Adderbox76

Please don’t lump us all together.

The full saying is “Free as in Speech, not Free as in Beer”

Basically the “Free” in free means that it’s free to do with as you please, modify, etc… But not free as in “here’s a free product…like getting a free beer”

I’m not really talking about development as simply programming. There are a lot of aspects that go into development, yes…programming is a big aspect.

But there’s also bug reporting (every user should know how to report bugs because it’s contributes to making the program better).

Heck, you can even download the documentation and give it a proof-read if you’re good with grammar and spot some errors if you don’t want to commit to helping to write it.

I know a lot of people who spend a lot of time in the various subs for the software, taking care to answer questions from other users who need help doing this or that. That again, is contributing.

Then there’s simply what we’re doing right now. Bringing attention to the projects online getting them more visibility.

Development of a successful FOSS app isn’t just about programming. And even small contributions count. If you can donate some coin, great! If you can’t, or don’t want to, there are a thousand other things that you can do to contribute to that apps community.

I emphasized the word community because that is exactly what it is. The ethos of Open Source; what makes it different than Propietary software, is that the users are an inherent part of the development process in ways both big and small. In propietary software, there is a distinct line between the developers and the users. Developers have multiple stakeholders of which the user base is certainly one, but also include advertisers, software makers, hardware makers, etc…

FOSS software, in contrast, is much more a communitee effort with the involvement of the community in the way of bug reports, literature, education and even simply championing the project because they don’t have millions of dollars in advertising budgets.

Sorry, I get a little passionate, so this is longer than I intended it to be.

But tl;dr, contributing isn’t just about money or just about programming. There’s a thousand ways big and small, and my issue isn’t with people not “paying” necessarily. But people who use it for free and don’t bother filing bug reports, don’t join the community online to help answer user questions, etc…

A good FOSS citizen should be an active part of the community. Or donate money to the project if they’d rather not.

This software is extensively free (as in beer)

No…it’s not. It’s free to download and to use, but the expectation that people contribute in exchange for using it is how FOSS has always worked.

That doesn’t necessarily mean monetary. But contributing can be helping with user guides, or making youtube tutorials, or even just extending the reach of the program to friends and family by talking about it.

There are many ways to contribute, and money is one. But the notion that Open Source software is “free as in beer” has never been correct. Users have an expectation to contribute…period.

Unfortunately, there has always been the issue that a not-insignificant percentage of users of FOSS software believe the FREE part means “free as in beer” and take umbrage when asked to contribute.

I’ve long been a proponent (and I know I’m in a minority) that has advocated for a shift in the marketing of FOSS applications from “donation based” to “value based”. Meaning that the expectation is that if you enjoy the software, you pay an amount that you believe is commensurate to your use. This is voluntarily of course…if you can’t pay, than please use it and enjoy it. But those who can pay, should pay…at least a little bit, to offset the costs for those who can’t.

It’s more or less that the wording of FOSS apps needs to change so that you are expected to contribute if you can.

Just my opinion. Like I said, I know I’m in the minority. Just not a fan of the percentage of users that has always existed that (falsely) think that asking for money for your project is somehow anathema to the Open Source ideal and whine whenever they’re asked to contribute.

Our point of sale software doesn’t work with it. So they blocked the update until it does.

You do what you can, when you can. Every bit helps. Buying your iPhone used is a great thing. Self-hosting services. Also great.

There is no “one” solution that is ever going to be perfect, because the corporate greed has been allowed to run rampant as far back as the 80s. Reaganomics took us from a world where company “x” would make a product, attach a reasonable profit margin to it (usually 30-40 percent) and be happy with that. Then shareholders came along and suddenly it wasn’t about a profit margin, it was about INCREASING a stock price at the expense of everything else. At the expense of customers. At the expense of employees. At the expense of the environment.

But all we can do is do what we can, when we can. Otherwise we’re rapidly heading for the movie “Elysium”, where the super rich live on a space station (or other paradise) while the rest of us are in slums. The only difference being is that unlike Elysium, no one in the slums will notice or care, as long as long as they can spend a months wages on the new hotness each year.

Hell no. Fuck all of them. My point is get off the corporate cycle.

You’re phone isn’t dead just because two years have gone by and Apple/Samsung/Google tell you so. Stop giving them money and use your phones for longer, or preferably (though understandably much more difficult for most regular people so not really feasible for most) replace the built in software with privacy respecting alternatives that don’t send all your data back to their home office.

Apple devices could literally be the best device ever created and they should still never be purchased because Apple is a garbage company.

The shit state of the world right now is largely because we keep giving garbage companies our money because they make the shiny shit we like to be distracted by.

The absolute strategy of the billionaire corporate class is “who cares if the world burns as long as we collect all the money and keep people looking down at their screens so they don’t notice.”

Fuck them. And fuck anyone who keeps the status quo going by shelling out for their shit. And doubly fuck anyone who then shills for them on social media.

Hard to pin a number on it, percentage-wise.

• Desktop and laptop are both running Linux.
• Chromebook wiped and running Linux.
• Most software, but definitely not all. Steam, Resolve being the two biggest non-foss items on my desktop, while my ex-Chromebook has a proprietary screenwriting program, as well as OnlyOffice instead of LibreOffice because I need much better Excel compatibility for work and LO still isn’t quite there for it.
• Phone android. But not entirely de-googled. Replaced drive with syncthing, keep with Joplin, photos, phone, and messenger with their Fossify equivalents and disabled the originals. Replaced gboard with heliboard, etc…

But can’t/won’t completely replace the OS yet because both google pay and android auto are essential to me and getting them working on most replacements is still a royal pain in the butt.

So let’s call it 80%, maybe a bit more?

It’s been a long time since I last installed Linux on a two hard-drive system, so take this advice as “likely not necessary, but will probably fix your issue”

The installer asks whether or not you want to “replace” the existing OS or install alongside. And if you’re fairly new to linux (like I was at the time) it can be tricky to see at a glance which hard-drive you want to install it to and which you don’t.

So to be doubly cautious and make sure that didn’t happen, I simply unplugged my secondary harddrive during the install so that the installer would automatically be reading the correct one. Then all I had to do was choose “replace” or “install alongside” without worrying about anything else.

The drawback to that was, once the install was complete and I re-attached my second drive, I had to configure it to auto-mount and do some work on that, but at least my computer was working.

If I’m being honest, So many little distros just come and go that I’ve stopped bothering to learn about any of them until they have enough support that I know the devs aren’t going to just vanish in six months.

They’re ‘taking inspiration’ if you will, transforming it into something completely different.

That is not at all what takes place with A.I.

An A.I. doesn’t “learn” like a human does. It aggregates multiple chunks from multiple sources. It’s just really really tiny chunks so it’s hard to tell sometimes.

That’s why you can ask two AI’s to write a story based on the same prompt and some of their lines will be exactly the same. Because it’s not taking inspiration from, it’s literally copying bits and pieces of other works and it happens that they both chose that particular bit.

If you do that when writing a paper in university it’s called plagerism.

Get the fuck out of here with your “A.I. takes inspiration…” it copies nothing more. It doesn’t add anything new to the sum total of the creative zeitgeist because it’s just remixes of things that already exist.

correction… always were worthless.

It’s always been a con game.

Their so-called “value” was always determined by the ability of the person shilling it to make up bullshit. Literally the definition of a “confidence” game. Same problem as crypto in general. It’s only has value if you have confidence in the person shilling it. The moment that person loses the confidence of their marks, the entire thing crumbles to nothing because it isn’t backed by any real tangible assets.