Nearly every day, my kids come home from school and go on about some new app or game they and their mates are excited about.
  • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
    6·
    1 month ago

    The point, in one sentence:

    If you are the product, not the paying customer, then not only is there no incentive to cater to your needs, there exists incentive to make the product worse for you if it means the paying customer extracts more from you.

    Users of freemium software are basically nothing more than willing cattle. Housed and fed for free only to be slaughtered.

    Maybe people just can’t help themselves? I fear we can’t have a fair and free market if people are so easily manipulated.

    • t3rmit3@beehaw.org
      2·
      1 month ago

      I fear we can’t have a fair and free market if people are so easily manipulated.

      We can’t, certainly at least in the US. People falsely believe the government will protect them from exploitation by corporations, but corporations have long since proven they can and will manipulate the government into serving them.

    • Lime Buzz@beehaw.orgEnglish
      1·
      1 month ago

      This is also true for open source software though, a lot of open source devs are mini dictators ruling over their own fiefdoms with an iron fist and they don’t care what the users, many of which have no coding ability, need or want.

      Even those that do have some coding ability will be ignored if they try to change things upstream that the main devs don’t agree with, even if most users would welcome such a change.

  • Lime Buzz@beehaw.orgEnglish
    3·
    1 month ago

    Sure but the same could be said and often is said for open source projects.

    Open source devs often have a particular goal or vision in mind and will ignore any attempts to give the users what they actually want, either through issues or pull requests.

    We’ve seen it so many times in open source projects, they love having that power over others and become mini dictators.

    • millie@beehaw.orgEnglish
      15·
      1 month ago

      That’s a really weird way of framing a hobbyist who isn’t being paid using their free time to code what they feel like coding. It seems to me that people who show up and make demands about what someone else does are literally attempting to dictate how that person spends their time. Someone coding what they want, rather than coding what other people want them to code, is just… independent? Autonomous? Do you really think that someone spending their free time how they want to constitutes being a ‘mini dictator’?

      It sounds to me like some end users like to have power over others and feel entitled to dictate how those who make the things they use spend their time.

      Personally, my suggestion to people with that attitude would be that they learn to make what they want themselves rather than demanding that others do it.

      • blindsight@beehaw.org
        1·
        1 month ago

        … Or pay them for it!

        There’s a prolific open-source dev that makes many plugins and themes for a widely-used OSS platform. He’s quite open when asked for new features if it’s something he’s already planning on doing anyway (with no guaranteed timeline) or if it’s not. But if it’s a reasonable ask, he’ll always mention that he can prioritise its development if they fund it. He even posts his current contractor rate; it’s quite transparent.

        I think more OSS devs should be more open like that. “Yes, I can do that feature request. Sounds like about 2-3 hours work. My hourly is $120 for contract work. Email me here if you’re interested and I’ll send a contract.”

        • Lime Buzz@beehaw.orgEnglish
          1·
          1 month ago

          There are two problems there:

          One is that not all open source developers accept payment, this is accurate, we have come across some that refuse to be paid for their work and not everone has the money to pay for it.

          This forces, we believe, people back into the freemium etc model. So really there don’t seem to be a lot of good solutions here, which seems to go against the original post.

          Either folks somehow pool together to have enough resources to pay open source devs, we put up with whatever they decide to do, we create a new movement focused more around what the community wants or we go back to corporations, most will probably choose the latter as there’s less tension there.

          Something to think on.

          • millie@beehaw.orgEnglish
            1·
            1 month ago

            Be the change you want to see in the world. Start developing what people want and be responsive to suggestions. A handful of motivated developers can get a lot done, especially in the context of whatever niche they’re focused on.

            • Lime Buzz@beehaw.orgEnglish
              1·
              1 month ago

              Sadly, I am a writer, not a coder.

              I have tried, but it never really stuck for me.

              I can plan things out, know how they will work, but actually programming it is very unlikely.

  • Sina@beehaw.org
    2·
    1 month ago

    foobar2000 is a counter example, but yeah the mobile space has none of those

  • Kissaki@beehaw.orgEnglish
    1·
    1 month ago

    They’re describing one kind of free proprietary software and company setup. Which is valid. But the title claiming “[all] always ends in tears” isn’t supported by that.