Comment by h4ny
2 days ago
You have the source to everything you use in life right? You can make your own car, patrol, shampoo, grow your own food, build your own house, wire your own electricity (and generate it), can switch to having your own reserve of drinking water anytime and plumb it, etc.
Nothing against you personally but that kind of logic is getting old. I get it that you don't trust corporations but asserting it like open source projects don't do rug pulls, and like having the source because you can spin up the version you even if they screw you over means it's safe is missing the point of how we all function as a society.
The problem isn't open source or corporations to begin with or someone made the mistake of trusting someone who seemed trustworthy to begin with, and people who take the opportunity to push their own beliefs and narratives by capitalizing on emotional situations like this instead of finding constructive ways to make things better are the worst.
If I woke up one day to find some corporation had snuck in overnight and subbed out my shampoo for their newest scent without asking, then yeah I'd be looking for more reliable options for that too
The car is a better example. I'd be infuriated if my car received an OTA that made it play ads or something. I have to trust that the company won't do that (or buy a car that doesn't have OTA capability).
As others pointed out it's not the same dynamic when it's not about software.
The big picture is that agency was lost and that's not OK.
> You can make your own car, patrol, shampoo, grow your own food, build your own house, wire your own electricity (and generate it), can switch to having your own reserve of drinking water anytime and plumb it, etc.
*can* is a lot better then *do*. I would prefer that all of these processes be documented such that new sources of these products and services can be created if need be. That's really what having the source for a given piece of software is; the documentation required to reproduce it.
Imagine if the process of generating electricity was a big secret and controlled by a single company. That company would be unreasonably powerful, no?
I trust corporations enough that i do pay them to provide me with goods and services. I do not trust them enough to set them up as the only viable source for goods and services.