Comment by vladgur
5 hours ago
How does one not engage with the corporate product at all?
Im typing a comment on a website of a corporation whose goal is to grow companies into corporations, via a computer manufactured by a corporation on a keyboard produced by a corporation, staring at a screen produced by a corporation, while connecting to an internet service offered by a corporation. Never mind that im also employed by a corporation, dressed by a corporation, drive a car manufactured by a corporation that takes fuel from a corporate gas station that is extracted and proccessed by a corporation.
What is the alternative exactly
On some level there is local/small businesses. They are less efficient and hence you usually have to pay more for less, but it avoids the a lot of the "power structure" that people have strong distaste for.
On a deeper level there is none. Overwhelmingly peoples complaint is that they need to do something to get something, which is just how life is, a shared annoyance that is just a fact of reality.
> they need to do something to get something, which is just how life is
FLOSS invalidates that statement.
Many people are happy to contribute to something greater than themselves. They also happily acknowledge they're standing on the shoulders of giants.
I'm not totally dismissive of FLOSS, but it's kind of a unique situation so you can't really extrapolate broad generalities about society from it.
Software basically has zero marginal cost, and is pretty unique in that regard. If baking 1 loaf of bread was identical to baking 10,000,000 loafs, we would have solved hunger centuries ago...
There also is the fact that a large amount of FLOSS is an exercise in resume building (FLOSS contributions is SWE resume building 101), and one rung lower, an exercise in ego building ("my design runs on millions of computers daily" is definitely something a human would value). So I wouldn't call it completely selfless (we are now also at the boundary of the philosophy of "selfless acts").
But in short, there is a reason software is pretty much the only field with a vibrant "free/open source" scene. It falls off a cliff once more than pressing keys on a keyboard a few hours a week/month is involved.
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