1312
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Although I’m a firm supporter of free software

Unless I'm misreading this, your argument seems to be that software freedom is irrelevant in the face of technical superiority or popularity. That's exactly the opposite of "firm support" in my view.

I'll offer a counterpoint to the "best tool for the job" thing: before git existed, Linux development relied on a proprietary VCS called Bitkeeper. Licenses for Bitkeeper were "graciously" donated for gratis by the Bitkeeper developer. Andrew Tridgell, who was not party to the Bitkeeper EULA, telneted to a Bitkeeper server and typed "help". The Bitkeeper developer, in retaliation, revoked the Linux developers' gratis license to use the proprietary "best tool for the job." This was what forced Linus to develop git, which became the most widely used VCS in the free software world. (read: Thank You, Larry McVoy by Richard Stallman)

Proprietary tools can seem to be useful in the moment but developing a dependency on them, and encouraging their use, is dangerous. Discord might seem like "the best tool for the job" until it enshittifies, just like its predecessors did, and just like its successors inevitably will. We've seen it happen often enough.

this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
1312 points (96.0% liked)

Open Source

30826 readers
1146 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS