Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1

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- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
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If everyone moved to open source non-profit solutions, the tech industry would lose billions (programming.dev)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm a FOSS (free and open source software) contributor and enthusiast. So I prefer to use such products (Lemmy instead of Reddit, Linux instead of Windows, Firefox instead of Chrome, Signal instead of WhatsApp, you get the idea). Was just thinking that if everyone moved to such solutions, the tech and ad industry would lose billions of dollars. That would translate to governments losing billions of dollars in tax revenue. Would such a move ever be encouraged then by the governments?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Think of it this way. Billions of people use Windows. The OS itself is not free, and despite that it is ridiculed with trackers and adware for more profits. Operating system is a multi billion dollar industry. If everyone started using a free OS tomorrow that doesn't even have ads, the OS industry just lost everything. Sure the dev cost for linux distros would rise because of new users but that's it. For companies like MS, dev cost would only be a fraction of what they reap yearly, so that profit will get wiped out because people don't pay for it anymore, not even with their data.

Another example is of Uber. Uber is another multi billion dollar company. Uber takes 30-50% commission on each ride. If everyone started using a FOSS alternative that just charged say 5% commission to just cover the dev and infra cost and reap no profits beyond that, the ride hailing industry just lost billions.