[api]

Open source has never achieved user freedom.

It’s achieved developer and very tech savvy IT pro freedom. If you can deal with command lines and debugging systems you are not a user. You’re a computer professional.

If OSS wanted to bring freedom to users its primary focus would be radical simplification and UI/UX.

[jasonvorhe]

What nonsense, especially if framed in a such an absolutist way leaving no room for nuance. Millions of people are storing their data on self hosted or 3rd party run managed OSS services on multiple platforms. Sure, it is not all perfect, UX might be an issue here and there but compared to having to relearn using some proprietary app redesign every other year because some Product Manager needed a promotion, a lot of OSS stuff is perfectly usable, stable and secure.

[api]

> Millions of people are storing their data on self hosted or 3rd party run managed OSS services on multiple platforms.

That's open source being used by developers to provide a closed service to users. Users experience it as an opaque closed service.

SaaS backed by open source is actually the most closed model of software, more closed than closed-source software run locally.

[user3939382]

That’s because of extractive economics from tech not because of any failure or weakness of open source. If tech economy was in equilibrium open source would be massively popular. Polished alternatives are subsidies by extraction economics.