> The only ones caring about FOSS are technical minded people already working in the field.
People that fought for common hygiene standards, or labor rights, or human rights etc in the past were a minority too, because most people didn't care. But this minority was able to organize, push forward and gain support. And the fight was worth it, and improved lives of us all.
Ya think? I mean, I agree 100% that was the good fight. But to take a tangent here? That's falling apart, world wide.
It's falling apart because the average person wants to be "smart". I applaud this, the fact that people want to learn, want to know, want to understand.
Yet now, when they try to learn? To understand? They end up with youtube. Tiktok. Pages of AI slop. They're told what is "astonishing" or "proves that scientists don't have a clue!". They're told that gibberish is real, that those lab-coats are all evil, or trying to poison people, and so on. Or even better to their egos, that the lab-coats aren't so smart, and with this "one simple trick", you can be smarter than them!
This is coupled with outrage!!, when this rarely tends to be the case. Yes, there is corporate greed and it gets caught, recalls happen, mistakes happen, yet 99.99999% of the products and services just work. No one notices that aspect, only the "big news" of the tiny, rare, unusual failures of our system.
And then on top of that, politics enters the scene. Now, it's "us vs them" on matters like medicine?! Or health? Or school? What?! And no it's not just "one side", it's both sides, just in different ways.
People used to say things like "I don't know". Now people who can barely write, and read, have opinions on everything. They have no idea of the science behind things, but they'll just say "Oh! I saw this on youtube by a random person I've never heard of before! That's true, not what I learned in school!"
And the worst part is, we want people to think "being smart" is important. We want intellectual betterment. Yet now this is twisted and warped against the light of knowledge, for now everyone craves it, but are given the ashes of burned truths. All provided by false profits, so they can pocket some coin.
As far as I'm concerned, youtube and tiktok need to die. Social media needs to die. There are other solutions, but Google, Meta, the rest only care about cash, profit, and not one iota about fixing this.
So if they won't fix it? Then we must destroy it.
And can we? Nope! Because the public LOVES it. Loves loves loves it.
So back to FOSS. I've dedicated my entire life to FOSS. But the time of "making people care" about things is gone. They don't care. They never will with all this noise going on.
I'm not happy about it, but if you can't get people to even be interested about privacy violations by Google on their Android device? How will you get them to even remotely care about FOSS?
"But the time of "making people care" about things is gone. They don't care. They never will with all this noise going on."
Tragically, that's very true. But society and societal issues being what they are nowadays we should not expect anything else.
Most of the world's addicted users would be bereft and suffer severe withdrawal without their regular dose of Social Media. Same would apply if those 'amazing' apps provided 'freely' by that wonderful magnanimous benefactor Google were to disappear or ever be under threat.
Any notion that their treasured online ecosystem could be disrupted or their 'free' apps might be replaced with FOSS equivalents would cause outrage. With their attention spans already severely reduced, uses would never stop to consider the true benefits of FOSS, instead they'd actively fight against it.
Like a parasitoid wasp taking control of a catapillar's mind/body to benefit its offspring, Big Tech has parasitized the minds of much of the world's population before anyone realized the fact.
That this outrage has actually happened without any effective opposition is a true tragedy, to expect FOSS to reverse the situation without some cataclysmic event intervening is just a fanciful pipedream.
not to mention that ... there are simply more important things.
from climate change to a landwar in Europe, or simply spending time with loved ones (or the loneliness epidemic - which might be a measurement artifact, but just as with starvation, tuberculosis, measles, even one person is too many).
FOSS is a good amalgamation of ideas, it needs a bit more work on sustainability, but public goods provisioning is a well-studied field (note, not a solved one!)
we might not like it, but probably wrapping the problem in national/geopolitical security terms and civil and social infrastructure concepts is required to make progress on it. (providing a public safe baseline, then standardization and productivity cooperation, but all this requires the underlying problems to be also considered in similar terms - and as long as education, healthcare, transportation, housing, construction, logistics and so on lack a public basic quasi-standardized option there's not much software can do.)
and where a common platform makes sense FOSS software capital is already being accumulated. (though of course the iron laws of amortization/upkeep apply to software too.)
Probably the speculative FOSS project I'm most excited to think about is an open alternative to YouTube – a universal video hosting platform or network, free from commercial incentives baked into the platform.
I've only started to think about this recently so haven't explored whether it's viable to e.g. run all video hosting in a torrent-like, distributed way, or perhaps a Mastodon-like model, but the goal seems like one of the best things free software could aim to achieve right now. YouTube needs to die, and it needs an alternative that could conceivably kill it.
GP was stating that YouTube needs to die and you said PeerTube is the alternative that can kill it - unless I misunderstood something.
I think PeerTube is great but it’s always going to be super niche. If it grows to a level that threatens YouTube I am sure that it would also change/exert economic pressure.
PeerTube might kill YT, but definitely not very soon. However before that it can replace YT just for a tiny minority that needs it the most, which is a good step forward.
It's the same as with GNU/Linux. Did it kill Windows? No. But it doesn't matter for me, since I abandoned Windows many years ago.
Literally. In pentecostal churches people (even children) are taught to babble out loud as if it's divine revelation. And another to 'interpret' the gibberish in the 'human' language for everyone else to understand.
Many of these people are college educated. Yet they learn to compartmentalize to the extreme.
I always wondered where this belief that progress is given comes from.
Nothing is given in this world. Every real fruit of progress (freedom, democracy, public health etc, not iPhone) was fought for and paid with effort, sweat and blood. People were often put in jail, tortured and murdered. I am not sure what exact price you have in mind when you state you've dedicated your life to FOSS, but I somehow doubt it is comparable. It is naive to think that once we achieved something, we don't need to keep fighting in purpose to keep it. This is equally true about democracy, eradication of diseases through vaccination, and free computing.
Of course only geeks care. My point was that it was always like that. Every big societal and political change was enacted by a relatively small, but coordinated and motivated minority. Majority always is passive, and even if it comes in, it comes in at the very end of the process. The problem is not a small number of geeks that care, but rather geeks' reluctance to organize and act politically. Hell, in this demographics political is always suspicious and unworthy. There won't be any success until this changes.
It is naive to think that once we achieved something, we don't need to keep fighting in purpose to keep it.
I agreed with this in my post, but I suppose not using those words. However, I discussed how people used to pay attention to experts, and they really, really did. Of course nothing is absolute, but there is a massive change, from what I see, between 50 years ago and now.
The average person didn't want to seem "stupid", by trying to claim that germs didn't exist (because they can't see them), or that the world was flat, or whatever may be said.
Yet now, as I said, we have all these sources of just plain stupid, spewing stupid as knowledge. Before, we could enact change and at least get the public behind it.
Now (and you seem to agree here!) it's harder to do so. And we're losing ground!
So I disagree that it's about us not organizing. Very successful ways to organize and educate now fail due to this slop. It's not us, it's the world, fading, dimming, dropping back into the gibberish of the masses.
Social media won't die, but it can be replaced with something that is better in every way, but especially better at actually enriching our lives, rather than better at gluing us to screens and feeding us ads. It rests on us to create these decentralized systems. I think local-first software and some ideas from crypto are some good first guideposts on the way there. AI can surely help too, if used judiciously.
Perhaps so, but users have not done a damn thing to reverse the situation. It's Social Media and Google's apps as usual.
It's privacy bedamned when those factors get in the way. Even with the strongest will, electronic heroin, like its chemical counterpart, is almost impossible to shed.
Surely you can't be linking to a post on HackerNews, or a response, when trying to say "the average person" cares about privacy, are you?
The fact that the person is even posting on Hacker News invalidates "average person". So you must therefore be talking about the Times article?
The title of this gatewayed article is:
"You Care More About Your Privacy Than You Think"
It's literally saying that "you don't care", then trying to tell people why they should. This actually supports the premise that the average person doesn't care about privacy.
Yet beyond that, my "Only geeks care" clearly was about FOSS. Trying to invalidate my privacy statement, which everyone knows is an issue, doesn't invalidate my "Only geeks care -> FOSS" statement.
Do you really believe that if you stop 100 random people on the street, they'll even know what FOSS is? If they don't know, they do not care.
I wonder how many people know what FOSS is? What if I stopped 1000 random people in 5 rural towns, and 5 urban cities. Out of those 10k people, would even 100 know?
You might say "Oh, well if I explain it to them!". Nope.
Caring implies knowing about the issue, considering it, and worrying about it. This isn't even on the public's radar. They don't know what FOSS is. They don't even know what software is, nor do they know what files are.
Even if you sit them down, get them to listen to all sides of the issue for hours, some still won't care. At all.
And of the ones that do, what does "care" mean?
After all, upthread is discussing how the mildest inconvenience means nope, don't care. In the contexts of this thread, "caring" means "willing to use FOSS even if there are inconveniences".
FOSS software is everywhere. People could be using it. They aren't. Why? They don't care.
People have too many other problems in their life to spend efforts on every (important!) world problem. This is essentially a Maslow's pyramid. Unless it's also your hobby, you simply have no energy to spend on things which aren't immediately beneficial to you. This is not equivalent to not caring.
You seem to, as I do, care about open platforms and open software.
I think to difference here is, you need to believe people care. Meanwhile I know most don't.
The best I've ever gotten from people is economic self interest. "Free" without care for the ecosystem.
Beyond that? It's all posturing and signaling. I've had hundreds of clients, been involved at the community and government levels, worked to make OSS better for all.
And after 30 years it gets worse not better.
Even now, the biggest push is self interest, because "oh software not controlled by US corps?", from clients and government entities I work with.
Understand, I say this with immense sadness. And we must still strive. But for most of the world, simple is all they understand.
> The best I've ever gotten from people is economic self interest.
In the end, it all comes down to money, which is the measure of people's prosperity. It's sufficient to only care about it. I guess democracy itself also improves the prosperity of people in general.
Can I seriously talk with you. I am in high school and I was so passionate about open source (I still am)
I wanted to make it better. I wanted to do my part. I thought about it for months, nobody else is there with whom I talk about it, and the people I do think I am a nerd or can't really go into the in-details of it.
I found HN to be the best way for discussing it, the problem is that I genuinely see this doomerism in open source that's eating me more and more.
I thought I would get some more discussions regarding the how we can change the fact that foss isn't used by most people part but it seems that they expect claps to made by one hand and expect everything to be done by developers for gratis once again and they expect to give nothing back... I didn't see many discussions about donating to foss software or smth in there.
My biggest question to you right now is: how are you so hopeful right now as well?
> Understand, I say this with immense sadness. And we must still strive. But for most of the world, simple is all they understand.
I tried to be hopeful and I feel strayed away from my purpose, disillusioned,helpless,feeling doomer/ that nothing can truly fix open source... I have tried to change myself for the better yet I still feel like I will deeply involve myself in foss atleast or atleast share it still as well.
I genuinely want to ask you what brings you hope in there. Idk my hope for the longest time was the history of how things changed for the better but I still don't feel better. I have to trust people for real change and my idea of population at a large scale is a little pessimistic nowadays.
I genuinely want to talk to you if that's alright with ya. I don't know what I am feeling about open source but its so mixed. Feeling like I can't really give it what it really needs (donations/support from general public), the best I can try is advocate in my friend circles I suppose but that's about it. I don't know but I just feel like there is so little that I can do & I wanted to try/ I tried but the whole world is giving me signals to shut up about it, even here.
somebody said to me to don't talk but show and I appreciate it but all I want to is talk to somebody about how I am feeling about open source, all these loads of thoughts I am caring and sharing in different comments. I just want to talk about open source and find hope about it otherwise I am seeing to lose hope in humanity itself. Hope is tiring. I tried. Which is why I am asking why you still have hope. Have you not been tired stranger? Have you not doubted yourself thinking if open source isn't a fight worth fighting for when you realize that substancial change mightn't be done by yourself & you feel sad about it though, it hurts me actively knowing that there is sometimes nothing can be done, how do you still have hope sir, i don't get it. I also want hope but I am not finding any, I am drowned in a pool of sadness/this inner feeling that this shit might not change and we are stuck here and things might only get worse but nobody's fighting hard for it to get better. How do you still have hope sir. I want to know. please either write a comment and contact me on my mail or signal (anything) or maybe both.
> how we can change the fact that foss isn't used by most people
1. Use it yourself, get experience with it and suggest it to other people when it fits their use case, offer support to your friends and family.
2. Support FLOSS development in any way you can (including documentation and finding bugs).
3. Support and promote commercial companies whose services are related to development of free software (e.g., https://puri.sm and http://system76.com).
fsflover and I have somewhat agreed, self interest is definitely a way.
And to be truthful, why would you use a specific ... anything? A pen to a car, you're going to use, or buy, what's best for you.
Where fsflover and I disagree, is whether the average person cares about OSS. Or business. Or if they can even be made to care. As per above, we both agree that they can be made to care because of cost. And for a business, being able to fix OSS if needed, hack it, is also about cost in another way.
But caring about cost, isn't the same as caring about the ecosystem. Caring about cost is a "right now", immediate concern. Caring about the future of an ecosystem? That's "the future", and unimportant to many.
Let's look at it another way...
Can you make the average person care deeply about privacy? If they really cared, wouldn't they be screaming about tracking in their car? Well I guarantee you they could not. I tried, because every car I buy? I disable the antenna and ground it via a resistor, so it cannot phone home. I also ensure I can still use the rest of the system (such as bluetooth to my phone) before I buy.
And that means research. And over the last 20 years, that research on multiple car forums and reddit went like this:
* 20 years ago -> "Haha you're paranoid, what a moron"
* 10 years ago -> "What does it matter, and you have a phone, who cares! Idiot!"
* 5 years ago -> (Announcements that car manufacturers were selling speed/accel data to insurance companies, and people's insurance were being affected)
Instant "OMG" from everyone, and anger suddenly.
It's not like any of this was a surprise to privacy advocates. We've known about being tracked, and it affecting what you pay for things. We know about how tracking is used to bubble-you in the real world, in terms of news and information. We know of negatives like the above.
But unless it slaps someone in the face with money, or personal danger, they don't care.
The people and the car incident? The ones that 20 years ago, 10, 5 mocked and thought it silly? Hands down, they still don't care about privacy. Instead, they just want to make it illegal for car manufacturers to sell that data to insurance companies.
They care about that one case.
But they do care. Short-term.
Yet one thing I bet that fsflover and I agree upon, is that we have a hope with some developers. And the more developers that care, the more robust the ecosystem, and therefore, the more new devs entering this world for the first time?
May see what you've seen.
So I'd say, while it's great to talk about this to friends and family? Or to advocate in other ways? Getting DEVs on board, especially young ones, is probably the most powerful lever.
Well I am an aspiring dev (young) and I didn't think of it being a powerful lever but I am the one speaking about installing signal or speaking with zeal about open source atleast in my community circles and this is something that I am proud of...
But here's the thing, I want to work in open source preferably. I don't want to work in some job which does proprietory so that one day I can retire to then work in open source.
I'd preferably like to work on open source now and just make a bare living in my country. I am not motivated that much by money. Yet, I will tell you, when I tell my brother to contribute to open source (he works at a company) and he says that for the same work, he can do freelancing and earn good enough money, then why should he work in open source if not for reputation...
And I don't mind him wrong. I get him, he's the guy who wants things to just works i guess, whereas I am okay with tinkering and learning new stuff in hopes that it can be easy down the road.
Thanks for giving me hope, but seriously, the open source community doesn't really help much because nobody gives hope to each other. You can read my other threads. I was charged, stoked about what can I do & people in threads are like, Open source lost, Open source discussions were done years ago, now there is nothing to discuss.
I mean no harm to them, maybe they are right. But that does make me less hopeful and creates a stress in my head regarding open source and that's why open source recently became a little mixed topic that I stopped to take part in it knowing that 90% comments are gonna depress me.
And even still, I find myself conflicted about licensing issues as well and what not. Like, what if I write software proprietory and then donate part of the money to open source & also donate some time into open source as well at the same time.
I just find it a little hard. There is so much in-fighting in open source and the community is hostile to well... a person being hopeful. I was hopeful about open source and the community's opinions were definitely mixed. I thought maybe together we could discuss things to fix it but I sense a sort of entitlement from open source sometimes (I was part of it, going to github repo and not knowing anything and asking to fix or add but I got more and more kind along the way but I know there are some rude comments)
I don't know, I still love foss but were my experiences with the community a little harsh, yes.
Sometimes I felt like it was hostile even. I made my own custom cachyos hyprland liveiso which boots into liveiso and I was proud to showcase it yet people didn't care or literally told me of 10 fixes to do the same thing but literally noone there was interested or said anything nice about it...
Why does the community feel hostile sometimes, Am I being entitled in my position if I say cool things about projects that I find interesting yet I find that nobody else says cool things to projects I built which I still thought were interesting...
We are 99% more common than different yet we fight over the pettiest things. We don't like commenting good things to one other, its fucking weird sometimes. And do you get any money out of it -- nope. I wasn't doing it for the money but if I spent hours, I atleast expected some attention. Its like, We are social creatures and my experience has been that in open source related communities, people treat my inexperience very weirdly. People say to me to read the temperature of room if I share anything I share. Like I am sorry I guess. People my age can say 67 and make a million $ and become a meme and get attention, its very weird thinking.
But I don't do it for them, I do it for myself. I do it because I am curious, to unlock more things. I do it because open source makes me feel like anything is possible for the most part that computers can do. But the community itself needs to be more hopeful like you as so many of my experiences have been so negative, its mixed, that is the best idea I could give personally.
Please we young devs aren't gonna make mona lisa's or something very interesting. I cherish the moments someone's appreciated me and I tried my best to answer any questions they have but when the community feels hostile, I feel weird being part of an hostile community sometimes.
Also you and fsflover says to spread it and I do spread open source in my friend circle but then you see comments like on my submission
"The community just does not make a good impression on most people so they don't pursue it. With most people I have long since learned to be careful about how I talk about OSS because most people have someone in their life who has been trying to convert them for years and that is what OSS has become to them, that friend or coworker or family member they are very patient with. If you want to change people you have to be willing to be changed by them."
Such comments make me feel weird, about sharing open source.
I thought when I had created that ASK HN: that I would get both pro and anti open source yet it was an overwhelming anti open source comments and that really made me think about it
if this is the state of hackernews... oof.
I genuinely think that in open source, and in life, we need to be more understanding of each other yet it genuinely doesn't feel that way. Discussions are thrown away. Why is my experience with open source community a mixed bag, I don't know. I always thought its the best community but I have some mixed bag, its like its got both good and bad. But is it worth taking a financial hit over if that's the case? If people would still criticize your software if its foss and all you want to give is yet another software to give more freedom... like why? Its my time so I can code anything with it, why do you expect me to follow your norms...
I genuinely can't shake some negativity that I get from open source sometimes and my real impression of it. Its.... something fresh to see hope but so rare in open source sometimes I feel like.
I try to be hopeful but I expect foss community to be hopeful as well but when people say that foss lost and its over, well :/ I guess that doesn't help young developers.
I truly love open source tho. But I feel on the edge that neither open source community appreciates me and neither my normal genz community appreciates me.
I see on some make friend discord servers on how people watch anime and movie shows and songs, and well, here I am writing these long paragraphs about open source but I can't bother writing a list of my favourite songs for them, my mind runs blank, I would have to look my phone for it. Its so weird man. I feel alienated from open source community at the same time sometimes, just a bit less, but its evident.
People that fought for common hygiene standards, or labor rights, or human rights etc in the past were a minority too, because most people didn't care. But this minority was able to organize, push forward and gain support. And the fight was worth it, and improved lives of us all.