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You're assuming that community driven FOSS development is sustainable, or can make a good long term project the size of a kernel, or a multimedia package, or an

You're assuming that community driven FOSS development is sustainable, or can make a good long term project the size of a kernel, or a multimedia package, or anything larger than a tool or library. In practice, I'm going to be honest and blunt, it's never worked. 3 decades of trying to replace Photoshop with GIMP (founded 1995)? Barely a dent. 3 decades of trying to unsettle Windows with the Linux desktop (KDE, 1998)? Barely a dent. 3 decades of trying to beat 3D packages with Blender (founded 1994)? Finally working now, ironically only because corporations started getting involved. Before then, Blender 2.7 was never going to do it. 2 decades of Apache trying to kill Skype with OpenMeetings (founded 2007)? Not even a dent. 2 decades of trying to kill proprietary CAD packages with FreeCAD (founded 2002)? Not even a dent. 4 decades of trying to beat Microsoft Office with what is now LibreOffice (roots in StarOffice, 1985, which was ironically a proprietary corporate project for the first decade and a half)? Barely a dent. The Linux community, and FOSS communities, overestimate their strength without corporate interests. They have none.

segasaturn 2y ago
Why should I care that Microsoft Office has more users than LibreOffice? I care which is the better product and has my interests as the user, and not the product, in mind. For example, and relevant to the article, I can use an ad blocker on Firefox without Big Brother Google stepping in and taking it away. Photoshop takes 30 seconds to open and illegally scrapes its users' private data for AI training. Windows has mass surveillance built in with Recall and shoves tabloid garbage and ads into the Start Menu. It means nothing to me that the worse products have more users, they are still worse products.
- dotancohen 2y ago
  > Why should I care that Microsoft Office has more users than LibreOffice? Because people are going to send you documents in Word format, and expect you to be able to send them documents in Word format. Including embedded objects, RTL text, animations, and many other features that LibreOffice barely support and do not transfer well between its own native format and the Word format.
  - seszett 2y ago
    I'm sure it's a problem for some. But at my company we've been using open/libreoffice for about 20 years and I can count on one hand the times it has actually been a problem. And all our customers often send us MS Office documents. They never use the fancy features.
rstuart4133 2y ago
> You're assuming that community driven FOSS development is sustainable I'm confused. Is FOSS is something more than someone or some entity contributing their time and releasing the source for for free? Does it really matter if thing doing the development is a a person in a garage or a company? There doesn't seem to be a lot of difference to me. Both a people in garages and a company have kept their pet projects going for decades, giving away their efforts over all that time. Both people in garages and and companies have lost interest in open source projects. As an example Debian is one of the longest lived open source projects on the planet. It is a community drive development. To me it looks likely it will outlast Ubuntu, which is a fork that isn't community driven. The central tenants that make FOSS work don't seem to have much to do with whether it's community driven or not. Both can succeed. Yes, community driven efforts can fail. But so can corporate drive FOSS, as WordPress may well demonstrate.

segasaturn 2y ago

Why should I care that Microsoft Office has more users than LibreOffice? I care which is the better product and has my interests as the user, and not the product, in mind. For example, and relevant to the article, I can use an ad blocker on Firefox without Big Brother Google stepping in and taking it away. Photoshop takes 30 seconds to open and illegally scrapes its users' private data for AI training. Windows has mass surveillance built in with Recall and shoves tabloid garbage and ads into the Start Menu. It means nothing to me that the worse products have more users, they are still worse products.

dotancohen 2y ago
> Why should I care that Microsoft Office has more users than LibreOffice? Because people are going to send you documents in Word format, and expect you to be able to send them documents in Word format. Including embedded objects, RTL text, animations, and many other features that LibreOffice barely support and do not transfer well between its own native format and the Word format.
- seszett 2y ago
  I'm sure it's a problem for some. But at my company we've been using open/libreoffice for about 20 years and I can count on one hand the times it has actually been a problem. And all our customers often send us MS Office documents. They never use the fancy features.

rstuart4133 2y ago

> You're assuming that community driven FOSS development is sustainable I'm confused. Is FOSS is something more than someone or some entity contributing their time and releasing the source for for free? Does it really matter if thing doing the development is a a person in a garage or a company? There doesn't seem to be a lot of difference to me. Both a people in garages and a company have kept their pet projects going for decades, giving away their efforts over all that time. Both people in garages and and companies have lost interest in open source projects. As an example Debian is one of the longest lived open source projects on the planet. It is a community drive development. To me it looks likely it will outlast Ubuntu, which is a fork that isn't community driven. The central tenants that make FOSS work don't seem to have much to do with whether it's community driven or not. Both can succeed. Yes, community driven efforts can fail. But so can corporate drive FOSS, as WordPress may well demonstrate.