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Comment by idid | Hacker News Reader

While I resonate fully with the ideals encompassed by free software, I find that the "logistics" of supporting them "in real life" are a completely different story, that has little to do with the ethos behind them.

This comes as a singular, personal data point, or course. There's wider context behind my trials and tribulations, but, succinctly put, starting a for profit company around my 5 year-ish old OSS project was the only way I managed to find to safeguard its continued existence and development. This road involves a lot of uneasy compromises that don't fit in the original discourse around free software.

Perhaps, what I'm lacking, is a "how to get there" guide - the ideals are clear, the way to achieve them is not so much so.

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I agree with supporting the ideals, but hitting a barrier in features and usability. For my wife and I, our Apple Watches, AirPods, iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks are a net (I use this word purposely) that holds our digital life together and make working (she is my editor, and even in retirement I write every day for a few hours) and our digital lives easy and pleasant.

On the other hand, I love Linux, have a zillion GitHub repos with open source projects I do, etc.

I dream of a world in which I could use open hardware and free software, but how would something like an Apple Watch ever be open hardware and software?

> I dream of a world in which I could use open hardware and free software, but how would something like an Apple Watch ever be open hardware and software?

The PineTime is going to be released soon. Sure, it's nothing like an Apple or Android watch, but it's a significant start.

There's also the recently-released LilyGo TTGO T-Watch, which might not quite meet the most rigorous standards due to its ESP32 core but is designed from the get-go to be hackable. It doesn't seem like a stretch anymore to imagine a world of perfectly nice hardware that isn't locked down.

Many writers are doing their job just fine without owning the whole range of Apple's current offering, nor is there a surge in global writing talent imputable to the advent of the Apple Watch. It's cool if it works for you, but those things are not necessary.

No claim of “necessary” was made which needs refuting.

If people stopped buying the proprietary version, manufacturers would make open products. They don't really care either way, they just make a bit more money with proprietary licenses.

So, the answer is: it's on you.

I agree with supporting the ideals, but hitting a barrier in features and usability

You could reverse this and say that if open-source advocates would make usable products with features on par with commercial products, people would adopt them. There's a chicken-egg problem here.

People interested in these issues should read Working in Public by Eghbal, which is about open source culture and sociology. I just finished it.

The trouble is that the commercial products have marketing departments that aim to convince people that their feature set is the most important. So although open products have unique features of their own - including openness - people are likely to overlook them.

DRM also has an amplifing effect here.

I'd say it's the other way around. If you work for free software, then money is secondary, will happen only if your software has so much value that you can set your own conditions.

Else, you accept to work for money and then, well, you know that road...

Agreed. That's definitely not the scale we operate at (digitally latent, partially marginal by hn standards industry). Nevertheless, this restricts free software to only "critical" need infrastructure that has high value from the start (rather than being allowed to develop it), doesn't it?

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