Remote View

Free and Open Source Software @beehaw.org

1y ago

TC on open source evangelists

TechConnectify@mas.to - Oh my gosh I just figured it out.

Okay, all you open source evangelist people: your knee-jerk reaction to come at people who are talking about a problem with whatever commercial software they use and suggest Your Favorite Alternatives™ is exactly like saying "why don't you just buy a house?" to someone complaining about their landlord.

TechConnectify@mas.to - Actually, to borrow from @DoubleA, it's worse than that.

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.

You have to be at peace with the fact that some people just want to exist and not worry about so many things. And they still have a right to complain about their situation.

Link to thread: https://mas.to/@TechConnectify/111539959265152243

200 comments

Damn, I didn't know people couldn't financially afford installing Linux.
- "Open source is free if you don't value your time." (forgot who that quote is from)
  Sometimes the time investment is small, but especially for complex software, the friction of switching from one imperfect (proprietary) software to another imperfect (open) software makes it not really make much sense unless the issue is severe (house is half destroyed).
  
  This is basically what he was saying. Open source tends to be a much less plug-and-play out-of-the-box experience, and usually requires at least some IT know-how for it to not be an infuriating experience. A lot of FOSS advocates compensate for that by kind of being that over explaining bro meme and get kinda pushy about getting people over the technical barriers because they want FOSS to be widely adopted and be a real alternative, and for good reasons. But most people don't have the time or patience to stumblefuck their way through IT issues, they just want the shit to work.
  It's a fair criticism, accessibility is a big problem in FOSS. We've come a long way, but there's still a long way to go.
- Time is money after all.
  You can ask a CEO to waste hours upon hours learning Linux, or they could install Windows and make bank using the hours saved.

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.
- Even then that's not that accurate, more like move to a different place. It's inconvenient and might not have all the same things you wanted/liked from your old place but you can actually change things in the new place if you really want to
  
  More like moving to France. For me it wouldn't be an issue. My french isn't bad and I learn languages quickly.
  I assume that's not true of everyone, just like everyone isn't great at PC stuff.
  
  Then you find out that while the new place doesn't have the problems the old place had, it has a whole new set of problems.
  Sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don't.

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.
- When I say "don't think of a panda", what do you think of? Pretty much the same thing with saying "don't recommend me FOSS options" lol
  
  No. Thinking about the panda is involuntary in that scenario. Typing up and submitting an explicitly unwanted response is not involuntary. It's a thing a person chooses to do expressly against the wishes of the person making the request.
  
  I'm on lemmy. Obviously, I think about Marxism-Leninism.
- That's the biggest annoyance with mastodon

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.
- The whole point is that a bunch of people don't have the technical skills to figure out FOSS. Sure, sometimes the ux is just as good as the main competitor, but in my experience, usually it isnt and has a decent learning curve
  
  I'd be more sympathetic to that mindset if it was anyone other than TC saying this. He's a smart dude and I have every confidence he could figure out how to use a new piece of software.
  
  ui/ux sucks because it is hard to onboard designer into FOSS logic.
  
  It's an interesting take from a tech YouTuber to say they are not good with tech
  
  This.
  Last month, I installed Mint, which is my first ever Linux install. I chose it because people said it would be the most hassle-free.
  The bugs currently plaguing me include:
  Steam's UI scaling is off, to the extent that I practically need a magnifying glass to read it.
  Bluetooth has now decided that it no longer wants to automatically connect to my speaker.
  Discord won't share audio during screen sharing anymore.
  But the big one, the one that made me stop and think, was the keyboard. Right out of the box, my function keys (brightness, airplane mode, etc) would not work. This turned out to be because the laptop was not recognizing its keyboard as a libinput device, but treating it as a HID sensor hub instead. To fix it, I had to:
  Find similar problems on the forums and recognize which were applicable to my case.
  Learn what the terminal was and how to copy code into it.
  Learn that the terminal can be opened from different folders, which alters the meaning of the commands.
  Learn the file system, including making how to make hidden files visible.
  Figure out that a bunch of steps in the forum were just creating a text file, and that any text editor would do.
  Figure out there were typos and missing steps in the forum solutions.
  Learn what a kernel is, figure out mine was out of date, and update it.
  Do it all over again a month later when for some reason my function keys stopped working again.
  For me, this was not a big deal. It did take me two evenings to solve, but that's mostly because I'm lazy. But for someone with low technical literacy (such as my mom, who barely grasps the concept of ad blockers in Google Chrome), every one of these bullet points would be a monumental accomplishment.
  The FOSS crowd can be a bit insular, and they seem to regularly forget that about 95% of the people out there have such low technical literacy that they struggle to do anything more involved than turn on a lightbulb.
- I follow him on Mastodon, and I think many regular users misunderstand his specific problems. They're unique due to his huge number of followers, and I think that if we want Mastodon to grow, it wouldn't be a bad idea to include more tools for folks with large followings.

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
- you have to admit this is one hell of an edge case. the vast majority don't have your sister's 'problem'
  
  I think the majority of us also don’t want to play tech support.
- If I had you as a sibling I would use a lot more foss stuff then lol.
- Yeah, and that is their opinion, which is as valid as yours.
  They are the ones who will have to use the software day in and out, they should be the ones to decide which software they use.
  
  okay but you still don't get to act like i'm saying "just buy a house!"

@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.
- How many times have you setup Fedora or any other Linux distribution and have every single thing working from the get go?
  I'm talking drivers, audio, networking, libraries, DNF, repositories, plugins, runtime dependencies, ...
  That house isn't furnished.
  And don't forget, plenty of popular software isn't even compatible. Meaning you got to use alternative software that doesn't always do what you want it to do.
  So buy a new couch, cause that one isn't getting in.
  
  How many times have you setup Fedora or any other Linux distribution and have every single thing working from the get go?
  "Every"
  
  How many times have you setup Fedora or any other Linux distribution and have every single thing working from the get go?
  I’m talking drivers, audio, networking, libraries, DNF, repositories, plugins, runtime dependencies, …
  Is proprietary software any easier than that though? Don't you have to put in much more time removing all the spyware and bloat they put in and then spend all your time perpetually fighting against forced updates and applications being installed without your permission?
  Whereas with Fedora my experience is more or less install it and forget it.
  The "it's easier" argument for proprietary software I think died at least 15 years ago.
  Choice of applications is a different argument.
  
  With 0 experience with linux i installed nobara without any problems. I didnt need to install anything else(edit: excluding the software you can install in the "welcome" app), to change something in the settings etc
  The only "hard" thing i had to do was to disable secure boot in the BIOS
  
  I think you are talking about the situation that might be true 15 years ago, vut right now you'll be hardpressed to find anything that doesn't work out of the box on any modern distribution. I don't know what plugins and dependancies don't work on your machine, but I assure you it's not a universal experience, far from it.
  Also, most of the software that you use on Linux is free, so you don't "buy" new couch if your old is built specifically for your old house, you learn to sit on any of the new ones that you can get for free at any moment
- It's somewhere in between, you're not building your own software, but oss software does usually tend to need more work. It's like telling someone with a shitty landlord to move to a new house which they get to own, but it has no paint, or lighting, or flooring and they have to move their furniture and learn a different layout
  
  And If it doesn't require more work, it requires different work. The beast you know is easier and more comfortable to understand than the beast you don't know, even if it would be more beneficial to learn to deal with the newcomer.
  
  Or even, just move to my building that has a much better landlord, but it's a 5 storey walkup.
  Some folks will be able to use that no issue, some folks might removed but be happy in the end, and for some folks it'd be a nigh impossibility to do so.
  And all of that, provided the house they have to be in, is within their control.
  
  It’s like telling someone with a shitty landlord to move to a new free house which they get to own
- Well. And maybe the new house doesn't support their bed.
  
  i mean yeah but they can just dual boot to metaphorically keep the old house too
- Isn't the point that you don't have a choice to just buy a house, because there are obstacles that prevent it. In the same way, I don't have a choice to use Linux or whatever other foss alternative to the stuff I use daily because my laptop is owned by the company I work for and their policies dictate that it runs windows etc.

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?
- I agree. As inaccurate as Technology Connection's statement is, this post here is kind of...distasteful.
- Is there a community where a take like this would be considered and welcome? Asking because I would like to follow that community…
  
  same tbh
- I think it's a discussion worth having, since it's clearly a recurring problem.
  
  with all do respect, what discussion can we have here other than dunking on technology connections with an out of context post that misses the second post that clarifies what hes actually saying?

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.

Are houses free now?
- Exactly! I actually talked back and forth with him a bit and eventually said that "complaining about a missing FOSS feature is like complaining to the volunteer ladeler at a soup kitchen about the lack of a gluten-free option. It's just not the path to getting the change you want."
  In the end he seemed to get what I was saying, but was still irritated. I've been really learning lately how hard it is for some people not to see themselves as customers in FOSS land.
  
  I’ve been really learning lately how hard it is for some people not to see themselves as customers in FOSS land.
  It perplexes me, because when people get free stuff that isn't FOSS, they have no place to complain. Their only option is to pay for the software, but most don't. As soon as they see a place they can complain, they go twitter on the place.

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.
- I actually did jump into the replies and went back and forth with him a bit and I do think he (finally) understood the FOSS perspective. I think a lot of people get very hung up on this concept of a customer-product relationship and for some people it's a very hard mindset to break out of. I often forget that while "FOSS" is software, the "free software movement" is not really about software, it's political.
  
  The political aspect is especially true. The FOSS confusion is often similar to the communism confusion, especially when it comes to small-scale things.
  Take the concept of a neighborhood garden that no one is expected to pay money into, for instance. "Wait, so the people here who like gardening don't expect me to pay or provide labor unless I'm able to? What do you mean i should take only according to my needs? What about Jimothy, he never helps but he takes way more than I do! What do you mean Jimothy contributes as he is able or in other ways? How can i trust everyone to be fair?"
  Take the money for goods/services exchange out of the equation and it can really throw people off.

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.
- In this thread, everyone getting caught up on the first toot and not the second where he clarifies his point.
  To be fair, the second part is not included in the image.
  
  Lemmy doesn't allow for multiple images as far as I'm aware, so I did the next best thing: put it in the description
- your landlord (the provider) takes care of all the maintenance
  this is a dirty lie :P

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

"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.
- Alternatives aren't always a solution.
  
  You can't know until you try it.
  Professionals are trained on already available answers, often target marketed, which moves forward the penetration of such answers into broad society.
  This does not mean they are good or bad, just popular.
  Any alternative solution will always be compared to the more popular, even if better.

this is a really dumb take lmao

What do you mean not every casual computer user wants to wrestle with drivers, troubleshooting and running everything through wine all the time?
- I literally cannot remember the last time I had a driver issue with Linux but go off
  
  Try being stuck with an Nvidia card
  
  Multiple monitors, touch screens, tablet digitizers remain a letdown constantly. Not always fully broken, but falling just short enough that actually fixing it is a pain and just living without the feature (or Linux) is easier.
  
  Pre Linux 2.6

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.

Except it is actually the inverse. FOSS is usually free to access and fork. Whereas commercial walled gardens cost you thousands.
- The cost of something isn't always in the form of money. In many cases with Foss there are comprises in either simplicity, stability, documentation, or compatabiliry.
  For instance I can boot my machine into a live garuda instance and it runs great, but as soon as I install it, it runs like trash. I spend something like 3 hours fiddling trying to get it going then wipe and try to install smaugos and it wont even boot. I install debian and it works okay but sluggish. Popos works fine. 2 days of fiddling around and I find something that works. Windows may cost more than just money, but it worked out of the box and I didn't have to fiddle or try a bunch of different distros. We can go down that rabbit hole, but let's look at other things.
  Foss often has volunteer support that can be hit or miss and often requires more advanced knowledge of the os or software. There's also often toxicity like people shaming for not knowing everything about the application or os. Commercial support is often dedicated and may even remote into your computer. I'm not saying Foss can't do that, but I've never heard of it for free.
  FOSS doesn't work nearly as easily or reliably as commercial software a lot of the time. Nextcloud is a good example. There are a million ways to install it, but now you need to learn docker, or how to setup a web server and even then maybe the docker image is buggy or straight up doesn't work. The different Linux distros is another example.
  Then there's the learning curve. Even if FOSS has 1:1 parity in functionality, it often comes at the cost of learning a LOT about a new application, or the functionality is different or harder to use compared to a commercial alternative.
  Don't get me wrong I live foss. I self host, I'm slowly getting rid of windows and degoogling. But there is cost to do all of this, even if its not monetary. Plus not everyone has the time, patience, or interest in it.
  
  Then why is photoshop so buggy?

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
- Poor people don’t have time above all else. A lot of times they are working 2 jobs, sometimes with those jobs doing shady scheduling where you are essentially on call without being paid for being on call.
  Also tons of people just aren’t as smart as you are at computer things. Guess what? If they were you wouldn’t be as cool as you are for being able to do it.
  I’ve found everyone has something they can teach me, whether it’s how to be or how not to be.
  A great way to use your talent would be to assemble the resources that made you good at something and post it online so others can be lifted up by your knowledge.
  Everyone in this entire world’s life is at minimum as complex and nuanced as your own. It’s kinda rough to assume laziness of people you don’t know well.
  I’ve been up and down, and I ain’t better than anyone on here, I’m just trying to add a little of my perspective.
  
  This is actually my argument for general consumer AI access. That person you're describing already wouldn't be able to pay an artist for a commission, but they can take 15 minutes to generate some images that make them happy. People deserve anything we can get that brings us joy in this time sensitive world.
  
  Ahhh.... i suck at computers. Nowadays anyway.
  But FOSS generally has the tech nerd I wish I was going over it, finding and squawking loudly about vulnerabilities, instead of quietly writing backdoors in.
  No, it's not as stable and easy out of the box, but it's less likely to turn you into ICE because your name is half mexican
- Open cad just isn't the same though
  
  yeah, freeCAD is kinda crappy compared to even F360

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.
- Buying a house costs so much money and time that most people .... Suggesting FOSS to replace “whatever commercial software they use” is the polar opposite, in that it’s literally free
  Suggesting people 'just' buy a house is unhelpful, because it assumes they have enough money to do so.
  Suggesting people 'just' use FOSS is often unhelpful, because it assumes they have sufficient computer abilities and/or have the time to learn how.
  Some kid who's just started writing his thesis and enjoys fiddling with stuff? Sure, recommend LaTex.
  Some overstretched parent of two, who gets home at 8 and just needs to edit a powerpoint for a presentation at the end of the week? No, suggesting they install a piece of software, something they've never done before, and learn to use this piece of software they've never used, to finish something that needs to be done by the end of the night, and that they're almost certainly going to be using in an office (ie. windows/office) environment? Not helpful.
  
  some people don't know about FOSS alternatives, i dob't think i need a PHD in computer science to idk try kdenlive intead of sony vegas
  
  The difference here is mountains vs. molehills.
  And in most cases, they obviously do have sufficient ability to learn how, because they were able to learn the commercial software they're currently using.
  As for time, yes, learning always takes time. (Thus my comparison to learning a new commute.) But suggesting that someone learn something new is not stupid or unreasonable, especially if the thing they currently use is not serving them well.
  In response to that paragraph you edited in after I replied:
  I don't know why you would think that cherry-picked and extremely specific scenario is somehow representative of the general subject we're discussing. Of course situations exist where learning alternative software isn't the best answer. That doesn't make it wrong for people to suggest the alternatives. Quite often, they're perfectly viable, and it's perfectly reasonable to try to help by making someone aware of them.
  
  @Hyperreality
  "Suggesting people 'just' use FOSS is often unhelpful, because it assumes they have sufficient computer abilities and/or have the time to learn how."
  I mean, it took my parents in law 10 minutes to learn and they're almost 80. Realistically, if you're using a computer, you have sufficient computer abilities and time to learn Linux.
- What an idiotic comparison.
  .
  …is incredibly reductive and combative. The world needs less of that, not more.
  Be the change, homie.
  In any case, do recall that many of us are in enterprise environments where we're not the only decision makers. Plus, FOSS without reliable support contracts isn't workable for many use cases. If something in FOSS goes tits up none of my customers will be satisfied with the great discussion I had with the devs about it and how they'll totally get to it after Furrycon.
  You might not be paying for software in money but you're going to pay for it, one way or another.
  
  Be the change, homie.
  When someone claims two obviously different things are exactly the same, pointing out that the comparison is idiotic is not combative, homie.
  Edit: More to the point, defending one's community by pointing out the idiocy of an attack is not combative.
  You might not be paying for software in money but you’re going to pay for it, one way or another.
  Indeed. As I hinted in my comment, and stated more clearly in another one.
- The cost isn’t the software, it’s the time, energy and risk involved in using it.
  The combativeness was deployed to fight off combativeness.

Ah yes, put your problem out in the internet, then get befuddled when people suggest solutions. Classic.
- If they ask help with a problem in software, then telling them to switch to a completely different software is never a solution.
  If the software is forced by the company they work for, then they do not have a choice to install a different one.
  So stop looking at problems from only your perspective.
  
  It’s the only perspective I have, unfortunately.
- But they are not solutions to the problem. They are asking you to fully abandon the problem and tackle a completely new set of problems.
  The most annoying part is that they know this, they just want to signal their own moral superiority.
  
  Using a different tool is not abandoning the problem.
- Ah come on, don't tell me you've never ranted on the internet, with no interest in a solution, just to rant
  
  But he was asking for a solution, people just weren't giving solutions that were suitable

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

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

It's more like telling someone "Why don't you just build your own house?"
- brb recompiling my porch
  
  Recompiling my foundation and hoping it still holds the house up when I'm done.
- That was true in 2000. The situation had improved a lot by, like, 2005, but it was still pretty rough. You were still likely to have to drop to a console at some point even in 2010.
  These days there's 20 distributions that are easier to install, use, and maintain than Windows, and you don't even have to know ls to use it.
  
  That is great!
  And how many of those work out of the box on every type of hardware including new laptops without having to look up compatibility?

He's still being a dick about this?? Thought he'd chilled out a bit but now he's lost all damn sense about the matter. Maybe he's at least gotten past insulting all Linux users in his videos and will be keeping this crap to a somewhat more appropriate environment.
- I and a few other people kinda chatted with him a while and the reality kinda seemed to click with him? He was very stuck on "it is a product and I am the customer" mindset that is very ingrained into so many people. He said filing a bug report felt "dehumanizing" and we tried to illustrate that it can actually feel empowering if you view yourself as a collaborator, not a customer. I think he's coming around.
  At least I hope he is because (opinion on FOSS aside) he really is one of the all-time best creators on YouTube right now.

Not to buy a house but to get a house for free?

Who is this and why should we care about his opinion?
- He's a pretty awesome educational YouTuber but this is a dumb take. To be fair, he's not a programmer or software guy. I believe his background is in engineering.
  
  Even without being a programmer, associating Free Software with a MASSIVE purchase is bonkers.
- Valid question. After reading his opinions, why would anyone follow his mastodon?
  If he's a good YouTuber, it's like following a footballer who has shit opinions. I'll watch you play football, but screw following your nonsense stream of consciousness.

You can pay each month or be free forever.

This feels like gossip and I wish that Lemmy would let me mark this post as hidden.
- Mastodon, like Twitter is a gossip platform, as far as I can tell. Too bad you can't filter out screenshots of other social media posts en masse.

It looks like what they were trying to convey is apparently that it can be a large time and effort commitment that most people don't have the technical expertise to figure out, which is a fairly reasonable argument in some contexts, but I do not think they conveyed it very well and they're being kind of a dick about it in the replies, so idk. I understand the point, but this is NOT the way to get it across.

This is just wrong, people stay stuck with propertiary software either out of habit or not wanting to learn new things (Assuming there is alternatives ofc). People who rent often have no other option. People who use propertiary software have other options they just don't care ebough to utilize them.
- Or they're forced to by corporate. I can complain endlessly about Outlook but guess what? At the end of the day my ass has to use Outlook.
  
  school [..]

Eh, sounds like the average person in that he just wants to stick to what is familiar to him. Can't save 'em all
- It's not always wanting to stick to what they know. I have a few programs I hate and every time I have to use them I try to find a better alternative. Unfortunately, none of the other programs I tried had the functionality I needed to use them.

Thats like the exact opposite

That's use FreeLord the OSS landlord alternative

That makes no sense. I think he should use home assistant for his home automation.

200 comments