Comment by Imustaskforhelp

Hey, appreciate your response! Now, my hn post was actually longer than 4000 and that's why I had to trim otherwise I would've had maybe explained the question but I will try to write a short answer in here.

> Why should they care? What does open source give you?

Open source gives people complete freedom, the freedom that a software can run for posterity, can be modified towards your liking, and the most important thing which I failed to mention: peace of mind

Most open source software can be run with peace of mind. No subscriptions. No update that enshittens it. If it works and you like it, its yours. No spying on you. No showing you ads which will try to radicalize you or sell you some scammy course as an example. Its just there... saying hi to you, saying how's your day, oh you want to use me, fine, how can I help you today.

And it expects nothing back in return. Its just there waiting to be used.

People should care because of this, for peace of mind. its almost always worth it in my opinion. I genuinely think that although I didn't mention but even small steps like using f-droid and then transitioning to linux to then transition to mastodon/bluesky as an example can definitely help reducing the reliance on algorithms as well, it can stop spying on us via using things like signal.

I'd recommend you to check out the clippy movement by louis rousman. I sort of resonate with the same statement and I agree with the right to repair as well, sure I am not much of a hardware tinkering person but the fact that I can go to a mechanic who can repair easily or have an ability to learn it myself via repair friendly systems is always nice to have and I agree with that thing too. I hope that the clippy movement can sort of bring both the things together which I think it already does.

Clippy movement is great actually & explains the reason why people should care, but I have also tried to give some of my own rationale behind it as well.

Personally, the reason I got into open source was because of privacy. I started learning more and more about privacy and uh, the final straw on the camel's back for me was when I learnt valorant was installed kernel level and there's no way you can 100% guarantee its removed without deleting the whole system.

Downloaded linux and kind of never moved back and got into a rabbit hole. (The only time I used windows was in a vm/winboat app to run a tool which could root my phone but that company's otp server didn't work or anything and so my phone can't be rooted but yeah:<)

I like linux but I think that there are so many low hanging fruits like f-droid and signal that people don't even use them man. I would talk about linux/cli tools then when people show the initiative of having f-droid/signal. I think that we need to first educate people about these tools because they are genuinely better than their alternatives and just so good that its almost always worth it to have them on your phone/systems