Following this road is overwhelming

buckykat, 9 months ago

There is no ethical way to monetize software because the unethical thing is capitalism itself.

monotrox, 9 months ago

Also, all the arguments for market economies being useful and the typical supply/demand arguments completely break down for a product which is infinitely duplicatable for free

buckykat, 9 months ago

Yes, hence the constant efforts to create and enforce artificial scarcity, from DRM to NFTs.

And it’s not just software. The same ideology leads to locked dumpsters full of food behind grocery stores and shoes and coats cut open before they’re thrown away at the end of the season.

leetnewb, 9 months ago

Nothing gets solved overnight. I realize that f-droid isn’t the be all end all, but hey, be the change you want to see in the world. Maybe Aurora is a stop-gap, but maximize your use of f-droid alternatives and support the developers however you can. Be active in alternatives to the big-tech sites, like posting in beehaw communities.

Poaching something I posted on Reddit /r/selfhosted at the beginning of the year:

Back of the envelope math. Assuming 30,000 active users here on /r/selfhosted x $50/yr = $1.5M / 20 -> $75,000 per year. In other words, if /r/selfhosted gave $50 per person per year, “we” could contribute $1.5M to open source projects we use. Some projects probably wouldn’t know what to do with resources and/or don’t have the infrastructure in place to receive anything, so not a panacea. But for the well organized and developed projects?

It’s sort of wild if you think about it. There are probably 10-12 very popular self-hosted applications with a very long tail, but 20-25 probably captures a very healthy cross section of use. Not every project or developer can accept monetary donations or use them effectively. But $75,000/year is median household income in the US.

There are almost certainly many more open source software and app users than there are self-hosted people - I’d imagine the self-host people are a subset. So what if we add open source software and mobile apps to the collective pool we could financially contribute to - again, $50/year/per able user - maybe the number of supportable applications goes up to 50 or 80.

Leading the thought experiment to a logical conclusion - if 80 open source projects received $75,000/year in donation income (at a minor cost to those able to pay and none to the vast majority), enough in most parts of the world to support a person and possibly a family, we would have more amazing, privacy respecting options. It doesn’t necessarily solve everything, most people naturally free-ride, and organizing many small contributions at a massive scale isn’t a solved problem itself. But, my point is that users collectively have way more power than we realize.

monotrox, 9 months ago

Just fyi, I found that aurora store often works a lot better if you log in with a google account. I know its not the best option for privacy but I kind of rely on some play store apps working and being updated and I still had a google account either way.

Also, do you have microg installed? Most google play apps work without much hassle for me on lineageOS microg

dontblink, 9 months ago

Yeah i have microg but some of the apps don’t work very well either

NaoPb, 9 months ago

I just use linux until fstab inevitably breaks again and my system won’t boot. And then I install Windows again until I am fed up with how bloated and slow it has become, and install linux again. And then the cycle continues.

dontblink, 9 months ago

This sounds like a torture

Eggyhead, 9 months ago

I have no problem monetizing with ads, I just have a problem with privacy invasive “targeted advertising” and the non consensual sale of personal data to 3rd parties and governments. I’ve yet to see a compelling argument why the ads I see need to be so specifically targeted as to warrant tracking my behavior on and between websites. As a consumer, there isn’t a distinguishable benefit to this arrangement and I don’t understand why my participation is expected.

CaptainHowdy, 9 months ago

Good thing I’m a libertarian and we hate roads!

zergling_man, 9 months ago

waaaah proprietary services keep breaking ToS-breaking third-party tools, why is foss bad?

Some FOSS stuff does suck, like peertube and pulseaudio, but your problem is pretty clearly your dependence on Google. Surprise, they hate FOSS.

Gaywallet, 9 months ago

This is a reminder to be nice on Beehaw.

MJBrune, 9 months ago

This is a childish reply, specially to misquote op and pretend their opinion doesn’t matter. It’s essentially what’s wrong with the Foss community.

mtchristo, 9 months ago

There is one good example of a good FOSS project with reliable funding and a thriving community, which is blender.

You know why blender is a success unlike other projects . Because it a very complicated piece of software that most of the community can’t just fork or start another project. so for FOSS projects to thrive they need more convergence of developpers to the same project . rather than divergence of efforts into multiple of projects. I know that this is not how FOSS works. but the reality is that without an urge to devellop projects in rivalary with the commercial ones. the resulting quality will always be mediocre.

another problem is the lack of proper documentation, It it very hard and time consuming to get familiarised with complex project codes. many of them are lacking proper documentation to encouraged newer devs to join in. the reality is that this takes time away from coding into documentation, but its an important ressource to encourage growth and participtation.

Hadriscus, 9 months ago

You make a good point with Blender being too complex of a beast to divert the effort into forks. I rely on Blender to put bread on the stable and this is only possible because of the funding & development stability.

bedrooms, 9 months ago

So, regarding convenience, sadly my apps are mostly non-FOSS. These non-FOSS devs have the advantage that they can see the source code of their FOSS alternatives. They also have FAR more workforce. So, we'll probably never reach the point where general FOSS is superior to closed source software.

The area that's primarily FOSS to me is coding. With ChatGPT it's got damn easy to build daily productivity tools that meet one's specific needs.

Security is also generally better with FOSS, but, yeah, I admit that the UI is less convenient than the proprietary ones...

orcrist, 9 months ago

I think transparency and collaboration is good for software quality in the medium run. You suggested the opposite, and in my observation that’s not true.

Yes, proprietary devs can copy the ideas, but nobody helps them find or fix bugs, or insist on interoperability or following protocols. So corners are cut, often reasonably, and then in a few years it’s full of cruft.

bedrooms, 9 months ago

Well, regarding apps I use, they typically have professional testers who find bugs and who are paid full-time to fix them. Interoperability and protocols are respected differently by different projects by FOSS and non-FOSS alike, and they aren't needed for many apps.

Something suggests me we're not going to agree, though. I'd appreciate if you further counter my points, but I'm likely not going to agree with you in that case. So, don't waste your energy.

orcrist, 9 months ago

The big FOSS apps are tested by many paid and unpaid people. So I’m not sure that your QA instincts are serving you well.

The value of interoperability and protocols all depend on your situation. If you’re temporarily doing certain standalone tasks, maybe you don’t care. Just try to avoid reinventing the wheel.

bedrooms, 9 months ago

So, regarding convenience, sadly my apps are mostly non-FOSS. These non-FOSS devs have the advantage that they can see the source code of their FOSS alternatives. They also have FAR more workforce. So, we'll probably never reach the point where general FOSS is superior to closed source software.

The area that's primarily FOSS to me is coding. With ChatGPT it's got damn easy to build daily productivity tools that meet one's specific needs.

Security is also generally better with FOSS, but, yeah, I admit that the UI is less convenient than the proprietary ones...

argv_minus_one, 9 months ago

Buggy software, not so user friendly, things don’t work, new things to learn…

Sometimes you just wanna do a simple thing and you cannot do it and that really undermines your self esteem.

You try to find little working solutions when big techs with armies of engeneers and programmers are working against you.

Sometimes you find half of your software stops working and you need to go and understand why, fixing or checking for alternatives…

All of those issues are also present in proprietary software. Not sure why you think free and open source software is unique in that regard.

In my experience, FOSS generally works better than the proprietary alternative. It tends to have fewer features, but the features it does have are designed to be useful to the user rather than to collect more money from the user, and tend to be much more thoroughly debugged. My favorite example of this right now is Thunderbird versus Microsoft Outlook; the latter has plenty of bells and whistles, but trying to use it is an utterly infuriating experience.

Also, FOSS alternatives tend to be sparse in topics that most programmers don’t personally care about or don’t have access to. For example, there are a great many FOSS text editors, because every programmer needs one, whereas FOSS business accounting software is not so common, because most programmers don’t own businesses.

Aurora store stopping to work, apps getting blocked on lineage os or rooted phones, Reddit cleaning out all those amazing third party apps, Linux that wanna make you destroy your pc at times, Firefox remaining the only real alternative to chromium (only god knows for how long yet), google wanting to DRM everything, ig blocking my account because i was using barinsta (i cannot even delete it), Newpipe getting stuck after 1/4 of the video.

That’s a problem with proprietary software (i.e. proprietary apps and websites), not free and open source software (i.e. your browser, operating system, and Reddit client).

When a business refuses to do business with me because I use FOSS, I take that as an insult, and take my business elsewhere if I can. I suggest you do the same.

Can’t we just find a new way of monetize stuff without ads?

Not as long as we practice capitalism, no. As long as investors demand that businesses grow faster than inflation, those businesses will look for ways to take more and more of your money, forever, until they finally collapse, and then the cycle of enshittification starts anew. What you want is stability and equality, but stability and equality are anathema to someone who wants to be richer than everyone else.

Rentlar, 9 months ago

Like another user said, take as much as you can comfortable handle at one time, as FOSS cold-turkey can be exhausting.

It’s a bit like trying to stop using Nestle or another multinational’s shit, once you realize how many brands and sub-brands are owned by the big bad, it can make one feel pointless doing it (like just switching from one to another big bad). Replace one thing at a time to make it easier on yourself.

Think of it this way. If FOSS is a rebel movement in the eyes of a world oligopolized by Big Tech, you can’t just expect to overturn the core in a day. You take it slow and let the open-source movement and your desire to try out promising FOSS software one at a time drive you to become a knowledgeable power user, rather than trying to force upon yourself a lifestyle you might not necessarily want at this moment.

nxtequal, 9 months ago

This is a great way to think about it… as much as I would love to completely drop the companies I hate like Microsoft or Google or Twitter, sometimes you have to use it for school/work/etc. (Good God I hate Teams.) Like food conglomerates it’s just far too hard for the majority of people to live off the big tech grid.

density, 9 months ago

Can’t we just find a new way of monetize stuff without ads?

Yes it's called taxation and public funding.

Governments should prioritize floss projects when running their infrastructure and other projects. Our money is paying for these projects. We should have access to all the products of that labor.

Furthermore they should give out money for non-business cases like games and other stuff just like arts funding.

We have private corps stepping in to do this sort of thing with "google summer of code". But it would be better through some nominally democratic structure.

In all cases governments and their agents should be good floss community members. "Free like puppies"

zeekaran, 9 months ago

Mmm floss

cstine, 9 months ago

Another point of view is that OSS and Linux is absolutely amazing.

With a very limited set of exceptions, you can grab Ubuntu or Fedora or whatever, make a USB boot drive, and be in a GUI and shitposting on the internet in about 5 minutes.

Linux has grown tremendously from when I started using it, which was when you’d probably have to end up editing a config file for X11 to add the modeline so X knew the resolution and refresh rate of your monitor because there was no auto-configuration for anything more than like 640x480@60hz (and even that might not work).

And in just a few years we went from very very few games working with Wine, to damn near everything that doesn’t need ring0 rootkits working almost perfectly.

So yeah, it’s not perfect, but it’s absolutely light years from where it was 5 or 10 or 20 years ago and maybe focusing on how great it actually is vs bemoaning the things that still need work will help keep you motivated.

That said, at the end of the day software is just a hammer: you use it to build something. If Linux doesn’t work but MacOS does, or Windows, or whatever does then use what works. There’s no point in using something that doesn’t do what you want to the point that you’re angry/stressed/tired of dealing with it, because life is way too short to spend all your time fighting broken software when all you wanted to do was draw a picture or play a game or watch a movie or whatever.

lemillionsocks, 9 months ago

I am pro-opensource when possible. I use linux on desktop and laptop, I use foss android apps where available, and am happy to keep that trend alive.

That said, I am not a foss purist. There are things in my life where you gotta do what you gotta do. I have google’d android(a pixel even), I make use of steam and other proprietary game stores, I of course bank using bank things. Sometimes I waste time looking for an alternative only to find I’ve wasted my pre-bed time and Ive stayed up late chasing my tail. It’s just easier to live well.

One thing about FOSS ui is that as frustrating as it is to be forced into someone’s esoteric workflow, it isnt always counter intuitive, just different from how the mainstream does it. There have been a few foss programs where once it clicks I kinda get where they were coming from(and of course many others where I feel the devs are intentionally out there spreading chaos)

Penguincoder, 9 months ago

Can’t we just find a new way of monetize stuff without ads?

Just typo squat an NPM module with a cryptocurrency miner.

jk do not do this