Free and Open Source Software

Damn, I didn't know people couldn't financially afford installing Linux.

Better comparison would've been something like "Annoyed with your landlord? Go build a cabin in the woods!". Like, that's straight-up appealing to some people, but it's also not just something anyone and everyone can do.

Guy wanted to vent about smart thermostats, explicitly said he doesn't need advice and got bajillion responses with advice, mostly from FOSS folks who couldn't contain themselves. I'd be annoyed too.

Translation:"I refuse to try the thing that people tell me might make my life better. I prefer to rant and complain to random strangers on a public forum rather than accepting that a solution to my problem may exist"

It's funny, this is not at all his stance when it comes to hardware and appliances. It doesn't even sound like something he'd say.

When I say to my sister "I will literally buy the house for you, help you move in, and give you my phone number you can call any time you need any help with it" and she comes back with "I'd rather sit here and complain about my landlord" I think I have a right to get angry

@morrowind funny to find this here when I wrote my reply just a while ago:

"It's like talking to someone who is in a crappy apartment as though they have the agency and skills to stake out a plot of land and build their own home."

Maybe if you're suggesting them to install Linux From Scratch, then yes, it is.

If you're suggesting them them to install any of the many very simple (and very usable OOTB) distros like Fedora, then it's not.

In that case it's like the house is free, already built and furnitured, and right next to their own; but they have to move their personal belongings from one house to the other and learn a different room layout.

Sure, they still have the right to complain about how their landlord treats them like crap. But they sound pretty damn stupid if they do so while having an available free house right next door, and refusing to move because they don't want to learn a new room layout.

Are you trying to gather a lynch mob here? I think posts like these are quite bad taste. Most wont have a good understanding of the situation.

Does this really fit this community?

That's goofy.

It's like someone hearing someone complaining about a slum lord and pointing them to a company that gives out free parcels of land with free trailers on them. It's not usually, like, a mansion, but it'll do.

Normally, I would reply to the guy, because, you know, he's a human being, but there's so many replies, I doubt, he can actually read all of them and potentially someone else has already made that point.

Anyways, I feel like something he kind of misses here is that many of us do it from a heartfelt place. Like, we're all techies. We've all used commercial software to a point where we've grown so frustrated with it that we decided it is a waste of time.

So, it's not us saying "Why don't you go and just have more time/money?".
Rather, it's us saying "This thing is wasting your time? Here is a solution that I felt wasted less time in the long run.".

Yes, sometimes that does miss the mark, because not every complaint is looking for a solution. Or because we may be frustrated with restrictions of commercial software, which are not a problem for less techy people. Or even because we're embedded in this tech world and are hoping to make it a better place, which someone just quickly visiting may not care about.

But other times, I do just happen to know a lot about technology and a non-techy genuinely did not know about the solution I suggested and is actually really appreciative of me bringing it up. It does happen. And it's not easy to discern who would appreciate a suggestion and who won't.

"This program is really expensive and I keep having to buy a new computer every two years because it gets so slow."

You're being fucked with, when there are alternatives out there.

But that is none of my business.

You could be tied to a specific piece of shit you don't like because it's what your job requires you to use.

I had to work with Salesforce and when I'd complain about it, Id be given all sorts of alternatives. These are nice but... The dude in charge of what the rest of us had to use liked Salesforce, so we all suffered.

In this thread, everyone getting caught up on the first toot and not the second where he clarifies his point.

If you step past the initial investment of buying a house, the analogy makes perfect sense. When you rent an apartment, your landlord (the provider) takes care of all the maintenance; you just live there and you get what you get. When you own a home, you take care of all of the maintenance, but you get to set the place up however you like. This isn't that different from a lot of FOSS out there.

this is a really dumb take lmao

Are houses free now?

Except it is actually the inverse. FOSS is usually free to access and fork. Whereas commercial walled gardens cost you thousands.

You are not buying a house, if the software is free it's more like a expropriation

What do you mean not every casual computer user wants to wrestle with drivers, troubleshooting and running everything through wine all the time?

Because the reason companies are brazen enough to pull the crap that they do is because most people have viewpoints along the lines of this post. Reddit for example has almost certainly performed a cost-benefit analysis and wouldn't have locked down their API like they did if they suspected an actual risk of enough people switching to Lemmy and other alternatives where the lost revenue would have been significant. And they were right, the vast majority of Reddit users tangentially looked at Lemmy and similar alternatives but are still on Reddit. The people actually here on Lemmy saying they'll never use Reddit again are a tiny minority of Reddit's total userbase.

I'm genuinely surprised that a creator who has a ton of op-eds in his videos and constantly pushes for electrification and heat pumps citing their lower environmental impact, which is very correct and noble of him mind you, doesn't apply the same logic to software.

Also, obviously it's not good to be a dick when promoting FLOSS as you're more likely to push people away from it, if that was his point then I'd tend to agree (admittedly I've been guilty of that before). Maybe that's what he meant, but he doesn't mention that in the post and seems to imply that even a friendly or matter of fact suggestion that a FLOSS alternative is available is unacceptable. Like are you complaining just to complain or are you complaining because you want suggestions on how to solve the problem? I don't know what his experience with FLOSS discourse is, but I've personally complained about a proprietary software, had someone point out that an alternative exists, and immediately tried it out and often end up switching. Literally the other day, I was complaining about the Unix cp command, someone suggested I use rsync instead because "it's better", and what do you know they were right.

is exactly like saying “why don’t you just buy a house?” to someone complaining about their landlord.

What an idiotic comparison.

Buying a house costs so much money and time that most people cannot afford to, and those who can generally must go into debt for most of their remaining lives in order to do so. Suggesting FOSS to replace "whatever commercial software they use" is the polar opposite, in that it's literally free (usually in both senses of the word). It's more like suggesting that someone consider a new route to commute from home to work.

Also, this opening...

Okay, all you open source evangelist people: your knee-jerk reaction to come at people

...is incredibly reductive and combative. The world needs less of that, not more.

It really isn't though.

A day or two or even a week to get the hang of something isn't a 40-year mortgage

If buying an house was free, you can be sure I would definitely tell that to every fucking anyone.

Ah yes, put your problem out in the internet, then get befuddled when people suggest solutions. Classic.

Who is this and why should we care about his opinion?

It's more like telling someone "Why don't you just build your own house?"

Very convenient that you left out a lot of context, but I'm an open source enthusiast and he's not wrong.