I think the increasingly widespread attitude that only open source software is good and trustworthy increasingly annoying and problematic.
Building software takes time and resources. Experienced show that most open source projects do not make enough money to make the resource investment worthwhile, much less the time investment.
I generally like people being able to out food on the table, and if that means I have to pay for their software to use it or get updates, then I am happy to do so if that software is of value for me.
That of course doesn‘t mean I appreciate unnecessary vendor lock in, hostile subscription models, etc. All of these things are common with proprietary software, but they are not inherent to it.
Obsidian is a great example. Easy to takeout open formats, generous licensing model and no aggressive licensing implementation that makes it impossible to use the software offline. The team behind it seems to be able to make a living and people can still feel safe about the access to their notes.
Even if its not open source, it would be great progress if we‘ve had more software like obsidian
> I think the increasingly widespread attitude that only open source software is good and trustworthy increasingly annoying and problematic.
Software being open source almost always makes it more trustworthy, and I'm glad that more people are picking up on this over time.
> I generally like people being able to out food on the table
Completely agreed, and this makes for a frustrating paradox.
I don't use Obsidian because it's closed source, but I don't think it's evil or anything. Conversely, I pay for Immich, and I hope their model is sustainable.
Closed source also keeps missing CVEs, only most of them you never know because they aren't even making it to an officially released CVE. You usually don't even know what libs it uses and at what versions, never mind the proprietary code.
And then there's the closed source's Cloud part and its holes as well, which is a whole other can of worms.
They get to counter a point they think is wrong in an open forum on the internet. I guess they get the satisfaction of providing a second viewpoint to a claim, so that the claim, alone, is not the only viewpoint that others coming to this thread see.
What did you get out of calling out their counterclaim?
They didn't counter OP's claim, though. OP is essentially saying that software other than open-source can be trustworthy and the supposed counter-claim is that open-source software is more trustworthy. Regardless of that being true or false, it's not a counter to the claim that closed-source software can also be trustworthy.
They restate what the other person said in more correct (as they see them) terms. They're not "contorting" anything, nor are they attributing their version to the other person. I mean, "They're being a fucknugget for riffing off of the other person's words". Jesus, chill...
And yes, they respond based "on their own agenda". That's what all conversation and sharing of opinions entails: telling it from your perspective, and based on what you think it's better.
>rather than replying clearly on their own terms
What you quoted couldn't be clearer, or express the responder's terms any better. Your issue is not that the response is not on their own terms, it's that is not on your terms, where phrasing it similar to what the other person said is supposed to be bad.
But that's more of a you problem. Was just looking at another thread, and chanced on you berating someone for pointing to GNU's website as opposed to writing a set of custom arguments on the spot:
As long as they aren't abusive, people can answer anyway they damn please, including rewording what the parent wrote, or pointing to some link they agree with. Is that a novel concept?
>And I'd get even more relief if they admitted to having been an asshole on purpose and apologized. God forbid, stopped acting this way.
> They restate what the other person said in more correct (as they see them) terms. They're not "contorting" anything, nor are they attributing their version to the other person.
How is this not a contradiction? They're not contorting their words, they're just restating them with subtle changes to make it "correct". What?
> And yes, they respond based "on their own agenda". That's what all conversation and sharing of opinions entails: telling it from your perspective, and based on what you think it's better.
Yes, and do you not see how clapping back by "cleverly" rewriting someone words would come across as incredibly annoying? This is just a slightly more elaborate version of how children bicker! How do I need to explain this?
> But that's more of a you problem.
It certainly seems that way...
> oh, the irony
People getting hostile in response to hostility? Oh no, not the irony?! Case in point:
> As long as they aren't abusive, people can answer anyway they damn please, including rewording what the parent wrote,
This WAS abusive, that's my whole issue dude. It'd appear what is and isn't abusive isn't a fundamental force of the universe, and you and a few of your peers here just happen to not find what I - and imo, any average person with a reading comprehension - find immensely abusive.
>How is this not a contradiction? They're not contorting their words, they're just restating them with subtle changes to make it "correct". What?
"Contorting someones words" is said when someone changes what somebody said to make it appear as if they meant something else.
Not when someone merely expresses a different opinion, as their own, using some part of the other's wording.
>Yes, and do you not see how clapping back by "cleverly" rewriting someone words would come across as incredibly annoying?
No. That's a you problem. And even describing it as "rewriting someone words" would be a stretch. They merely used the same noun (which they need to, as they speak about the same thing), and contended that the opposite is true:
"I think the increasingly widespread attitude that only open source software is good and trustworthy increasingly annoying and problematic"
"Software being open source almost always makes it more trustworthy, and I'm glad that more people are picking up on this over time".
The only annoying comment I see in the whole exchange is yours.
>People getting hostile in response to hostility? Oh no, not the irony?!
The only hostility was in your mind, based on your premise that responding by reusing some of the same wording is "hostile".
I hope all replies you'll ever get will be in their style, maybe that will (eventually) teach you why I find it oh-so-unreasonably hostile, and yes, an intentional contortion of words.
I further hope someone will be there afterwards to gaslight you about how there's actually nothing wrong with it, and that it's all in your head (which is like no shit, where do you think hostility arrives to?), and that it's a you problem (whose problem would you be reporting on? nonsense...).
I have the impression these people only use Big Tech open source projects. Why would they expect software developers to work for free so they can give their beautiful contribution of using it for free is really unknown to me.
Obsidian also has affordable commercial pricing. By now I very much try to pay support contracts or give back to projects in other ways at work.
The problem is that quite a few open core companies immediately go from $0 / year to low to medium 6-digit-figures per year. This escalates the entire project sky-high in levels of internal scrutiny with a high chance of it not happening.
On the other hand, it was simple to argue why this is easily providing us with $50 in value per year. Now it is integrated with our normal license handling and it's actually slowly and steadily growing internally. We're up another 4-5 users from the last time I looked.
>I think the increasingly widespread attitude that only open source software is good and trustworthy increasingly annoying and problematic.
If people put their notes in, only open source software is good.
At best, one can tolerate a very big closed source company, who is unlikely to just do whatever with the data and has some track record for privacy, like Apple.
But trusting all your notes to a closed source app from a small peanuts company?
In this case the "closed source app" is using a very open and easy to parse format.
If Obsidian enshittified tonight so badly I had to stop using it, the only thing I'd kind of miss is dataview and bases.
And of those dataview is "just" parsing a bunch of markdown with javascript. Bases is a yaml format for displaying more markdown.
I'm pretty sure I could vibe-code some scripts over a weekend that cover most of my Obsidian use-cases and use any markdown-capable editor for writing.
That's why I use Obsidian (and stopped using Joplin, because - at the time - all my notes were in one obscure blob)
I think they could easily make Obsidian open source without losing out on profits.
The app itself is free anyway.
They could keep the sync backend closed source and make people pay to use the sync feature.
Lots of apps have open-source clients (for trust/auditability) but backends that are closed/locked somehow, e.g., Logseq.
Obsidian is using electron, so the source is already somewhat available anyway. I understand them not making it open source, and risking someone forking it and harming their business. But considering the situation, I would think making it at least source available on a popular forge, where people can make issues and open merge-requests, might be a beneficial thing.
There are a bunch of small problems people encounter here and there, which usually will never be solved by the company. Giving the community a route to improve their tool, would be good.
The PKM I've been using lately, SiYuan, does exactly that, and I think their business model isn't bad: the client is fully FOSS, there are some client-side paid features with a one-time subscription (WebDAV/S3 sync "bring your own server") and some server-side paid features with a more expensive recurring subscription (cloud space provided by them).
I don't particularly like client-side paid features, but:
- The client is fully FOSS, you can just patch the license check out. In fact, there are some forks on GitHub that do just that and provide binaries, and the authors don't seem to care, they even acknowledged them on Twitter (https://x.com/b3logos/status/1928366043094724937).
- There are plugins to sync without a paid plan
This works out quite well for them: if you choose a fork or a sync plugin, you don't get the same support that paying users do, so many users still end up buying a license. But you don't need to, which makes the whole thing not user-hostile.
I have bought a one-time license myself, and I'm very happy that I'm supporting the development of a FOSS project.
The article is about security and trust. Open Source is in that context by definition the only good solution. Though, doesn't mean that a closed app has to be bad, but you have to blindly trust them, and hope that this will never change. With Open Source, you don't have to be blind, you can trust them educated (or at least trust that other will check what's going on).
Of course this always a bit of case by case, but obsidian is a very exposed and worthful target.
> I generally like people being able to out food on the table, and if that means I have to pay for their software to use it or get updates, then I am happy to do so if that software is of value for me.
Paying money to Obsidian for writing yet another text editor seems like digging and filling holes to increase GDP to me.
While I agree with you, i feel like that was not the point the author was making.
It more so was a warning that the combination of little reviewed community plugins and a not sandboxed macos binary is a potential risk. And with that sentiment I can also agree.
That was my take too. I am less concerned with an app being simply closed source and much more concerned with closed source coupled with skipping review and the general approved distribution models on the two platforms.
I hope you understand that ethic is not absolute. It's unethical for you, according to your ethical rules. Doesn't mean that this applies to other people rules too.
Yeah, we're on a site where a large majority of users shamelessly work at adtech companies, and threads regularly pop-up where people defend working at companies actively developing and selling exploits.
I am well aware of that, this is why I remind people that proprietary software is bad actually.
You wrote that "Closed-source software" is unethical, not "harmful software & services" is unethical. There is a significant difference. Don't shift your goal as you like.
Not all closed-source software is harmful; Obsidian here is a prime example of one which is not harmful and could be even considered as beneficial, despite being closed source, because of how open and supportive it's designed in everything else.
I was just confirming the point you made -- the definition of ethical is not absolute, and there are people that consider questionable things ethical.
> Obsidian here is a prime example of one which is not harmful and could be even considered as beneficial, despite being closed source
All proprietary software is unethical. It's as simple as that. No matter whether it's free or paid, no matter whether it's useful or harmful. If you have a right to use it but are deprived of the right to alter it, it is not ethical.
Depends on people, but for most it's mainly because Stallman says so.
You still have ethics ground if you think it the same way as repairability, actively blocking ways to repairs things you bought yourself is questionable, and keeping things closed source can be seen as a way to artificially prolonge a strict dependance on your vendor by impairing your ability to resolve issues by yourself.
Not disclosing the ingredients is illegal large part of the world, and people can die if you don’t do that, so the answer is clearly yes in some sense. This is also true for some cooking techniques, like heat treatment of raw meat. I think your analogy is not the best.
Not disclosing ingredients is more like not disclosing dependencies because I am very confident that you can't go into a shop, buy a random food and then construct recipe from list of ingredients.
It does however play a hugely important role in a recipe, in a way than the choice of language doesn't play in a program (especially considering turing completeness). So the analogy is broken.
Besides nobody made the point that list of ingredients makes a recipe.
Just that it's important to know the list of ingredients for a food you're gonna eat, and that it's even illegal to not disclose them (either to the public or a regulatory body) if you sell food.
As someone who also believes closed source software is unethical (though full of nuance), I don't appreciate the abrasive and combative (and frankly rude) way you are engaging on this. You're so epitomizing the rabid stereotype that part of me thinks you are just trolling and don't actually believe what you are saying.
If you actually care about this, stop alienating potential allies, and ideally start making arguments to support your case instead of telling people to RTFM (which in this case is even worse because "the manual" isn't as much of an authoritative mic drop as you seem to think it is).
This is the first paragraph after the initial quote defining "free software".
> We campaign for these freedoms because everyone deserves them. With these freedoms, the users (both individually and collectively) control the program and what it does for them. When users don't control the program, we call it a “nonfree” or “proprietary” program. The nonfree program controls the users, and the developer controls the program; this makes the program an instrument of unjust power.
It seems safe to say the author thinks that one creating "an instrument of unjust power" for oneself is unethical. Though, perhaps if the commenter in question pulled that quote out of the article, it could have helped their point.
You don't have to agree with it, but I think it's fair to parrot a take from people who have invested a lot of time and effort into considering why free software is good.
The linked page has a clear explanation for why one might consider nonfree software to be unethical.
Sometimes people take the time to read and understand something and conclude that this is the best way to express it, better than they themselves can paraphrase.
And sometimes they just collect opinions and follow suit, instead of forming their own ones. How do you know which one happened here, are you a mind reader?
> How do you know which one happened here, are you a mind reader?
If you admit that they could be doing one of two things ("And sometimes ...") but you assume it's actually one of them in particular ("I think they asked for your take, not GNU's."), then this question could similarly be asked of you.
A bigger problem with my model is that it's a false dilemma. These are both just characterizations. Both can be true at the same time just fine, and so can neither.
It even does my own sentiment poorly. My actual issue with this whole exchange was not that their thoughts are unoriginal (although I'd be surprised), but that this way of responding I find extremely lazy and disrespectful, as well as generally unreasonable. They were asked for their opinion. It doesn't have to be good, it doesn't have to be rigorous, it just has to be theirs.
Linking out to some reading material and adding nothing else of substance fails even this most basic expectation. It's a discussion thread, not a newsletter. But then just like in the other subthread where the person above found me from, I'm sure they'd argue that this is just, like, my opinion. And that it sure is.
Could ask the same from you really, but then you followed me here out of spite from the other subthread to just loosely regurgitate another person's reply [0], along with your lackey [1], trying to make it a touch more hostile on the way, so I think I do know the answer to that one...
> If you're not interested at all, why did you even join the conversation?
Or was this a genuine question? I don't think you do those though. Are you then maybe getting tripped up on your own dumb headcanon? Cause honestly, given that this would be the third time in this thread that you're conjuring up a strawman and twisting words, you have to appreciate I have a hard time believing anything coming out of your mouth (keyboard?) at this point. It's almost as if there was a reason I went off about what I did, and it's coming back to bite you in the ass now...
To you, is a suggestion for someone to explain their own thoughts in their own words, rather than link to someone else's, a sign of no interest at all? Did I really say that I wasn't interested in what their take was, or did I say that I wasn't interested in receiving another barrage of GNU links? Careful, the latter one doesn't even require thinking, only bare minimum intellectual honesty, seemingly your Achilles heel.
I am quite thankfull that thanks to unethical software I am able to pay my bills, instead of being like a street art performer hoping to get enough coins at the end of the day.
I was also a dreamer once upon a time, with M$ on my email signature and all that zealot attitude, then I had to support myself and face the reality that most supermarkets don't take pull requests.
I don't think GPL cares where the money is coming from - we're talking about closed/open source, not ethical business models. If we did, we'd have to also go over unfettered free markets and capital flow.
First of all, I do get by with just FOSS. Second -- whether you can or cannot get by without proprietary software has no relation to it being objectively unethical.
Building software takes time and resources. Experienced show that most open source projects do not make enough money to make the resource investment worthwhile, much less the time investment.
I generally like people being able to out food on the table, and if that means I have to pay for their software to use it or get updates, then I am happy to do so if that software is of value for me.
That of course doesn‘t mean I appreciate unnecessary vendor lock in, hostile subscription models, etc. All of these things are common with proprietary software, but they are not inherent to it.
Obsidian is a great example. Easy to takeout open formats, generous licensing model and no aggressive licensing implementation that makes it impossible to use the software offline. The team behind it seems to be able to make a living and people can still feel safe about the access to their notes.
Even if its not open source, it would be great progress if we‘ve had more software like obsidian