Hacker News Reader

Comment by fsflover | Hacker News Reader

> who pays for proprietary software, often can demand changes

So how do I demand that Windows 10 stops spying on me?

You can demand that by paying for an enterprise license of Windows and then disabling the tracking yourself: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/configure-w...

Boycott it. If enough users cease to buy the OS, Microsoft suffers economic consequence and may change the design to adapt to customer desires.

This model works less well for free software / open source, which often has a lack of financial incentives to motivate (or demotivate) developers.

> Boycott it. If enough users cease to buy the OS

So I have to convince thousands (for Windows maybe a million) of people that the thing that irritates me should be removed. Nope, that seldom happens. I find better luck in FOSS where there is enough tweaking potential that I can remove the irritating thing I don't like. Maybe FOSS maintainers and developers have no financial incentive to do what I want, but I can always have a local patch to do that.

Absolutely. You (with your training and ability to manipulate software, test, debug, and deploy) can make the change you like (and maintain it in perpetuity if you can't find someone to take on upstream maintenance).

This is not an option most software users have, but it's probably an option for most readers of this forum.

> This is not an option most software users have

Yes, but the good thing is that more and more people are learning how to program so I am hopeful that things will get better :)

> So I have to convince thousands (for Windows maybe a million) of people that the thing that irritates me should be removed.

No, you can alternatively pay money for a different tier of license that lets you turn it off.

You are assuming that such a tier exists (remember, my comment was not specific to telemetry)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com