this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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[–] uralsolo@hexbear.net 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Land enclosure. Screwed everything up for everyone stg

Microtransactions in video games. Remember when everyone got pissed over horse armor?

Trading Card Games. The whole trading card thing is about psychologically manipulating you into buying shit you don't need, shoulda been stamped out as soon as cigarette companies started doing it, but if you think about it the ideal capitalist institution sells you literally nothing and selling people heavy paper with little pictures on it is damn close to that ideal.

Software. Should be free, isn't. Blame Bill Gates.

Advertising. We all know about propaganda (even though we might disagree on what is and isn't propaganda at times) and we all know it's bad, but we literally let rich people propagandize us every single day in every single orifice.

[–] Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Software. Should be free, isn’t. Blame Bill Gates.

lol...

that's just some dumb take. Some software can and should be free (operating systems, for example) but all software? lol

[–] ButtBidet@hexbear.net 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You like your free Android kernel? How about your free browser. Or MF'er, do you like this lemmy shit that you're using?!?!?!? What about all the network architecture so you don't have to pay dozens of owners so that you can send a packet of data from your the open-source router software to the Linux server that is hosting your game.

Make no mistake Microsoft has been at war with open source since its business model requires people to pay for software. It would destroy open source if it could, it it probably will after it acquires enough enough market share.

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

MF is your choice of term to open discussion with someone on a topic you disagree on? Surely this is going to get your audience to be open to accept your views/input.

Edit: the discussion likely is about your use case of the term free

[–] ButtBidet@hexbear.net 6 points 1 year ago

Weird way to avoid the Epstein island, charter school proponent, weird bullshit in Africa guy, literally at war with open source guy discussion.

Hey I'm sorry that I made an abbreviation for a naughty word.

I'm assuming uralsolo is talking about free software as in, software which gives users the four freedoms.

I don't think all software needs to be free, but in some ways, it's no longer the issue of the day. In this day and age, a lot of what we're using is no longer really software. We're using services with client-side Javascript which is nominally free software (but not really). Most of the actual software is sitting behind a server. I see this as good and bad. It means users of less popular operating systems get access to the same services as users of popular operating systems so long as they have browsers, and the negatives are, well...I'm sure you don't need my help to think of some.

It's hard to make money with free software because everyone has the right to commercially exploit it. For this reason alone, I don't think it's necessary for all software to be free, but I'll be there to celebrate the programs that are free.

[–] LufyCZ@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] polskilumalo@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The qeustion would rather be, why shouldn't software be free? Because there is no good reason it shouldn't be.

[–] OrekiWoof@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So people who create it can afford to live?

[–] polskilumalo@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I forgot not everyone knows what free software means. Free as in freedom not free as in gratis. The other one has good, even great reasons for existing as you've said people need to pay the bills. The first one does not.

[–] JCpac@lemmy.pt 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

TIL of GNU's philosophical take on "free software". Thanks!

Though, it was quite a hassle to find amidst all the other search results for "free software"... πŸ˜…

Maybe we should use "libre" to differentiate the 2, like GNU points out.

[–] polskilumalo@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, the english language has a problem with that. But not just English!

Polish does too, the translation would be "Wolne oprogramowanie". However wolne can be understood both as free and... Slow.

Yeah, slow software lmao

If you'd like to know more about software freedom checkout the Free Software Foundation, Software Freedom Conservancy, of course the GNU project and some Linux youtubers like Distrotube and the like.

[–] OrekiWoof@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This definition of "free" in the context of software is used only in specific circles. It's confusing for everyone else and another word should be used.

[–] polskilumalo@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 year ago

libre is one word that is already popular

[–] duderium@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago

Perhaps if we built a world in which no one needed to worry about necessities, it would not be even excusable to charge money for commodities?

Trading card boosters are literally analogue loot boxes targeted at children and for some reason everyone is just fine with them.