Oddbean new post about login | logout I'm worried what you heard was "Never use proprietary software." That's not how risk works, and also it's not a reasonable position. I'm saying this is part of the risk you accept when doing so, and it should be accounted for.
@663e5b60 just to see if I understand what you mean: the risk you talk about here, is the risk that it can suddenly happen that you can no longer use the software you have been relying on?
@ee3c3a40 Or that it will cost you significantly to do so, because Vader has changed the terms of the agreement, and you can only pray he does not alter it further.
@663e5b60 are you suggesting that proprietary software has a valid purpose in the world?
@d72d5211 I am saying that it's okay to pay people for software they made. I'm also saying proprietary software is unavoidable, so figure out how to handle it when greed gets the better of the company you're in business with.
@663e5b60 thanks for the explanation - fwiw, I'm a data point demonstrating a developer can make a good living as a purely #LibreSoftware dev (#Copyleft is my preference)... my whole career thus far (~30 years)... I don't think proprietary software is really inevitable... nor (in any way) desirable.
@d72d5211 I'm glad you made that work for you, but I'm also sure it was a moral imperative to do so. That needn't be the case for everyone, and I think you'll find most people face far more blockers than enablers in excising non-free software. For every Dave, there are 1000 devs who must contend with things like Windows every day, and that isn't the most important fight for them.
@663e5b60 you're certainly not wrong there... however, if devs realised their collective power and stopped working for those companies requiring them to use Windows... companies would stop using Windows. Yeah, it's a moral imperative... but if we don't believe that a critical mass of people can 'do the right thing'... what point is there in caring about anything? 😉
Seems to me that demonstrating it's possible to do this can be quite empowering. There're a LOT of unfulfilled devs out there.
@d72d5211 What do you do? (If you don't mind me asking)
@81a962e8 this is what I currently do: https://tech.oeru.org/democratising-higher-education-oers-foss This is how I got here: https://davelane.nz/my-open-history and move of my motivations are explained on https://davelane.nz (e.g. https://davelane.nz/proprietary and https://davelane.nz/darkage )
@81a962e8 also, fwiw, this is an update on what I'm doing these days, including why it's #FOSS, and how much it costs compared to some other tech. (tl;dr vastly less). https://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/5763/5600