I find 95% of foss software to be better than the commercial alternatives, and I’m not joking. As for bugs, foss devs are usually faster to respond to bug reports and user requests too, unless it’s some mismanaged behemoth like Mozilla.

Thing is, commercial software can use the money for advertising and marketing. Foss, especially of the free to use kind, usually only spread by word of mouth, and even that only within the foss communities at first.

Let’s not get into examples, because I’m sure we can always find examples for every case and it often comes to specific preferences. My general point is, that people who think free has to be crap, and commercial has to be good, are categorically wrong.

It’s in fact backwards: if you do something only for money, you’re incentivized to do the least amount of work either for maximum effectiveness or to give yourself time to do stuff you actually want to do.

It seems like most FOSS I’ve seen is a free, buggy, alternative to mainstream software, which resolves a problem the user had.

I don’t know what kind of sw you use, but usually I find Foss software to be sleek, functional, fast with good support and updates, while commercial software is ridden with ads, trackers, bloat and bugs. Exceptions on both sides but the notion that free software is generally worse is categorically incorrect.

Everyone can contribute, but how do they make a living?

So first not everyone can contribute. Usually people who also use the software and have personal (or monetary) interest in it, contribute.

And why does everything has to be about monetisation? Yes, both people and gigantic corporations make money off foss in various ways, I’m sure others have explained that already. But people also do things for other reasons than just money.

But I’m just baffled how people so often declare that foss can’t work or that it’s qualitatively worse, even though the entire planet has been dependent on foss for decades.

No, just because someone sells something directly, doesn’t mean it’s inherently better.

Ah yea I don’t know why I didn’t see them before when I installed it… Weird. Thx

Lovely, but no widget support… Is there any foss weather app with good widget selection? I tried a bunch from F-Droid a while ago and didn’t find any.

• you open your code under a licence that means other people can use it, that means other people can use it

• reporting a bug is not demanding free labor

Like how do you think this is supposed to work?

A) That everyone who wants to use open source stuff needs to be a programmer and contribute?

B) That if someone posts code under GPL or some other licence permitting commercial use, that it’s not permitting commercial use anyway?

C) That you need to pay to report a bug?

Come on. If the dev wants to only fix particular things and wants payment for fixing other things, fine, but don’t say this is the only way foss should work.

Sounds good.

I wish there were such detectors for other triggering stuff, like gore, or creepy insects, or any visual based phobia. Everyone just freaks out about porn.

As people mention, there’s a bunch of them. I’ll also add the Simple Mobile Tools phone project. And Divest OS.

Tell me what country are you from without telling me…

Hot take, but the main issue is - developing a program requires programming skill. Shocker, I know. But think about it, a ton of people may be interested in “taking on” a project, but without being a programmer, nothing can come out of it, unless somebody takes care about the program so much they’re willing to fund development.

Is there a solution? Maybe soon we’ll have AI programming assistants good enough that even a non-programmer can do something useful with source code. At least temporarily keep the project alive with minor updates until someone more experienced comes along.

You know what grinds my gears more however? Rewrites. Whenever a small foss projects announces a complete rewrite, I consider it done, as it’s virtually certain it will be abandoned and the rewrite will never be finished. Seen that soo many times, it’s insane why people attempt it in the first place. Actually insane if the same thing keeps happening over and over and yet you expect different results…

Recently I’ve seen that NewPipe is getting a rewrite. While I have more trust in these guys than in some other projects, it’s time to look into alternatives.

You make an Android app, you leave the binary on Github or wherever, or even just get people to compile it themselves.

On Apple, you need to go though the whole appstore bullshit.

Any Android box. Install NewPipe and VLC and other such stuff. I hear Xiaomi are popular, although at this point I don’t know if there’s any brand I would trust. So I’d prefer to make my own with a Rasp Pi or something. Same idea.

IIRC the guy who was doing the official Linux builds of the old id games was also the one who was publishing the code, so that’s probably why.

They could never publish everything they had internally, as they used proprietary or patented bits in places, so the code always needed cleaning up before GPLing it. That’s why Doom engine source was released without the sound, the Doom 3 engine had the shadowing code replaced, Quake 3 code didn’t have the single-player parts because people were still licencing it in the mid-00’s, and other such stuff.

And yes, Doom was originally developed for *nix, I think they were using NeXT machines or something like that, for development.

Quake 2 has been GPL and had Linux versions since forever, even official ones from id.

I assume this remaster uses the same engine. Maybe they used stuff from contributors/forks, that’s why they kept it open.

I’d still prefer a separate server even if it’s only for myself:

1. power efficiency, you don’t need to keep a power-hungry PC on when you don’t need it, but only an old laptop or a rasp Pi or whatever

2. if your PC is down - broken, needs reinstall, having an issue that needs troubleshooting - you can still have your server stuff running

3. expandability. Media server alone is good to stream movies to a TV, or to a phone over the web, and again the PC can be off

That was kinda the original idea behind micro transactions (minus the gradual decline, if anything that’s the other way around). And it just never worked I guess.

It’s made by the same people that make the Lemmy system, isn’t it?

Liftoff is the one farthest in development. Jerboa is the most “official” one. You have to wait a few months for the others to mature.

!lemmyapps@lemmy.world

Link to lemmynsfw and we’ll get double the users in one day

It’s actually been the case for 20 years now. Same with lots of other devices.

Around 2008-ish I saw a Tesco-branded webcam for something like 5€. I was just in need of one, so I looked up if it’s not, by any chance Linux compatible. It was, right out of the box.

Same thing with Sony Ericsson phones of that era. Capable of lots of things, like Ethernet over USB or Mass Storage, but with Windows it all needed a massive and annoying driver package. Linux - plug and go.

Same with Bluetooth and lots of other things.