I’m a FOSS (free and open source software) contributor and enthusiast. So I prefer to use such products (Lemmy instead of Reddit, Linux instead of Windows, Firefox instead of Chrome, Signal instead of WhatsApp, you get the idea). Was just thinking that if everyone moved to such solutions, the tech and ad industry would lose billions of dollars. That would translate to governments losing billions of dollars in tax revenue. Would such a move ever be encouraged then by the governments?
I don’t know the solution but I do know that we’re losing what the internet was suppose to be.
I remember in the early days how we all thought it was insane and unethical to create scarcity in data.
We all knew data could be copied and shared almost limitlessly and so the internet was headed towards this new post information scarcity world were we could all collaborate and share information and knowledge and culture.
It seems like now we’re putting up walls everywhere and charging for access to every bit of data we can. I think as an online culture that we lost a lot of that early 00s mentality of what the net would be.
I feel like we dropped that baton and the newer generation is almost pro data scarcity.
I remember the general feeling you talked about, and the insanity of the idea when DRM was introduced.
It seems we vastly underestimated the ideas corporations can produce and implement.
For a short while it seemed as if with AI the field would be leveled again, but then I was astonished how quickly the EU moved with regulations first and foremost to protect copyright.
The cost is hardly in the software. It’s for the support and setup. Even if governments switch to Linux, they’d need some sort of support contract in place with a vendor.
And I know from first hand experience that those “not the corporate one” vendors that (often local) governments try to get their stuff from are not able to offer their products or services at comparable quality. Years ago my public university, via some half-baked initiative by the state in an attempt to protect data and employ local talent and whatnot, tried to ditch Dropbox and O365 etc. in favor of some locally made stuff. It was an unmitigated disaster, especially the absolute piece of shit that was supposed to replace Dropbox. On the rare occasions that it did actually work, it simply was nowhere near as useful or convenient or performant as Dropbox. As a result people avoided that shit like the plague and started sharing their files through other, arguably shadier platforms instead. Until they finally rolled the actually usable alternative that’s in service now, the documents were hosted on all sorts of shitty websites with no access control.
AFAIK the Office alternative failed completely and they’re back to where they were, maybe even deeper into 365 actually.
I work in tech. Some would lose, but others would win. We spend more and more every year on services. The software isn’t entirely FOSS, but the licensing cost is often trivial compared to the costs to implement and maintain. For instance, we use WordPress for our website. We give thousands every year to our web designers while spending 0 on the software. The big software we use, that we spend hundreds of thousands yearly on, is moving in the same direction. I suspect they will go FOSS in the next decade, and focus on hosting/professional services.
Great, so even on Lemmy ‘Shower Thoughts’ are just statements.
I did write a whole paragraph below the title, do people have more complex shower thoughts?
No, the fact it’s so complex is part of the problem. It’s an interesting discussion to be had but it’s not a Shower Thought.
A Shower Thought is something like “If Eminem’s Mom wanted to she could probably make a good amount of money selling her own spaghetti sauce” (stole this from Reddit). It’s a random thought that comes to you, serves no real purpose but still just kind of lingers in your mind.
Ah gotcha.
You’d be surprised how much of the tech industry even cares about FOSS. Many are just there for a paycheck and check out for the day, and have little to no personal opinion on how it should be.
Governments pay huge amounts of money for software licenses, mainly to Microsoft. So it would save them a lot of money too.
Depends on what you mean by “tech industry”. If FOSS projects are outside the realm of “tech industry”, then yes. The users and money would just go to FOSS instead of large well known companies, but the money would still go somewhere and development would happen somewhere.
Think of it this way. Billions of people use Windows. The OS itself is not free, and despite that it is ridiculed with trackers and adware for more profits. Operating system is a multi billion dollar industry. If everyone started using a free OS tomorrow that doesn’t even have ads, the OS industry just lost everything. Sure the dev cost for linux distros would rise because of new users but that’s it. For companies like MS, dev cost would only be a fraction of what they reap yearly, so that profit will get wiped out because people don’t pay for it anymore, not even with their data.
Another example is of Uber. Uber is another multi billion dollar company. Uber takes 30-50% commission on each ride. If everyone started using a FOSS alternative that just charged say 5% commission to just cover the dev and infra cost and reap no profits beyond that, the ride hailing industry just lost billions.
As we have seen from the social media companies over the decades, they are making billions of ads, so it goes without saying platform like lemmy does drive the economy, the problem is that it needs a way to cover its cost.
I have read that people in lemmy dont like ads, if lemmy (instance) is run for profit, it may cast shitstorm like misinformation, bad moderation and agendas bc of profits and capitalism. It’s a very good reason not to be for-profit, but it doesn’t mean it’s impossible to generate business if the profits could go to nobody.
We maybe able to sell ads, if the ads is run by the government and the profit doesn’t go to anyone but the government savings.
Lets say we forbid ads anyway just bc we hate. The government could still do the host of an instance and ideally makes goddamn clear that it only does moderation over the safety of the community(anti-spam) and illegal content, no agenda, no politics. Do so by raising taxes, or ideally sponsorship and donations. If we can do that, the inefficiency in Fediverse compare to a centralized platform is an non-issue, bc the state-run instance, as supported by the public, should be fast and stable. I mean, c’mon its just texts and images.
Lolol that’s absurdly optimistic and completely ignores commercial contributions. No licences hardly means less expensive.
Lolol that’s absurdly optimistic and completely ignores commercial contributions. No licences hardly means less expensive.
Lolol that’s absurdly optimistic and completely ignores commercial contributions. No licences hardly means less expensive.
Lolol that’s absurdly optimistic and completely ignores commercial contributions. No licences hardly means less expensive.
