Thumbing through the feed, the news on how this or that organization letting go of commercial options for day to day operations are mounting.
This led me to wonder what would be the impact if FOSS, be it on the OS front, productivity front or whatever, was to become truly a relevant option.
I’m painfully aware of the difficulties I’ve faced trying to take a few online courses to be faced with borderline desdain for not using Windows/Office/Etc and opting for FOSS solutions.
Paying/supporting a FOSS solution does not offend me. I’m happier when giving money directly to a developer or project than to an opaque company. But I’m just one.
But what could happen if the ones became millions, actively contributing with a few coins per year to projects we use daily?
What could/would happen in the short term (under a year), medium-long (one to three years) and the long term (over ten years)?
From enduser perspective the most visible change would be that all software wouldn’t be hostile to users because with propreitary you have to be very picky to get that.
In the long term we would see that companies could not build walled gardens to block off competition. Contrast Windows & MacOS vs Linux with its different distros, DEs, toolkits etc.
The least difference would be for enterprise because support is expensive either way.
The scalability problem with FOSS is monetary and motivation.
The successful products need longterm financial security in order to plan and support their peoduct(s) - so, do we start seeing more subscriptions as corp. sponsorship fades away?
And, just like XKCD 2347, FOSS needs to step up and support the components they rely on
That’s going to need some more maturity from the developers too: it’s a great feeling doing something new and interesting, but - like having a pet - you can’t just abandon something when you’re bored of it, or too busy, without rehoming your project(s)…
That’s where I see the industry needs to improve before they’re really ready for the big time.
A significant decrease in the amount of surplus value society produces going towards tech companies producing proprietary software, whicj is most of them. Basically the costs of using software for a whole lotta things are gonna get lower. This would make that society’s products cheaper for itself and export. It would allow its labour to do more useful things, one of which could be new FOSS software. But also helping out with the green transition, taking care of the ageing population, education, etc.
Realistically, probably not much for people outside of the tech industry. People will use the best tool for the job, and whether it’s foss or not won’t matter.
People are morons. They use Facebook and whatsapp and they think macos is the greatest. Best tool for the job my ass.
Politicians will likely take a more active role in screwing it up.
more people contributing to the code
