this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
287 points (96.4% liked)

Showerthoughts

29637 readers
1859 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. Avoid politics (NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out)
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I'm a FOSS (free and open source software) contributor and enthusiast. So I prefer to use such products (Lemmy instead of Reddit, Linux instead of Windows, Firefox instead of Chrome, Signal instead of WhatsApp, you get the idea). Was just thinking that if everyone moved to such solutions, the tech and ad industry would lose billions of dollars. That would translate to governments losing billions of dollars in tax revenue. Would such a move ever be encouraged then by the governments?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] NinjaAssassinKitty@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The cost is hardly in the software. It’s for the support and setup. Even if governments switch to Linux, they’d need some sort of support contract in place with a vendor.

[–] herrvogel@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

And I know from first hand experience that those "not the corporate one" vendors that (often local) governments try to get their stuff from are not able to offer their products or services at comparable quality. Years ago my public university, via some half-baked initiative by the state in an attempt to protect data and employ local talent and whatnot, tried to ditch Dropbox and O365 etc. in favor of some locally made stuff. It was an unmitigated disaster, especially the absolute piece of shit that was supposed to replace Dropbox. On the rare occasions that it did actually work, it simply was nowhere near as useful or convenient or performant as Dropbox. As a result people avoided that shit like the plague and started sharing their files through other, arguably shadier platforms instead. Until they finally rolled the actually usable alternative that's in service now, the documents were hosted on all sorts of shitty websites with no access control.

AFAIK the Office alternative failed completely and they're back to where they were, maybe even deeper into 365 actually.