by profits, I did not say I'm desillusioned with the corporations, but the FOSS community. Essentially it is us as users&developers who let this happen. > >> which to me seem increasingly more about a way to make a profit of the FOSS trend by using volunteer work without any investment from their end. > There's often serious investment from their end, but that's irrelevant. They absolutely want to leverage FOSS to make a profit. And that's explicitly allowed by OSS licenses. Again I don't say that companies shouldn't make a profit, but when OSS started to become more mainstream many (including myself) believed that it would be a way to break the stranglehold of large monopolistic corporations on the software world and create an ecosystem of relatively small software companies that would customise OSS software for specific needs on a relatively even playing field. Instead what happened is that OSS might have accelerated the concentration of the software world, by making small jobs essentially unviable. Regarding investment, I expect that FANGs still very much come out on top, just imagine what they had to pay in licencing cost for their datacentres if no oss operating systems existed. Also much of these investments are towards use cases with very little benefit for normal users. > To put it another way, your disillusionment is because of a "bug" on your end, not on theirs. They are behaving exactly as OSS is designed. Your _expectation_ of their behavior is inaccurate, and so does not match reality. Not surpisingly this makes you sad :( I think you misunderstand me, my disillusionment is with the idea what FOSS could have achieved (and people imagined) but didn't. I sometimes wonder if FOSS has made the world a better place, like many hoped it would. You might not care about it but I do.
- analognoise 4y ago
  I mean I think FOSS is objectively bad for humanity. But I'm an outlier.
  - 4y ago

3np 4y ago

Your last link is 404ing

cycomanic 4y ago
Weird it's working for me.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- 3np 4y ago
  Yeah it's back now. Was briefly missing on the altfronts as well so not just here.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Something wrong with your browser or internet connection, it works for me.

stew-j 4y ago

It seems to me (having sworn to not ever publish another line of free software after many years of doing so) that a kind of serfdom has been established in free software similar to the one working directly for FAANG. The difference is free software doesn't pay enough to live on ramen, if they even notice your project at all. [I noticed the stump of the pine tree, which apparently was cut down after a fire, in the picture at the head of this article--maybe why the author left Pine64? :)]

stjohnswarts 4y ago

The funny thing about manjaro is it would be abandoned in months if arch devs (for whatever reason) just disappeared. I suspect that Canonical could survive such a thing with debian, but manjaro could not.

goodpoint 4y ago
More than 95% of Ubuntu packages come straight from Debian. Ubuntu would not survive a day without it.

goodpoint 4y ago

> corporations like FANGs are largely pushing OSS to use volunteer work to make software a commodity Corporations has been coopting Free Software for two decades by opposing GPL, calling it Open Source and essentially turning it into unpaid labor. Yet community-driven FOSS is still possible and thriving around things like mastodon. Remember to use a license that protects your contributions, your community and your users.