overview for smpl

pale moon browser question by smpl in c/opensource@lemmy.ml

[-] smpl@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 2 weeks ago

https://www.palemoon.org/

[2019] Throwback: Mozilla invests $100m looking for a way creators can make money and still "move away from advertising and data mining" by smpl in c/firefox@lemmy.ml

[-] smpl@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 1 month ago

At least what they ended up doing was not some crypto ponzi scheme.

Written from Librewolf, because I've had enough.

Bold Ideas For Funding Open Source Software by smpl in c/programmer_humor@programming.dev

[-] smpl@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 5 months ago

That's the last stage of being a FOSS developer.

Jonathan Kamens: "It has come to my attention that many of the people complaining about Firefox's PPA experiment don't actually understand what PPA is…" - federate.social by smpl in c/firefox@lemmy.ml

[-] smpl@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I'm not even buying the premise. Any business can look at its bottomline to see if their advertising works. If they can't, then its not working.

A Staggering 19x Energy Jump in Capacitors May Be the Beginning of the End for Batteries by smpl in c/technology@lemmy.ml

[-] smpl@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 8 months ago

Sadly Sci-Hub has not received updated articles in several years. Alexandra is waiting for the outcome of the trial in India. I don't think it depends on what the outcome is, just that the trial needs to be over.

How are companies or developers supposed to make a full time living with OSI opensourced projects? by smpl in c/opensource@lemmy.ml

[-] smpl@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 8 months ago

WARNING. Everything other than the last paragraph is kind of rude and opinionated, so skip to the bottom if you only want practical advice and not a philosophical rant.

First of all Free Software don't need paid developers. We scruffy hackers create software because it's fun. I have a strong suspicion that the commercialization of Free Software via the businessfriendly clothing "Open Source" is actually creating a lot of shitty software or at least a lot of good software that'll be obsoleted to keep business going. Capitalization of Free Software doesn't have an incentive to create good finished software, quite the opposite. The best open source software from commercial entities is in my opinion those that were open sourced when a product was no longer profitable as a proprietary business. As examples I love the ID software game engines and Blender. Others seem happy that Sun dumped the source code of Star Office, which then became OpenOffice and LibreOffice, but then again companies like Collabora are trying to turn it into a shitty webification instead of implementing real collaborative features into the software like what AbiWord has.

..and back in the real world where you need to buy food. Open Source consultancy, implementation of custom out-of-tree features, support, courses and training, EOL maintainance or products that leaverage Open Source software is my best answer. See Free Software as a commons we all contribute to, so that we can do things with it and built things from it. You should not expect people to pay for Free Software, but you can sell things that take advantage of Free Software as a resource.