[Imustaskforhelp]

I don't really know man half the population doesn't know what open source means or cares whereas a lot of people seemingly have lots of opinions about AI.

One can liberate people from big tech and the other ties them to it in sorts. And there are very very more conversations about the latter than the former.

The point of discussion is to bring change. There has been a real change in how usable Linux has been lets say compared to past but now its really about user adoption I suppose. I genuinely think that we might need to reopen that discussion window as a lot of people are getting interested in linux/homelabbing /realizing that they can degoogle and what not to really get privacy.

Those discussions brought a change into how open source software is written today (git) etc. but now we probably might need discussions about the awareness of these open source products to the general public if we truly want mass adoption I suppose.

What are your thoughts?

[pixl97]

>One can liberate people from big tech

A very small portion of the population, yes.

The percentage of the population that is going to run things on their own is comparatively tiny. Mass adoption isn't going to happen because convenience and support is what most people want. Again, these things have been discussed for decades, and yet we keep seeing tighter and tighter centralization of data and services. In phones it's pretty much dead. You have apple (totally locked) and Google (on their way to totally locked).

[Imustaskforhelp]

yes I understand and your points are valid.

Yet I still feel like things like grapheneos are really valid nowadays and there are definitely some de-facto low hanging fruits of open source where you still get the same-ish level of convenience and support and the only reason I can't think of the same thing happening is knowledge.

my country is literally filled with everyone owning whatsapp, when I ask people why not signal... they don't even know what signal is.

Everyone has always been doing chats on whatsapp and now there is this weird lock-in but all it takes is for masses to use signal and spread the word as an example for a small victory towards a path of good. I will try to do my part I suppose, we can all be pessimist but atleast I feel deep down that we can create a system of convenience and support for other open source projects too if we can donate to these projects too and have a reasonable assessment of that too.

Too many people think of open source as free and yes its free but I also think that its the responsibility of us as a whole as a society to fund open source if we want support otherwise we should stop thinking about it.

Regarding google locking down, what can I say except that I think that this decision should be fought against with as much scrutiny by the people advocating for freedom as possible.

There is a way to do things with adb but still, it is a shame that google went down this path and we should definitely fight against this too of sorts but I have hope in grapheneos + f-droid too tho. I definitely need to enlighten myself more if the google's thing is gonna cause an issue for things like grapheneos too as that would be a real deal breaker / cause even more severe issues as from what I know grapheneos is one of the safest os roms/ most privacy friendly android rom for mobile and gives a lot of security advantages that are definitely something to look at and admire.

[SketchySeaBeast]

> I don't really know man half the population doesn't know what open source means or cares whereas a lot of people seemingly have lots of opinions about AI.

I'm not the person you responded to, but I'm certain that way less than half the population knows about or considers open source, that's one of those living in a bubble illusions.

Ultimately those people aren't here and have no interest in being here.

[Imustaskforhelp]

I agree that those people aren't here and have no interest.

I would say that it is the issue of lack of knowledge if anything.

Yes, there is an infinite amount of knowledge available on the internet regarding open source and that's honestly where I learnt about stuff but its overwhelming at first and required something to kickstart the whole process/ be a catalyst of sorts.

Realizing using linux that privacy matters a lot and then realizing that I can just search open source alternative to X really helped me in the beggining/still sometimes does and there are a lot of low hanging fruits that can just be told for people to follow (like use signal instead of whatsapp) so there's definitely that.

I definitely am thinking about doing something about it tbh the more I think about it but I think that partially why people don't go around doing this is because of how AI seemingly sells and open source fundamentally doesn't sell

[SketchySeaBeast]

It's not knowledge, it's interest. You go looking because you care. But people don't even use desktops anymore. They could, but they don't, what's the point? I know devs who haven't even put together their own PCs in decades if they ever did at all.

I don't know how you shift that, but getting people interested would be the first step. They need to have a reason to want to learn.

[johnnyanmac]

>They need to have a reason to want to learn.

Supposedly evveryone's mad over paywalls and enshittification and slop, but no one wants to take the time find geuine, curious content anymore.

As far as I'm concerned, the frog it cooked already. immediate dopamine trumps over the idea of ever owning anything in life.