Paying for open source software sounds good on paper, but if it is required, the software will never accumulate the users to make the development have any meaning.

Based on what you said, I’m not sure what you mean by “open source”, but Free Software gives you the right to distribute the program (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms). So anyone who owns a copy can legally share it with you. There are commercial Free Software projects. The game Mindustry is one example.

This is all true, but it’s interesting how people often forget another simple option: the software is commercial - it is simply sold on some website/store. Just like you can buy the game Mindustry on Steam, but it is Libre Software and even though you can get the build for free on GitHub and its itch.io page, people still pay for the Steam version. I wonder why people forget about this option, since it’s probably the simplest one.

Of course, Steam is a proprietary, unethical platform, so I’m just using it as an example - I’m not saying we should sell there.

Ah, true. I didn’t know about Grayjay, though. It doesn’t seem to mention this on their website or GitLab, but I can see that the license is proprietary. Ok, their license does use the words “open source”. You are not even allowed to edit the code! Crazy and a huge shame for something coming from people in the right to repair movement. Software freedom should be one of their goals. But I guess they think you should be able to control hardware, but not software.

Thought so! I guess people just assume that whenever they see something on GitHub.

For instance, why is this community modded by me? You would of though that they would of monitored the state of Reddit and jumped on board Lemmy. Its things like these that show that the fsf is blind.

First of all, thanks for doing this. Some months ago when I searched for a community like this, I couldn’t find anything. I’m not sure that the FSF can do much more, though.

Richard Stallman still travels the world to give talks about Free Software in multiple languages. They have a conference called Libre Planet. I wish there were more of Richard’s talks on YouTube, but other than that I don’t know what else they could do that would matter.

It’s just very hard to reach people with such a complicated message. I think that’s why a lot more people have heard of the term Open Source than Free Software. Even on Lemmy most discussions are about “Open Source” and “Linux”. When I commented on some proprietary app being made for Lemmy saying that it was unethical, people downvoted me. They don’t understand when I say that users deserve rights and they think Free Software just means you want to get something for free (I don’t think it even has anything to do with the word “free”, btw - they often think the same way about “Open Source”).

It’s a very complicated topic to explain to an average person, even to developers (many Free Software projects have a Discord server or use other proprietary software). We still should try whenever we can, but this should really be taught at schools. I doubt the FSF can suddenly become much better at this, no matter what they do. If you think there is a gap, we could try to fill it ourselves (and maybe we should), but we probably aren’t gonna build a big audience either.

Also, I just remembered there were some talks about promoting Free Software in last Libre Planet: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/questions-are-the-answer-how-to-have-deeper-conversations-with-anyone-about-free-software-philosophy/

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like it. Between 2003 and 2013 he really used to believe that pedophilia doesn’t harm children. But he really only mentioned it a few times and hadn’t talked about it again until 2019 when it was brought up again. He said then that he had changed his mind since and that he was wrong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controversies).

I don’t think we should cancel people for believing something stupid 10 years ago, but his haters love to use this. Just like they like to misquote him or spread fake rumors about him (https://stallmansupport.org). They are probably too angry to think clearly or verify information, but sometimes I wonder if for some of them it’s really only about his position on proprietary software (he wants to destroy it) and that’s why they wanted him removed from the FSF.

Software is usually installed from repositories and not random websites, so there is less room for user error in general. Even if you download an executable file, you will most likely have to give it permissions to run first. So I think it’s more immune to viruses not because of its users, but because of the way it’s designed.

it’s a smaller target and that hackers aren’t spending as much time trying to attack it

It’s the most popular server system, so I’m not so sure about that.

It’s a discussion about ethics. Proprietary software is unethical.

Wait, so crackers don’t publish any documentation on cracking Denuvo? They just keep all the knowledge to themselves? Or is it just that nobody else wants to do it?

But why sudo?