[email protected] - Oh my gosh I just figured it out.
Okay, all you open source evangelist people: your knee-jerk reaction to come at people who are talking about a problem with whatever commercial software they use and suggest Your Favorite Alternatives™ is exactly like saying “why don’t you just buy a house?” to someone complaining about their landlord.
[email protected] - Actually, to borrow from @DoubleA, it’s worse than that.
It’s like talking to someone who is in a crappy apartment as though they have the agency and skills to stake out a plot of land and build their own home.
You have to be at peace with the fact that some people just want to exist and not worry about so many things. And they still have a right to complain about their situation.
Link to thread: https://mas.to/@TechConnectify/111539959265152243
“Open source is free if you don’t value your time.” (forgot who that quote is from)
Sometimes the time investment is small, but especially for complex software, the friction of switching from one imperfect (proprietary) software to another imperfect (open) software makes it not really make much sense unless the issue is severe (house is half destroyed).
This is basically what he was saying. Open source tends to be a much less plug-and-play out-of-the-box experience, and usually requires at least some IT know-how for it to not be an infuriating experience. A lot of FOSS advocates compensate for that by kind of being that over explaining bro meme and get kinda pushy about getting people over the technical barriers because they want FOSS to be widely adopted and be a real alternative, and for good reasons. But most people don’t have the time or patience to stumblefuck their way through IT issues, they just want the shit to work.
It’s a fair criticism, accessibility is a big problem in FOSS. We’ve come a long way, but there’s still a long way to go.
If that’s what he was trying to say, he’s doing a bad job.
The only thing you need to buy a house is money. You don’t need literally any money to use FOSS.
Well, it’s mastodon. You’ve got a little over 400 characters to say what you’re going to say in the most shocking, attention-getting way possible. Yes, it’s not a perfect analogy, but no metaphor is perfect or else it wouldn’t really be a metaphor, would it?
Anyway, it’s a time and convenience cost that becomes extremely significant as your IT proficiency decreases, and you’ve got another think coming if you think those costs don’t matter to people.
It’s not an “imperfect” metaphor, just a bad one.
Okay, I guess. This isn’t really a hill I’m prepared to die on. The point is that it’s still a cost that’s real to the user, even if it’s not a direct financial one.
“Help, I can’t afford rent!” -> “Buy a house, stupid.”
“Help, this software is buggy and unintuitive!” -> “Try using buggier and more unintuitive software, stupid.”
Seems like a solid metaphor to me.
Kind of off topic, but you can change how many characters your mastodon instance allows. Mine allows 1337 (for some reason) and I know many have it unlimited. I don’t know about TC’s instance.
Probably because it’s leet.
Good to know, thanks!
For the last decade my job has consisted of helping IT administrators manage open source software. Even if they’ve got all the certifications in the world they get stuck. A lot. Like, so much that I’m amazed the Internet works at all.
And then the get angry, like the computer is going to respond to their anger. They stop reading error messages. They forget to look at logs. They can’t just stop and read and think.
The computer doesn’t care that you’re angry. It’s a Turing machine, and it can do anything a Turing machine can do provided it’s told to do the correct things.
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I don’t think it is so much claiming that open source doesn’t value time, but the opposite: (switching to) open source isn’t free, because it has a time cost that needs to be discussed. Technically the arguments holds for switching between any software, open or otherwise, but when your pitching to someone who already is using proprietary software that works well enough, the cost of staying can be much lower.
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