this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2025
175 points (80.7% liked)
Open Source
38350 readers
658 users here now
All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!
Useful Links
- Open Source Initiative
- Free Software Foundation
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Software Freedom Conservancy
- It's FOSS
- Android FOSS Apps Megathread
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to the open source ideology
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The challenge is that we're not just selling software, we're selling an idea - the idea that users deserve control over their computing. We're not competing on the proprietary software marketplace, we're offering an alternative to it.
We are already seeing the proprietary software world enshittify. More and more "non-tech" people are looking for a way out. The challenge is to demonstrate that these problems are inherent to the world of proprietary software and not just because "Google is evil."
Sure it's a challenge, but it's not necessary for getting people to use the software. One does not require the other, but it is a gateway to being able to do that.
It is self-evident that free software with open licensing and no strings attached is a superior and more beneficial ownership model than closed source paid licensing. That part I don't think anyone needs to be convinced of.
It's just not necessary to make that one of your core beliefs, or add several others, before using the software.
As someone who has both technical and nontechnical people in their family, I call bs. Even if it is partially self-evident (in the fact that you dont need to sign into an account or pay for it), the details, and more importantly the weight, of FOSS is often lost on people.
I've had to watch some of them walk into a rake and bruise their foreheads several times over before really absorbing it.
It's something people need to really read up on before true comprehension. That, or get burnt really really badly.
Ideology? Politics? Tomato tomatoh in my eyes. At the very least, they're nearly inseperable (think: DMCA, copyright law, etc.)