I see many people are FOSS enthusiasts here. Some only use free software on principle. I like open source alternatives too, but not every time.

As devs, our job is to make software. How can one justify preferring free software for all our needs, yet working on proprietary software?

Does advocating free software devalue your professional skills, while you're working on paid software?

If you do good work and sell your software, then someone releases a free thing solving the same problems, that's obviously bad for you.

Why should software be treated differently than other things? Have you seen a construction company building stuff for free? If you don't want to pay for your house to be built, can you find someone who builds it for you for free? I doubt that.

Yes, you can make your software free and accept donations. But you can't plan with that financially, you still need to be treated and payed as someone who creates value.

I have no problem with free software, I love the fact that many people can find the time and are willing to contribute to the public without compensation. What I'm saying is, software is a product of hard engineering work and builds upon knowledge and experience of individuals, and should be compensated like any other work.

What do you think?

@Torbuntu My example is exaggerated to start a conversation and find some difference between fields of work. I find your blueprint/construction analogy quite interesting.

@rantalicious I would think blueprints *can* be very much copyrighted. If you're an architect and someone contracts you to design a building, then a third party goes on and copies the building, you'll certainly be able to sue the shit out of them. The design is your intellectual property (unless you gave it away without terms, in which case there's nothing you can do).

@rantalicious You make very good points. There's something interesting to think about. One could argue that many of the leading open source projects today are free and open source because of PR and marketing reasons.

There are many examples, check VS Code for example. Obviously, the devs who do the vast majority of the work on it and are in a position where they can make decisions about the product, are paid by Microsoft and it's their day job. They are getting paid to make free software. Not everyone can afford that. Microsoft can though, because it's a tiny cost compared to the praise and good press it gets from people who appreciate it, and if you think about it, it can act like a very decent "entry drug" to other, paid Microsoft products and services. They desperately need a FOSS offering to appeal to certain groups of valuable people.

There's a large amount of prominent projects like this, developed and backed by companies. It's quite unlikely that Google couldn't possibly develop Kubernetes internally, without the help of people on github. Of course it could (and did).

@Torbuntu Expect a huge comment in 1-2 hours.

To iterate on this, "many" doesn't mean all by all means... The likes of Linux are obviously free as in beer, and that's a different category. There's open source born out of the legitimate desire for freedom, and there's open source born out of PR decisions.

You could also feel that when big companies open source important pieces of software, there's an element of forcing the industry in a certain direction. Part of the effect is eliminating competition, and it also makes you say well, Google is not evil because they open sourced 0.01% of what they do in X topic.

So you could say that these companies capitalize on the growing numbers of freedom and privacy conscious tech-savvy userbase by positioning themselves on the same side but are actually just muddying the waters?

Sometimes the likes of Google blatantly ignore what open source means for a lot of people. Android is being built on an open source core, seemingly just because it's cool to do that and it's easier for manufacturers to build their own shitty phones on top of it. They will of course make it punishingly difficult to opt out of their proprietary code and constant tracking. So android itself being open source does not give users neither a free, nor an open source system.

If Google announced that android goes closed source and completely proprietary, I would expect a huge amount of whining and projection of the end of privacy, while there is no such thing anyway in 99% of android devices today.

Building software has to be compensated in some way, that's pretty much a fact.

I just look at it entirely differently then the OR (Original Ranter).

I *always* use open source software if I can. Even if that piece of software has less features than it's closed source alternatives. What's the reason for that next to the open source philosophy? Security.

Let's have a look at the UK for example. They have a law saying that if a software product is released, they have to run it by the governmenment first (they don't all do that I think but it's officially required) to see if it's okay for release. If the goverment would decide that a backdoor would have to be build in before release, the company has to build that in.

The US has the same kinda principle only for as far as I know, you can just release your software there and if they come up with a non-public court order ordering you to build in something, you have to obey that order.

Now that's dangerous as fuck if you ask me. That would mean that if someone in the US would release a closed source encrypted messenger, the US could let the devs build in a backdoor through court order.

Using (f)oss doesn't guarantee that something doesn't contain backdoors, of course not. But it gives anyone the ability to verify/check the code for themselves.

If you don't have that, then how can one be sure that the software they are using is actually doing what it's supposed to do? They can't be sure.

'but that's very unlikely to happen' - I thought that too before the Snowden leaks. I actually think it's quite likely now.

Next to that, giving the user the power to alter something to fit their needs isn't a power that should be taken away imo.