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Why FOSS projects are using proprietary, privacy invasive infrastructure? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 6 months ago by JustMarkov@lemmy.ml to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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As you can easily notice, today many open source projects are using some services, that are… sus.

For example, Github is the most popular place to store your project code and we all know, who owns it. And not to forget that sketchy AI training on every line of your code. Don't we have alternatives? Oh, yes we have. Gitlab, Codeberg, Notabug, etc. You can even host your own Gitea or Forgejo instance if you want.

Also, Crowdin is very popular in terms of software (and docs) translation. Even Privacy Guides and The New Oil use Crowdin, even though we have FLOSS Weblate, that you can easily self-host or use public instances.

So, my question is: if you are building a FLOSS / privacy related project, why using proprietary and privacy invasive tools?

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[-] hperrin@lemmy.world 19 points 6 months ago

I run a fairly popular open source project called Svelte Material UI, and I can tell you why I use Discord for support. My users want me to use it. GitHub too.

People want to use what they already have, and most people, even developers, don’t care that much about privacy. I would gladly self host a support forum, but tons of people would rather use a different library than sign up for my personal support forum. And the people who really care about privacy wouldn’t trust my self hosted solution either, so there isn’t really a better option than Discord, as much as that sucks.

[-] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 69 points 6 months ago

When support is hidden away in discord, web searches can't find it. Nobody can even look through it without having an account.

[-] hperrin@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I agree that it sucks. I would much rather use a more open platform. But my users don’t want that. Discord is convenient, people want convenience, and I want to give my users convenience (even if it means I have to answer the same questions once in a while).

[-] django@discuss.tchncs.de 29 points 6 months ago

Only convenient for those who are on discord. Everyone else is excluded.

[-] hperrin@lemmy.world 8 points 6 months ago

Sure, but I’ve actually had people ask me to set up a Discord, and no one has ever asked me to set up anything else.

[-] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 6 points 6 months ago

I wonder if they just pass on the project since the documention is hidden away. I know I've done it a bunch of times

[-] hperrin@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

Support != documentation. I have plenty of public documentation.

[-] justme@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 6 months ago

Yeah, I gave up long ago to suggest ppl some alternatives. The problem PPL Here have is the discord only thing. With tools like matter bridge you could combine several tools seemlessly, but that is of course way to much trouble for smaller projects.

[-] toastal@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 months ago

Having the ability to bridge doesn’t mean you always should… you are now exposing folks to Discord’s data collection + ToS as well as all the inevitable spam that flows into these rooms.