Free and Open Source Software

17960 readers

176 users here now

If it's free and open source and it's also software, it can be discussed here. Subcommunity of Technology.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Gaywallet@beehaw.org

alyaza@beehaw.org

110

In your opinion, which FOSS software is by many considered "old" or "obsolete", but are in fact, in your opinion, in many ways better than the newer alternatives? (feddit.dk)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by privsecfoss@feddit.dk to c/foss@beehaw.org

231 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'll start:

RSS and blogs, news vs. social media
XMPP vs. WhatsApp/FB messenger/Snapchat
IRC vs. Matrix, Teams, Discord etc.
Forums vs. Social media, Reddit, Lemmy(?)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] weirdwriter@tweesecake.social 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@Skooshjones @privsecfoss @foss Also, another reason why big tech catches on, every time, is not so much that the UX is glossy but that Zoom, Apple, etc, all know that #Accessibility is needed to, 1, be dominant. As people look for stuff and tools that are accessible to Disabled users, Apple and Zoom come up a lot because they knew that capturing accessible design was a great way to capture a huge portion of users and otherwise. 2. Accessible design works for everybody. Seriously, having a far cleaner UI is better for everybody, including developers when they need to change code later.

[–] Skooshjones@vlemmy.net 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's a fair point, I've been happy to see that issue addressed more seriously in the last few years by many apps, including color schemes for folks with diminished sight or color blindness.

It would be interesting to create an open standard for app accessibility. Maybe that already exists, idk. But devs and organizations could submit their software to be evaluated and if passed, would be able to include a certification that it meets said accessibility standards.

[–] lamentforicarus@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

There is one for web site developers. You are meant to follow guidelines proposed by the WCAG and ADA.

[–] omarciddo@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I saw somewhere recently (don't remember if it was on Lemmy, reddit, or elsewhere), where a couple of folks were getting into it because a FOSS contributor didn't recognize the importance of accounting for accessibility in design. They thought that projects as whole did not have a responsibility to account for those design considerations, and that anyone who wants to see those implemented have to do it themselves. While technically the truth in that this is all effectively volunteer work and developers work on what they want to work on, it's something that could be alleviated by making it a core value of FOSS development. Asking questions like:

This is a point-click-drag interaction, but how would a person do this with a keyboard only?
These two components are identified using color, but what if a user is colorblind?
There are buttons labeled with iconography only, but what if a user cannot see it and uses a screen reader to interact with everything?

It's tough because the disability community in aggregate face steeper financial hurdles for a number of reasons, and could perhaps benefit the most from freely available, accessible tech.

[–] weirdwriter@tweesecake.social 1 points 1 year ago

@omarciddo It's especially ironic because these very Disabled people would be the biggest champions of FOSS if FOSS software was designed to be accessible from the ground up, or at least more development tools made it easier to do these things but the very people that could benefit the most from FOSS are completely shunned/left to fend for themselves constantly, while still unable to use your FOSS software at all, and then people wonder why big tech continues to capture that market. @foss