Comment by b112
4 months ago
Surely you can't be linking to a post on HackerNews, or a response, when trying to say "the average person" cares about privacy, are you?
The fact that the person is even posting on Hacker News invalidates "average person". So you must therefore be talking about the Times article?
The title of this gatewayed article is:
"You Care More About Your Privacy Than You Think"
It's literally saying that "you don't care", then trying to tell people why they should. This actually supports the premise that the average person doesn't care about privacy.
Yet beyond that, my "Only geeks care" clearly was about FOSS. Trying to invalidate my privacy statement, which everyone knows is an issue, doesn't invalidate my "Only geeks care -> FOSS" statement.
Do you really believe that if you stop 100 random people on the street, they'll even know what FOSS is? If they don't know, they do not care.
I wonder how many people know what FOSS is? What if I stopped 1000 random people in 5 rural towns, and 5 urban cities. Out of those 10k people, would even 100 know?
You might say "Oh, well if I explain it to them!". Nope.
Caring implies knowing about the issue, considering it, and worrying about it. This isn't even on the public's radar. They don't know what FOSS is. They don't even know what software is, nor do they know what files are.
Even if you sit them down, get them to listen to all sides of the issue for hours, some still won't care. At all.
And of the ones that do, what does "care" mean?
After all, upthread is discussing how the mildest inconvenience means nope, don't care. In the contexts of this thread, "caring" means "willing to use FOSS even if there are inconveniences".
FOSS software is everywhere. People could be using it. They aren't. Why? They don't care.
People have too many other problems in their life to spend efforts on every (important!) world problem. This is essentially a Maslow's pyramid. Unless it's also your hobby, you simply have no energy to spend on things which aren't immediately beneficial to you. This is not equivalent to not caring.
You seem to, as I do, care about open platforms and open software.
I think to difference here is, you need to believe people care. Meanwhile I know most don't.
The best I've ever gotten from people is economic self interest. "Free" without care for the ecosystem.
Beyond that? It's all posturing and signaling. I've had hundreds of clients, been involved at the community and government levels, worked to make OSS better for all.
And after 30 years it gets worse not better.
Even now, the biggest push is self interest, because "oh software not controlled by US corps?", from clients and government entities I work with.
Understand, I say this with immense sadness. And we must still strive. But for most of the world, simple is all they understand.
And OSS is a nuanced argument.
> The best I've ever gotten from people is economic self interest.
In the end, it all comes down to money, which is the measure of people's prosperity. It's sufficient to only care about it. I guess democracy itself also improves the prosperity of people in general.
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Can I seriously talk with you. I am in high school and I was so passionate about open source (I still am)
I wanted to make it better. I wanted to do my part. I thought about it for months, nobody else is there with whom I talk about it, and the people I do think I am a nerd or can't really go into the in-details of it.
I found HN to be the best way for discussing it, the problem is that I genuinely see this doomerism in open source that's eating me more and more.
I created an Ask HN to give a platform to all what I was thinking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45558430
I thought I would get some more discussions regarding the how we can change the fact that foss isn't used by most people part but it seems that they expect claps to made by one hand and expect everything to be done by developers for gratis once again and they expect to give nothing back... I didn't see many discussions about donating to foss software or smth in there.
My biggest question to you right now is: how are you so hopeful right now as well?
> Understand, I say this with immense sadness. And we must still strive. But for most of the world, simple is all they understand.
I tried to be hopeful and I feel strayed away from my purpose, disillusioned,helpless,feeling doomer/ that nothing can truly fix open source... I have tried to change myself for the better yet I still feel like I will deeply involve myself in foss atleast or atleast share it still as well.
I genuinely want to ask you what brings you hope in there. Idk my hope for the longest time was the history of how things changed for the better but I still don't feel better. I have to trust people for real change and my idea of population at a large scale is a little pessimistic nowadays.
I genuinely want to talk to you if that's alright with ya. I don't know what I am feeling about open source but its so mixed. Feeling like I can't really give it what it really needs (donations/support from general public), the best I can try is advocate in my friend circles I suppose but that's about it. I don't know but I just feel like there is so little that I can do & I wanted to try/ I tried but the whole world is giving me signals to shut up about it, even here.
somebody said to me to don't talk but show and I appreciate it but all I want to is talk to somebody about how I am feeling about open source, all these loads of thoughts I am caring and sharing in different comments. I just want to talk about open source and find hope about it otherwise I am seeing to lose hope in humanity itself. Hope is tiring. I tried. Which is why I am asking why you still have hope. Have you not been tired stranger? Have you not doubted yourself thinking if open source isn't a fight worth fighting for when you realize that substancial change mightn't be done by yourself & you feel sad about it though, it hurts me actively knowing that there is sometimes nothing can be done, how do you still have hope sir, i don't get it. I also want hope but I am not finding any, I am drowned in a pool of sadness/this inner feeling that this shit might not change and we are stuck here and things might only get worse but nobody's fighting hard for it to get better. How do you still have hope sir. I want to know. please either write a comment and contact me on my mail or signal (anything) or maybe both.
Thank you and have a nice day.
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