this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 year ago (2 children)

On the other side, Free and Open Source Software leveled the playing field for software development by quite a lot. Before FOSS you had proprietary databases, proprietary OSes, proprietary web servers, etc, at every level of the chain. Without FOSS Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office would rule the roost. Without FOSS smart phones might've taken years longer, and have far less choices. Without FOSS the web would be drastically different. Without FOSS development would be harder to break into, and anything you tried to produce would involve 15 different licensing fees.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Everyone can equally profit off it. And hopefully, everyone (that can) will contribute.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Without FOSS Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office would rule the roost. Without FOSS smart phones might’ve taken years longer, and have far less choices.

Uhhh, Google Workspace isn't FOSS and the only FOSS Office project that has market share is Libre Office with a whopping...1%.

Chromium may be "open source" but Google is definitely trying to make a walled garden, especially in respect to ads, and Chrome rules the roost. Chrome itself has plenty of proprietary software in it.

How is this any argument for something else? Your examples are weak, MS Office does rule the roost, and Chrome only rules the roost due to it being a Google product, not because of its open source bona fides.

Without FOSS smart phones might’ve taken years longer, and have far less choices.

Android is literally the reason bloatware from phone developers made a resurgence. It made modern phones worse than the shitty proprietary OSes driven by shitty phone manufacturers from the 90's to 2007. Google allows manufacturers to install applications you can't uninstall without rooting the device and risking your security.

How did that benefit consumers? To get a decent Android phone, you're paying a shitload of money, just like you would be for an iPhone (a completely closed source product) and iPhone at least doesn't have software bloat from your phone carrier/phone manufacturer.

Further, Google is literally attempting to use their web dominance to make it nearly impossible to implement ad blocking with Manifest v3. Their ad profits are more important to them than FOSS. How is denying the ability to block ads a "benefit" to consumers?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree with your points. But you can just download Android studio, hook your phone up in dev mode, and remove the bloatware packages as well as DT to prevent them from coming back. I did and I've not seen any carrier crap since.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That requires some technical knowledge that most people simply don't have.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Most people dont care about the carrier apps on their phone I would say. There are guides that make it pretty painless. But yeah the Android Studio setup would probably turn off most non-tech people, though I found that easier than locating the packages, which wasn't hard either.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

you can't uninstall without rooting the device and risking your security.

I see you bought into the fear mongering. Rooting your device doesn't compromise your security. Malware that uses an exploit to gain root access does compromise your security, but that's independent of a user rooting.