4 ms·

> Free Software gets you nice, simple, easy to use services While there are many upsides to free software, usability and user friendliness were never one of th

by runn1ng 12y ago

> Free Software gets you nice, simple, easy to use services While there are many upsides to free software, usability and user friendliness were never one of them. Hackability, sure. But most people don't care, let's be frank. I will use Hacker News because it works despite being proprietary software.

vitno 12y ago
Hacker News is not proprietary software. It's open source under the Perl Foundation Artistic License 2.0 (FSF compatible). It's even written in Arc Lisp, which is nifty. Some of us do care.
- runn1ng 12y ago
  Nice, I did not know. Really Where is the source code?
  - julionc 12y ago
    The language: http://www.paulgraham.com/arc.html http://www.paulgraham.com/arc.html Source code https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/ https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/
    - runn1ng 12y ago
      It seems like the source for Arch discussion, that seems to be similar, but slightly different, to Hacker News. But it's better than nothing.
TaylorAlexander 12y ago
But free software can do things proprietary can't, like maintain trust with the user and provide maximum good. Think about all the good things people could do with facebook but have been blocked because facebook wants to protect their one narrow use case. Social Networks won't reach their full potential until they're totally free software, because facebook has such narrow interests. So sure, you're happy for now, but billions of people are getting spied on and getting sick of it, and out of work programmers are increasing for number every year. As users get more fed up with proprietary companies jerking them around, I feel like people will start to demand Free Software. However this may be what all engineers who fall for Free Software think... I make Free Hardware so my plan is to prove why Free is better to people. We'll see if I succeed! I just recently realized that was the issue so I am working on that now.

by runn1ng 12y ago

vitno 12y ago

Hacker News is not proprietary software. It's open source under the Perl Foundation Artistic License 2.0 (FSF compatible). It's even written in Arc Lisp, which is nifty. Some of us do care.

runn1ng 12y ago
Nice, I did not know. Really Where is the source code?
- julionc 12y ago
  The language: http://www.paulgraham.com/arc.html http://www.paulgraham.com/arc.html Source code https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/ https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/
  - runn1ng 12y ago
    It seems like the source for Arch discussion, that seems to be similar, but slightly different, to Hacker News. But it's better than nothing.

TaylorAlexander 12y ago

But free software can do things proprietary can't, like maintain trust with the user and provide maximum good. Think about all the good things people could do with facebook but have been blocked because facebook wants to protect their one narrow use case. Social Networks won't reach their full potential until they're totally free software, because facebook has such narrow interests. So sure, you're happy for now, but billions of people are getting spied on and getting sick of it, and out of work programmers are increasing for number every year. As users get more fed up with proprietary companies jerking them around, I feel like people will start to demand Free Software. However this may be what all engineers who fall for Free Software think... I make Free Hardware so my plan is to prove why Free is better to people. We'll see if I succeed! I just recently realized that was the issue so I am working on that now.