I became a Linux user in 1999. I started with Slackware downloaded over a ppp connection over a couple of days. For the next two decades following I preached the wisdom of the penguin, opensource, and free software. It was fun! We were like the cowboys of the internet, fighting the outlaws (private hardware and software corporations). We worked together and evangelized what we saw as the right direction.
Boy were we successful. I big chunk of our world now runs on opensource software. Linux is all over the place, and even our enemies have started to embrace us. Microsoft are almost the good guys (what?) or at least close to neutral. Even governments defend us.
But as with all good things, they eventually come to an end. Now we "The Knights of Opensource" started infighting and using our platforms to support political ideologies; even if that is at the expense of losing some of our brightest people. Friends are kicking old friends from communities, projects are implementing coups.
It has gotten to the point where you can mention the name "Lunduke" and get booted from a community. Mind you, the before mentioned person is pretty hard on some communities, holding them to the line. But I haven't personally heard or been shown any hateful speech or words from the man. In general, he is cordial and a bit silly at most times. Needless to say, his name or work being mentioned should not be enough to get one alienated.
So where am I today, then? I find myself embracing proprietary software more and more. In many cases it has always been better, but I had that moral high ground being one of "The Knights of Opensource" keeping me loyal. But now that we have become a ragtag group of bandits and marauders, I feel no reason to stick around. Not to say I don't love the same things. Not many proprietary platforms can outdo the Linux command line. But I'm not fighting them anymore.
Boy were we successful. I big chunk of our world now runs on opensource software. Linux is all over the place, and even our enemies have started to embrace us. Microsoft are almost the good guys (what?) or at least close to neutral. Even governments defend us.
But as with all good things, they eventually come to an end. Now we "The Knights of Opensource" started infighting and using our platforms to support political ideologies; even if that is at the expense of losing some of our brightest people. Friends are kicking old friends from communities, projects are implementing coups.
It has gotten to the point where you can mention the name "Lunduke" and get booted from a community. Mind you, the before mentioned person is pretty hard on some communities, holding them to the line. But I haven't personally heard or been shown any hateful speech or words from the man. In general, he is cordial and a bit silly at most times. Needless to say, his name or work being mentioned should not be enough to get one alienated.
So where am I today, then? I find myself embracing proprietary software more and more. In many cases it has always been better, but I had that moral high ground being one of "The Knights of Opensource" keeping me loyal. But now that we have become a ragtag group of bandits and marauders, I feel no reason to stick around. Not to say I don't love the same things. Not many proprietary platforms can outdo the Linux command line. But I'm not fighting them anymore.
I use "Hey!" for email these days, why? Because I know I can go get support, and they will answer me whether I like dragons or I like unicorns, left or right. They will treat me like a person and paying customer. The same goes for services like Kagi, 1Password, and even Windows, though I plan to move to macOS. But none of these people care about my beliefs. They will treat me like a human and support me like any other customer.
I hope some other cool trend in tech comes that can excite me the way the opensource world used to. But as of now, they are no better than the companies they used to rail against, and I will support those who treat me as another human accepting disagreements as exactly that. Why is there no room for discourse anymore?
Cheers!