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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)FR
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231
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2 yr. ago

  • Paying for open source software sounds good on paper, but if it is required, the software will never accumulate the users to make the development have any meaning.

    Based on what you said, I'm not sure what you mean by "open source", but Free Software gives you the right to distribute the program (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms). So anyone who owns a copy can legally share it with you. There are commercial Free Software projects. The game Mindustry is one example.

  • I have started by at least supporting game developers on Steam.

    Steam puts DRM in games and requires proprietary software (the Steam client), so you should consider not buying there at all. GOG's client is also proprietary, but its optional and there is a free alternative called Heroic Games Launcher. Itch.io has a libre client (also optional). As far as I know games on those two platforms are DRM-free.

  • This is not for everyone, but I like when they post their crypto wallet address, because then I can send them money anonymously (especially if it's Monero), it can be a one time donation and I don't have to create an account on some website.

  • Is it? On GOG you can download games without installing their proprietary client (there is also a libre alternative called Heroic Games Launcher, but that's made by the community). Itch has a libre client and it's also optional. Both those platforms don't put DRM in games, unlike Steam.

    Steam has forced updates. This means that game developers can push an update that for example deletes content from your game and as far as I know, you can't really refuse it.

    On a page of every game that is sold on Steam, you will see text that says "Buy". But I'm pretty sure their ToS says that you are only renting games from them. So they are misleading their users.

  • This is all true, but it's interesting how people often forget another simple option: the software is commercial - it is simply sold on some website/store. Just like you can buy the game Mindustry on Steam, but it is Libre Software and even though you can get the build for free on GitHub and its itch.io page, people still pay for the Steam version. I wonder why people forget about this option, since it's probably the simplest one.

    Of course, Steam is a proprietary, unethical platform, so I'm just using it as an example - I'm not saying we should sell there.

  • I've read it, but I don't really understand the legal issue. I'm also not sure what could be illegal about VSCodium. It uses the Open VSX store for downloading extensions (but not every extension is on there).

    It would certainly be better if VSCode was under a Copyleft license, so that it couldn't be turned into proprietary software and maybe that way addons would also have to be Free Software, like in Blender. But Microsoft clearly doesn't want that.

    I’m not much against having repositories with plugins, extensions or whatever BUT they should be like Debian, you can just pack everything into images / a folder and use offline for ever when required.

    Yeah, that's a good idea. They could also just be added to Debian, which would solve this problem, but there also would be another benefit for me. Most people don't care about that, but I want to only use Free Software. When I install something from Debian's free repository, I don't have to worry that it might be proprietary, because they only allow Free Software there. I don't have this certainty when installing software from most other places.

    Same goes for modern Docker powered solutions and JavaScript frameworks.

    Some JavaScript frameworks and libraries seem to be packaged in Debian. But most people use NPM, of course.

  • Free Software gives you the 4 essential freedoms. One of them is the freedom to distribute the program. So anyone could legally give you a copy for free. Sounds like what you want, no?

    Even if the authors implement some kind of DRM, any programmer can modify the program to remove that feature and share the modified version with everyone. Technically that is also possible with non-free software, but it's illegal, pretty difficult and requires special skills.