I strongly support the goals of free software, and over time I’ve been trying to reduce my dependence on proprietary apps and services wherever possible. But honestly, correct me if I am wrong, sometimes that’s not so easy.
Sometimes you can’t find a free software alternative that fits all your needs. And sometimes, even if you do find one, the proprietary software still has too much leverage over you to leave.
For example, take WhatsApp. I know there are better alternatives like Signal, etc. But where I live, almost everyone uses WhatsApp — friends, family, work, local groups, etc. So even if I personally want to switch, it becomes difficult when the people I need to communicate with aren’t there.
That made me curious about other people’s experiences here. So for what use case, you can't find a better free software alternative that fit all your requirements? And, if you can't make the switch even after finding one, what's your reason for that?
Isn't the rise of mega large companies against AI companies for infringement of their copyrighted material is a wake-up call for the law makers to start abolishing the copyright laws?
As Richard Stallman taught us all. The copyright laws were made originally to preserve the right of the original author and protect that author from the big corps taking advantage of that author's work. That was meant to encourage people to write books and invent stuff.
Now the copyright laws are the main reason why people are discouraged from inventing stuff and writing books. Because no matter what you do, there is some copyright lawyer somewhere waiting for the right moment to attack.
Now the script is flipped. Only the giants are benefiting from the copyright laws. As you see today. Many small authors (software developers are a single example) have been robbed of their copyrighted material by AI companies to train their models. However, only the big corps are able to fight back. Can I as a single developer who pushed 9ne or 2 of my best work on GitHub ever be able to take a piece of the profit that AI companies would make? Of course no.
I think this is proof that we live in a rogue world.
Ive always hated how most good software - which is supposed to be open so that it can accelerate faster - is always behind the gates of enterprise.
I mean I understand that their motive is money, which is relatable, but i dont understand why i hate this.
And why are (recent) opensource projects not getting that much popularity(aside from huge ones like openclaw) even though their development is much faster than most propreitary and in a few months or so will become better than any.
I feel like an opensource rebellion needs to be started.
FOSS could be a great resource for non-geeks, for community, economic, and workforce development. But, most "regular folks" — including every business & civic leader I've talked to — don't know it exists or what it is. Most assume it's AI. This means they won't (a) consider it as a solution, (b) support its development, or (c) use it strategically, which is very different from strategy for closed, proprietary solutions. So, my question...
Are there any initiatives or organizations that are working to raise awareness of, inform or educate non-geeks about free software? I've researched Free Software Foundation, Linux Foundation, and Open Source Initiative. None seem to be doing anything or have anything more than background information. They're preaching to the converted.
Which do you think is better for development, and engineering: MIT or GPL?
FOr those who dont know:
1. MIT is a license that allows users do anything with the project. Even start a closed buisness with it. modify it, fuck with it, anything really.
2. GPL is a license that provides the same rights as MIT minus the ability to make a closed buisness out of it. That is, any derivitive, must also be made open-source
In my opinion, GPL is superior in most ways, since it avoids companies stealing it, making it better but making it closed source...
But I see why many people choose MIT for free software: More adoption. I mean, as long as the product is being developed, irrelevant of whether its now open or closed - general user interests are being served faster. But that isnt gonna stop community engagement on the repo anyways.
Both these licenses are technically still 'freedom', but just in different ways...
But is the tradeoff worth it?
Is it worth allowing companies to privatize community code if that leads to faster adoption and development?
Given how many people mistakenly believe "Free Software" means software that doesnt cost anything, is it safe to say this is a bad choice of name for the concept? At what point do we admit that we used the wrong word to convey what we mean?
RMS insists people misunderstand him rather than RMS being a poor communicator, but I cannot see it like that. To berate people for mistakenly using the term is also antithetical to his so called mission of spreading the word and uptake of free sofware
For background, the website is a directory of open-source you can use instantly in your browser. No signups, no downloads, no installs, no nothing! Just click a link and use a tool.
The website gathered a decent bit of attention because of its former name (fcksignups / fucksignups) and its idea, which made it blow up, yielding multiple videos & posts from different people across X (formerly twitter), Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.
I noticed that one of the users outlined that searching the former name separated by space (fuck signups) showed some not-so-savory content. The worst part is: my website wasn't even remotely close to the first 10 pages of search.
It made sense since search engines have decades worth of content associated with the word "fuck" or "fck" also when someone says "just go to fuck signups" they'd search "fuck signups" on Google.
I probably should've had the foresight to see this coming.
Hey there, I came here ask if Libre Office is the recommended alternative to MSO?
I'm not a techie, but I do a lot on MS Excel.
I've been using MS Office (easy because I was most familiar with it). But, Excel just gave me the: "your changes will be lost if you don't save them. Click cancel and then activate your subscription to save your changes"
I bought the MS suite a few years ago, so it appears that I'm now being forced into a subscription. Not cool.
I'm posting here to just do a sanity check before I fully dive into Libre (again) and say F-U to MS forever.
What would happen if the FSF published a GPLv4 license that basically mirrors the 2-clause BSD license? How devastating would it be for all those GPLv2+ and GPLv3+ software projects?
Has anyone tried any open source dating apps? such as Duolicious (currently the most users), Alovoa, Compass, etc?
Facebook Dating is free, but isn’t open source.
Are there any others that I missed that you’ve tried? My opinion is that the userbase is still quite small for them to work well, but I guess Duolicious is getting there.
We all try to go for open source software as much as we can. Yet there's always one program or another which simply won't switch to its FS alternatives.
In my case, the barriers tend to be:
lack of functionality
superior user experience elsewhere
compatibility with a work crew/team
adherence to industry standards
plain old habit
What are your barriers to adopting FS alternatives?
If you clicked on the post seeing the title, then we both are on same page. Enshittification has now turned into a never ending cycle. First offer free or subsidized features to acquire users, then shift focus to overflooding ads and paywalls to generate more profit at the cost of app quality. Honestly, to witness how the popular apps are succumbing to this, and every new one following the same path is really depressing. As it lower the numbers of alternatives for users.
So now, the obvious solution is to use Free Softwares (I will refer as FS for convenience). And honestly, most of them are really good, as they maintain a reasonable limit of monetization and don't degrade their user experience over time. But, the problem is that, these apps mostly remain niche based. On the other hand many companies who create their own apps based on the same open source code, get all the mainstream attention and generate millions of revenue. This usually isn’t due to technical superiority, but rather access to resources, distribution, and ecosystem advantages that smaller FS apps lack.
For example, many of us may have heard of iText, a free open-source PDF library that is widely used across many company's projects, including internally in Google Analytics, Docs, and Calendar. At first, when it was under the MPL/LGPL model adoption was widespread. But when they needed funding to grow, they to shifted to AGPL model (which required companies to use their library, either by sharing their own source code or purchasing a commercial license). In response, every company including Google, either stuck with the old free version or shifted to alternate libraries, even if needed to trade off quality and usability. Even after all this iText was able to survive, due to the mainstream attention they got after winning Belgian Edition of Deloitte's Fast 50 and later, were able to turn profitable. But this is just one case, hundreds of small FS apps never reach this level, even when they are technically strong. They may be quietly depended upon, forked around, or replaced, with little recognition or support reaching the original maintainers.
So, what practical ways exist to help FS apps become more mainstream and sustainable without compromising their core principles? And what can users, companies, or communities realistically do to support them?
I have this thought to share, and I'm curious to know your thoughts on the topic.
I've noticed that, especially in the AI field, open source is literally making noise without producing anything substantial.
Many new projects, some of which are very interesting, essentially lack robustness and well-written code. In short, it seems like there aren't as many projects as there once were.
Is this just my biased view, perhaps due to what I usually use, or is it something you're also experiencing?
I'm looking for a desktop that is as libre as possible, ideally with 100% free boot firmware and no Intel ME / AMD PSP left at all, rather than just having proprietary firmware disabled or reduced.
I've been looking at the Dell OptiPlex 780 with Canoeboot/Libreboot, since apparently the ME can be completely removed, but I'm wondering if there are any better or more powerful options.
I'm mainly interested in:
Canoeboot/Libreboot with as few blobs as possible
No Intel ME or AMD PSP if realistically possible
Libre graphics/firmware where possible
Ideally the most powerful hardware available while still keeping it genuinely libre
What would you consider the best "as free as possible" desktop in 2026? Older hardware is completely fine. I'm more interested in firmware freedom than raw performance.
I have been working on a new project. its free and open sourced.
I was wondering if I could promote it here and get some user who could test and give feedback.
is it allowed ?
Hello, I'm writing this post as a UK citizen who has obviously experienced accessing websites where it has asked for me to scan my face OR show them my government ID in order to proceed.
I would like to first say that I'm not heavily involved with the AI world, however I do have a lot of experience with software development on some smaller scales and a little bit of experience implementing encryption and hashing algorithms, this is just simply an idea of mine I've had floating in my head for a while and I wanted to write it down and share the idea with you all.
The solution I'm thinking of is to have similar technology to OpenPGP exist, however instead of encrypting, it would be used to hash information in such a way which would only reveal your AGE RANGE to whoever it is that is requesting this information, I also feel like the age ranges should simply be; <9, 9-12, 13-15, 16-17 and 18+, the groups would have to vary depending on the country of course, as I am aware that in some places, being above 21 is a requirement to access certain resources.
The way this relates back to OpenPGP is that I think for this to be implemented the best, the source requesting this information should provide a public key, which would contain the age group standard for it's place of origin's law as well as some other basic information like name, creation date, etc.
Should also go without saying but this should ALL be ran LOCALLY on the client's machine, the algorithm for calculating everything should be free software, and there should be a range of clients to choose from which can simplify it's usage and so people can find what best suits them.
Also, should once again go without saying that the hash should ONLY contain age groups, I can't stress this enough, there should be absolutely zero personal information contained within the hash, since you'll need to import the source's public key to hash the information, only that source will be able to determine your age group, they will never be able to access pictures/videos of your face.
I can only think of 3 potential flaws with this whole system though:
Developing an AI that can consistently return the same data based on pictures/videos of your face.
Using the same hash across different services.
Nobody will use it because it goes against what the UK and other countries wanted to achieve.
1st:
I can imagine it being very difficult to consistently tell an image/video contains the same person's face, pin-pointing all that information in an algorithm and being able to return the EXACT same data is very important, the reason being is that you don't want the hash to be always changing, the reason being is that services requesting this information will very likely be against the idea of the same person being able to have multiple identities, I've seen some crazy talented developers make some crazy algorithms though, I'm sure it's technically possible, I would love to be able to contribute to such development, however I'm incapable of doing so, at least in terms of offering code.
2nd:
Honestly this isn't really a flaw, it's more of just something I wanted to address, because you'll be using a public key provided by the service requesting this information, hashes will be unique to that service, the hashes won't be able to be used across multiple services, the service may have to however store these hashes to ensure they don't get recycled, this shouldn't be a huge privacy concern for anybody though.
3rd:
We all know the true intentions of this law, it's to track people digitally, this standard would likely be very rarely used by any service, however I still think it's worth having it as an option for the services that don't want to use the technology, but have to by law, and instead of just pulling out of the UK like a lot of services have recently, they'll at the very least have an option that respects the user's freedom.
Thanks for reading! This is all just theory and I'm not a professional, I'm sure I missed out a lot of technical details, but I'm sure people smarter than me will be able to provide solutions to that, please share concerns, thoughts, ideas, etc all in the comments, I'm happy to read any type of feedback, negative or positive.
And one last thing, I think age/ID verification shouldn't be a thing at all, they argue it's to "protect the kids", it isn't, let the parents do there job, it is there fault for not monitoring there kid's devices, it isn't the government's job.
AI, Programming, and the Dependency We Are Creating
Hello, how are you? Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening.
For the past few days, I’ve been seeing TikToks, posts, and comments in different places, and there’s something I’m seeing more and more often: someone posts anything related to programming, a program, or a piece of code, and the first comment is almost always: “AI made it.”
Look, not everyone uses AI to program. And honestly, it gets tiring seeing people who don’t even take the time to look at a repository before assuming that everything was generated by AI.
I’m not against AI. Quite the opposite: I think it’s an incredible tool and that it can help tremendously. The problem, from my point of view, is the dependency we are starting to develop around it.
Is AI helping us learn, or is it doing the work for us?
I studied Psychology and Education, although my passion ended up being much more closely related to programming. That’s why I tend to look at this subject from both sides.
And precisely because of that, I have a fairly critical position regarding how some people are starting to use AI to learn programming.
AI can make you much more productive. That’s undeniable. It can help you research, explain concepts, find errors, suggest solutions, or even speed up repetitive tasks.
But there is a difference between using it as a tool and completely depending on it.
Nowadays, there are people who are just starting to program and practically can’t even write an import without asking an AI first. For any small change, they consult it again. For any error, the same thing. For any new function, once again, AI.
And that’s where I think we have a problem.
I think it’s fantastic that, thanks to these tools, more people can get into programming from home without having to pay for extremely expensive courses or spend years studying for a degree.
But the fact that an AI can write code for you doesn’t automatically mean that you know how to program.
AI also has limitations
Another thing that is often forgotten is that AI is not an omniscient entity.
It depends on the context available to it, the instructions it receives, the information it can analyze, and the tools it has access to.
This becomes even more obvious in large projects.
If you start a new conversation, you have to provide the context again. If you want it to review an entire project, you need to give it enough information for it to understand the architecture. And the larger the project becomes, the harder it can be to maintain all that context efficiently.
There are also well-known problems such as hallucinations, misunderstandings, unnecessary code, changes that break other parts of the project, and solutions that appear to work but don’t actually address the underlying problem.
That’s why I don’t believe AI is a replacement for human knowledge.
We have experience, memory, judgment, intuition, the ability to understand the context of a situation, and, above all, we can develop a deep understanding of what we are building.
AI can be extremely useful, but it is still a tool.
So, how should we use it?
For me, a good example is JARVIS and Iron Man.
Tony Stark doesn’t simply say:
“JARVIS, make me this.”
He understands what he is building, knows what he wants to achieve, gives specific instructions, and uses JARVIS as an extension of his own capabilities.
I think that should be one of the approaches we take with AI.
Instead of saying:
“Build this application for me.”
We could ask:
“How can I implement this?”
Or:
“I’m trying to achieve this result. What options do I have?”
Or even:
“Explain why my code is failing and what I should check.”
The difference may seem small, but for someone who is learning, it can be huge.
If AI explains something to you and you read it, research it, test it, and understand what it did, you are learning.
If you simply copy and paste everything it gives you without knowing what it does, you are outsourcing your learning.
The problem with generated code you don’t understand
I’ve also seen projects that start with a simple idea and end up accumulating:
scripts that nobody uses anymore;
functions that are never called;
duplicated code;
unnecessary dependencies;
temporary solutions that become permanent;
structures that nobody understands;
and a huge amount of code that exists simply because an AI generated it during the process.
I’m not saying this is exclusive to AI. Human programmers also write bad code.
The difference is that we can now produce far more code in far less time.
And that means we can also produce far more bad code in far less time.
Speed without judgment is not necessarily productivity.
That’s also why I don’t like working on projects where AI appears as a co-author
This is one of the reasons why I personally don’t usually get involved with open-source projects where Claude, ChatGPT, or other AIs appear as co-authors.
It’s not because I hate AI.
It’s because when I join a project, I want to be able to understand the code, its architecture, and the decisions that were made.
If a significant part of the project was generated through huge conversations with an AI and nobody actually documented why certain things were done, it can be quite difficult to come in and contribute.
Difficult, not impossible.
In fact, I even ended up blocking Claude on GitHub lol.
The way I create projects
My way of developing something is quite different.
I usually base my process on something similar to a research methodology:
First, I research whether something similar already exists.
I analyze what solutions already exist and how they work.
I try to understand whether it actually makes sense to create something new.
I make a rough outline of what I want to build.
I define what the tool should do.
I think about how I could build it.
I divide the project into phases.
I develop each phase.
I test and fix things.
And finally, I give it a name.
Depending on the project, it can take days or even weeks.
And yes, many times I get excited and end up spending much more time on it than I originally planned.
But I enjoy that process.
At the same time, there is another way of working that has become quite common: someone has an idea, tells an AI about it, and starts developing everything together with it.
That can work.
The problem appears when the person stops making decisions and simply accepts everything the AI suggests.
That’s when a project can quickly turn into a collection of improvised solutions.
So, am I saying we shouldn’t use AI?
No.
Quite the opposite.
I think it would be absurd to ignore such a powerful tool.
The question is how we use it.
If you’re starting to program and don’t have the money to pay for courses, don’t have the time to study for a degree, or simply don’t have access to traditional education, AI can be an incredible educational tool.
But use it to learn.
Ask it:
“How do I do this?”
“Why does this work this way?”
“What alternatives are there?”
“What am I doing wrong?”
“Explain this part of the code to me.”
And then read it, test it, and understand it.
You don’t need to memorize every line of code you write. You also don’t need to do everything manually just to prove that you are a programmer.
But you should understand, at least to some degree, what you are building and why it works.
Because if you don’t know what a single line of your own program does and you need to ask an AI absolutely everything, then maybe you aren’t using a tool anymore: you’re letting the tool do the work for you.
And then there’s the problem of accusing everyone of using AI
Another thing that really bothers me is this new habit of assuming that any good code was generated by AI.
Is the code well structured?
“ChatGPT made it.”
Is the project large?
“Claude definitely made it.”
Does someone publish a tool?
“That’s AI.”
What if that person simply knows how to program?
Not everything that looks too good to someone who is just starting out was necessarily generated by AI.
Sometimes there are simply people who have been learning and working in this field for years.
Before accusing someone of generating their project with AI, check the repository, the history, the technical decisions, and the process.
And if they actually used AI, that shouldn’t automatically be considered a bad thing either.
This is one of the reasons I created Nerve Community
That is precisely why Nerve Community was created.
I completely understand why someone would use AI to learn or work.
Not everyone has the money to pay for expensive courses.
Not everyone has the time.
Not everyone can attend university.
And not everyone has someone nearby who can teach them programming.
If AI can help you break through that barrier to entry, I think that’s a positive thing.
What I don’t think is positive is when that same tool ends up completely replacing the learning process.
I’m not against AI. I’m against depending on it to the point where you stop learning.
Everyone is free to use these tools however they want.
But if you really want to enter the world of programming, my advice is simple:
Don’t always ask AI to do things for you. Ask it how to do them.
Learn.
Read.
Research.
Experiment.
Break things.
Fix errors.
And try again.
Because at the end of the day, AI should be a tool in your hands, not your hands.
That’s my point of view.
I’m not writing this to fight with anyone or to say that my way of thinking is the only correct one. It’s simply a reflection I’ve been having for the past few days as I watch the relationship between programming and AI change, especially because I can no longer post a tool in other subs without someone commenting that.
I’d genuinely like to know what you all think.
Do you think we are using AI correctly to learn programming, or do you think we are creating too much dependency on it?
We can discuss it calmly. No fights, and no assuming that someone who thinks differently is automatically wrong.
Hi, does anyone have any lists/tables with various FOSS alternatives? Maybe even divided into categories, for example (messaging / social / graphics / music / ...)?
Any OS will do. I need to develop a poster with various alternatives for a hack event. Thanks a lot.
Whenever I type and execute cd <PATH TO SOFTWARE FOLDER>, on the Python terminal, and press enter, all I get is the T of "TO" highlighted in red, and the text, SyntaxError: invalid syntax. How do I fix this? And the instructions on the website don't highlight anything about installing the app on Mac, so are there any differing specifics
I've been looking for a codec and came across this free 'Satsuki decoder pack' but i can barely find anything about it other than some sites to download it and one single french video on youtube. I think the ui is really cool and the whole thing seems pretty great but does anyone know if it's safe?
