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I'll be horribly blunt here but I don't give a shit about any of that any more. It's irrelevant which is why open source is a complete joke for most people. I,

by hggigg 2y ago

I'll be horribly blunt here but I don't give a shit about any of that any more. It's irrelevant which is why open source is a complete joke for most people. I, much as other users, just want my computer to solve the problems I ask of it, not turn into an activity in its own right or a maze of hosting problems and pain to get a simple task done. The job of the computer is to free us from slavery and everyone seems to have bloody well forgotten that. macOS is my dream OS as it stands. I can add a cucumber to my shopping list on my mac and when I get to the supermarket, it's on my phone. I can share a calendar with my family and it just works. I can listen to music on it and the same music is on my phone. I can open and move pages around in a PDF without having to futz with anything or open a terminal. I can literally write on my iPad with a pen and a PDF pops out full of my writing which I can send to people for review and feedback. I can use Lightroom, Photoshop and Excel, which are far superior to any open source products and I do not mind paying for that privilege. etc etc. The hardware cost and upgrade inflexibility, neither of which I have found a problem either way, is insignificant anyway to the pain I would incur without it. And that's what the community does't get: the last 20% is the hard bit and the above is the last 20% and it has never even once in the history of OSS got anywhere even remotely near that. No one cares about the political purity and ideology behind it.

cesarb 2y ago
> No one cares about the political purity and ideology behind it. No one cares, until they do. Everything you mentioned depends on a single company, which follows the commands from just a few people, who can one day decide to lead the operating system in a direction which makes it no longer your "dream OS", and intellectual property law makes it so that no other company can undo their changes. > The job of the computer is to free us from slavery and everyone seems to have bloody well forgotten that. We haven't, and that's why we prefer operating systems we fully control, instead of being bound by the whims of some foreign megacorporation, enforced by intellectual property law.
- hggigg 2y ago
  The other side of the fence is just as bad. Look at what Redhat and Freedesktop did to Linux. While you might have the illusion of control, the exit plan to take control is to take on tens of millions of lines of source code and manage it yourself. That is not control. Your data is the important bit. If you keep that portable and/or recreatable then it doesn't matter what tools you use.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    > Look at what Redhat and Freedesktop did to Linux. Well now you're just contradicting yourself. I'm not going to say RedHat and fd.o have been perfect all the time or have always made the best decisions or haven't pursued agendas that may have been at odds with others. But c'mon. On one side you're saying that open source can never be good because no one maintains the cohesiveness and attention span to do "the last 20%", but then you rail on organizations that have tried to set and maintain standards, and reduce fragmentation on the desktop? You can't have it both ways.
kelnos 2y ago
> And that's what the community does't get: the last 20% is the hard bit I think a lot of people in OSS do get that, but in many ways it's significantly harder to do that last 20% in an open source project than it is for a proprietary software company to do it. But ultimately I don't care that much, honestly. If you don't get what you need out of open source, that's fine. You not using it isn't a problem for me or for my own open source work. As long as there are enough users to keep communities going and developers interested, that's all that matters. > and the above is the last 20% and it has never even once in the history of OSS got anywhere even remotely near that. That's provably false, and it's pretty annoying when people make uninformed absolutist statements like that. > No one cares about the political purity and ideology behind it. A lot of people do. No, not a majority, and maybe not even a largely sizeable minority, but it's very very far from "no one". If you don't, I guess that's fine. I hope your proprietary software continues to do what you need and want, and that your needs and interests continue to be aligned with what those software companies want to give you. That hasn't been true for me for a very long time now, but certainly people have different needs and different thresholds for it to matter. But if that changes, feel fortunate that all the work we've done will still be available for you to take advantage of. > The job of the computer is to free us from slavery and everyone seems to have bloody well forgotten that. Your use of the word "slavery" is a bit bizarre and overwrought, but it's funny you say something like this. Open source software is the only kind of software that's going to respect your freedom. Proprietary software never will. You're at the whims of its makers, and can never take control of your own computing destiny. Like the sibling said, I guess that doesn't matter to you now. But maybe it will, someday, when the game changes yet again.
- hggigg 2y ago
  As I've said elsewhere, your data is the important bit. And at least in my case that is 100% portable. The winds of change are inevitable, but you can move house without too much hassle.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    If think you can trust your data with a bunch of proprietary software companies, I'm not sure what to tell you. > And at least in my case that is 100% portable For now. Time and time again I see stories where people think they have redundant copies of everything important, and can reconstruct things when a company pulls out the rug out from under them, only to find they're missing something important. Maybe you aren't. Great, good for you. You represent a teeny tiny percentage of the sum of proprietary software users. Again, I'm glad you believe you're safe and happy with the arrangement you have, but you're uncommon, and that's the entire point. And for me, it's not just portability. Most companies are going to mine your data, use it to train AI, sell it to third parties, whatever they think will make them money. Or they just get hacked, like everyone does, eventually. You can protect yourself from that with open source. Not saying you don't still have to be vigilant, of course you do... but with proprietary software? Well, best of luck with that. Even with Apple, one of the few companies I think are reasonably trustworthy stewards of customer data, despite all the other issues I have with that company.

by hggigg 2y ago

cesarb 2y ago

> No one cares about the political purity and ideology behind it. No one cares, until they do. Everything you mentioned depends on a single company, which follows the commands from just a few people, who can one day decide to lead the operating system in a direction which makes it no longer your "dream OS", and intellectual property law makes it so that no other company can undo their changes. > The job of the computer is to free us from slavery and everyone seems to have bloody well forgotten that. We haven't, and that's why we prefer operating systems we fully control, instead of being bound by the whims of some foreign megacorporation, enforced by intellectual property law.

hggigg 2y ago
The other side of the fence is just as bad. Look at what Redhat and Freedesktop did to Linux. While you might have the illusion of control, the exit plan to take control is to take on tens of millions of lines of source code and manage it yourself. That is not control. Your data is the important bit. If you keep that portable and/or recreatable then it doesn't matter what tools you use.
- kelnos 2y ago
  > Look at what Redhat and Freedesktop did to Linux. Well now you're just contradicting yourself. I'm not going to say RedHat and fd.o have been perfect all the time or have always made the best decisions or haven't pursued agendas that may have been at odds with others. But c'mon. On one side you're saying that open source can never be good because no one maintains the cohesiveness and attention span to do "the last 20%", but then you rail on organizations that have tried to set and maintain standards, and reduce fragmentation on the desktop? You can't have it both ways.

kelnos 2y ago

> And that's what the community does't get: the last 20% is the hard bit I think a lot of people in OSS do get that, but in many ways it's significantly harder to do that last 20% in an open source project than it is for a proprietary software company to do it. But ultimately I don't care that much, honestly. If you don't get what you need out of open source, that's fine. You not using it isn't a problem for me or for my own open source work. As long as there are enough users to keep communities going and developers interested, that's all that matters. > and the above is the last 20% and it has never even once in the history of OSS got anywhere even remotely near that. That's provably false, and it's pretty annoying when people make uninformed absolutist statements like that. > No one cares about the political purity and ideology behind it. A lot of people do. No, not a majority, and maybe not even a largely sizeable minority, but it's very very far from "no one". If you don't, I guess that's fine. I hope your proprietary software continues to do what you need and want, and that your needs and interests continue to be aligned with what those software companies want to give you. That hasn't been true for me for a very long time now, but certainly people have different needs and different thresholds for it to matter. But if that changes, feel fortunate that all the work we've done will still be available for you to take advantage of. > The job of the computer is to free us from slavery and everyone seems to have bloody well forgotten that. Your use of the word "slavery" is a bit bizarre and overwrought, but it's funny you say something like this. Open source software is the only kind of software that's going to respect your freedom. Proprietary software never will. You're at the whims of its makers, and can never take control of your own computing destiny. Like the sibling said, I guess that doesn't matter to you now. But maybe it will, someday, when the game changes yet again.

hggigg 2y ago
As I've said elsewhere, your data is the important bit. And at least in my case that is 100% portable. The winds of change are inevitable, but you can move house without too much hassle.
- kelnos 2y ago
  If think you can trust your data with a bunch of proprietary software companies, I'm not sure what to tell you. > And at least in my case that is 100% portable For now. Time and time again I see stories where people think they have redundant copies of everything important, and can reconstruct things when a company pulls out the rug out from under them, only to find they're missing something important. Maybe you aren't. Great, good for you. You represent a teeny tiny percentage of the sum of proprietary software users. Again, I'm glad you believe you're safe and happy with the arrangement you have, but you're uncommon, and that's the entire point. And for me, it's not just portability. Most companies are going to mine your data, use it to train AI, sell it to third parties, whatever they think will make them money. Or they just get hacked, like everyone does, eventually. You can protect yourself from that with open source. Not saying you don't still have to be vigilant, of course you do... but with proprietary software? Well, best of luck with that. Even with Apple, one of the few companies I think are reasonably trustworthy stewards of customer data, despite all the other issues I have with that company.