If Open Source is so great...

Sometimes slightly worse. Like LibreOffice.
Sometimes actually better, like VLC.
Sometimes about the same, like the latest version of MuseScore (older versions were, in fact, quite a bit worse).
But sometimes, like with older versions of GIMP (I'll admit, I've not tried its latest major version release candidate) it's significantly worse.
- Libreoffice is slightly worse because all the proprietary office suites keep lowering the bar for everyone to follow them. It's not a quality issue, it's a never ending contest to figure out how to complicate writing a simple letter so that everyone has to buy only your software.
  
  I actually find MS Word really clunky, laggy, buggy, and generally intuitive. LO I only find to be clunky
- LibreOffice is more than slightly worse, but FOSS projects cover the gamut. The thing about them is that the best ones are usually laser focused on exactly what the user needs, rather than what makes the most money.
  
  Calc was actually quite comparable for 90% of Excel features I have ever actually used.
  Writer is petty good on its own, but the fact that .docx documents don't quite matchup vs. When making and opening with Word makes it difficult for me to use officially.
  Impress is just plain disappointing compared to PowerPoint.
  Base might be okay, better than nothing I guess.
  The rest of the suite I don't know.
- I genuinely doesn't know there's paid media player out there, VLC came preinstall on all my prebuild PC purchase since forever.
  
  There definitely exist paid players out there (or at least used to...dunno if they still exist), but there are also "free" (as in beer) non-free (as in speech) options, like the ones included out of the box in a Windows or macOS installation.
- PSA: Inkscape is good now!
- For LibreOffice, I'd go with, worse and better at the same time.
  I have just noticed, overtime, that it has some problems in some cases, where MS Office does better, while there are certain cases where it does better.
  There are 2 major pain points though:
  Calc UI stutters when using the scrollbar with mouse click and drag.
  Adding images to files makes the whole thing way slower than acceptable.
  I haven't used it for a few months though, so something might have changed. But the second issue specifically is a long time one.
  On the other hand, the formula usages are much better in Calc. Also, the documents don't get wonky between versions as much as MS Office
- If you like professional photography, you can try darktables. It's a replacement for Lightroom and it's great in my opinion.
  Gimp is still useful for quick and simple edits. It's a bit weird to use though.
  
  Gimp is still useful for quick and simple edits
  See, the problem with that is that that's precisely not how I use Photoshop. I don't use it often (certainly not often enough to actually pay for it), but when I do, I tend to go fairly deep.
  I should try out Darktable though. I used to use Aperture until it was discontinued, and these days I frequently use Lightroom, though I don't really love it.
  
  IMO Krita is better than GIMP for the quick simple edits.
- 365 is far worse IMO. New web only apps (replacing all the desktop apps) are a big step backwards. LibreOffice does everything needed natively and a lot more.
  
  It's the return of the network computer of the 9xs. But worse.
- Krita isn't that much worse than Photoshop/CSP for digital illustration. That said, going back to CSP after a year was such a relief I didn't know I needed. So many little stumbling blocks removed.
- I wonder how many paid apps were utterly decimated after they released VLC
- To quote a non-computer savvy friend from a few years ago. When he was talking to someone else, I just over heard the conversation.
  Na, I use VLC player. It always works, it will play a slice of cucumber.

And if it's so good, why haven't they released an Open Source 2?
- We got gpl3
  
  if gplv3 so good, why there no gplv4??
  checkmate
- Because it's so good that a v2 is not needed.
- 👏
- If you like open source THAT much, why don't you marry it??
  
  Fork me, baby 🫦
- All those Silicon Valley brogrammers would have “OpS2 evangelist” in their bio.

Slightly worse? I can actually sort and the video player actually works, instead of whatever the FUCK was going on with the other place, for literally ever.

OK who changed the wojak into a beautiful woman?
- wojak is a beautiful woman
  
  Yay
- It was on Lemmy World's All[0] less than 10 days ago.
  [0] https://lemmy.world/post/21902350
  
  Yeah, that's where I pulled it from.
- That art style is pretty off-putting tbh.
  
  The naked woman is kinda odd too

"Slightly worse". I got a job and was not allowed to use a linux laptop, so I went with mac. I was almost worried that I would like the "just works" aspects everyone have been so exited about. Wow. What a piece of shit it is. Settings items takes forever to load after boot, mouse feels like it is stuck in mud (even if I remove accelleration and increase speed), it cannot wake many monitors up from sleep, it completely disables the keyboard momentarily when activating the screen (and if it fails to wake it, it becomes a flashing, keyboard grabbing nightmare). The window management? I can set up a workspace on this and that keybind, "oh, you disconnected the monitor, well we permuted the keybinds for you" wtf? When I get home and switch to linux, it is such a relief.
- Lol, since the last major update I can't type a tilde or a backtick, presumably because it doesn't recognize my keyboard type?? And I had to install another program that prevent Apple Music from opening each time I connect/disconnect bluetooth headphones?? Or to add week numbers to the calendar widget. Even Gnome isn't that bad.
  
  presumably because it doesn't recognize my keyboard type??
  The answer by Apple (and their parroting fanbois): You don't actually need those keys. It's confusing for users to have too many characters.
  
  I had that from the start... It cannot distinguish some keyboards, and I have two versions of my layout I have to switch between. All keybords work the same on linux, but mac, nah.
  And updates? Holy shit! They broke ssh! It was broken like a month. Ssh connections just died as 'corrupted' all the time. And they don't hotfix it asap? How can a company trust to use them as a work laptop if they break it and don't fix it?
- I got a job and was not allowed to use a linux laptop, so I went with mac.
  Same. 2015. I could have pushed them to let me use Linux, but it would have been making waves in a remote shop. The 2015 MacBook hardware was decent, so I got it. Domain binding was still in fashion. 99 problems. Finally, I got it okay-ish, set up Brew, it's a hack. I started trying to use the terminal to do things, almost no config available, the disk mount subsystem was alien, the logs were crap. Since then, the hardware and compatibility has just gotten awful.

All-Star team
You've never worked on software in a big company have you?
- I can only speak for myself, but I used to love to get home from work and contribute to free software projects I found interesting. Since I got a good paying tech job at a big company, the last thing I want to do is more of the same when I get home. (having kids around the same time probably had an influence too).
- There are definitely a lot of brilliant engineers working at companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple, they just get hamstrung by management.
- That's the point

I've been thinking about this often lately as well. These fucking corporations with multiple billions at their disposal, and all they can produce is shit like Windows or macOS? AND it also costs money to use? AND it has ads in it?
Meanwhile a bunch of nerds working for free on a passion project are giving away software that is faster and easier to use and often more beautiful to look at.
I guess I've simply reiterated what the post image said, so ignore me maybe, but fuck this is depressing and disappointing. All these corporate resources and all they can do is barely achieve what other people do for free in their spare time? What a fucking waste of human life and energy is capitalism.
- Honestly, it's such a compelling point to made for why capitalism is a shit economic system. Regardless of if someone is compelled by communist/anarchist economics, at the very least it should be obvious that capitalism produces only the most profitable products, not the best products.
- For real open source projects, it's a lot of the time not nerds working for free.
  All your favorite frameworks and libraries are often developed in house at big companies (angular, react, vue, tensorflow, Kafka, pytorch, k8s, Jenkins, and many many more).
  And even then, much of the development on them is done by people who are getting paid to use the frameworks at smaller companies.
  There are tons of examples the other way too of course, but even the Linux kernel is mostly corporate commits, Google, Huawei, Oracle, and others.
  This isn't inherently bad, but it's not as cut and dry as people make it out to be.
  I want to add, that language development is also often done by companies. Today for example is a Mozilla thing, and while a non profit, the devs aren't working for free.
  
  That seems like the system working as intended. Once enough work has gone into open source projects, even the profit-driven entities see they will make more money by improving those open source projects instead of following their default plan of reinventing the wheel and keeping it proprietary and locked down.
- I’ve been thinking about this often lately as well. These fucking corporations with multiple billions at their disposal, and all they can produce is shit like Windows or macOS? AND it also costs money to use? AND it has ads in it?
  Not only do I agree with you, I also want to point out the telemetry whackamole for those who care. (And those who don't care aren't going to bother with the whackamole, but their privacy is being violated just the same as those who do care.)

The fuck is this stupid ass meme format lol
- My first thought as well
- SEX
  Now that I have your attention...

Slightly worse in design, far better in consumer-friendliness!

If we're talking Lemmy and Lemmy clients, I'd argue it's a helluva lot better. For one, I can rotate my fucking screen
Hell, the thing that got my to switch was when they got rid of third party apps, because of how absolutely abysmally shitty the official app is

Lemmy is Reddit with more furries and communists
- I'm not a god damn communist Fred! How many times do I have to tell you, I'm an anarchist!

It's not, though. It's a big reason why I'm here, in fact. Boost for Android is awesome!
- Boost went open-source?
  
  Oh that's a good point, I don't know (or care) if Boost is open source. I was more referring to Lemmy.

And then you have Blender, Krita, OBS, VLC, bitwarden & Let's Encrypt.
But tons of corporate contribution to big open source projects so it is sometimes grey.
- Not sure it's grey, it's great when big corporate give back, just ot when they take over and pervert the ideals of open source to their breaking point.

Only until enshittification kicks in

Thats the point. People should realize that just because someone is doing some software as a hobby doesn't mean he doesn't need to earn money. YOU PEOPLE, IF YOU USE GREAT SOFTWARE PAY FOR IT PLEASE. Don't let great FOSS software die out, and donate. Just give those 20$, its not much for you (some shitty chineese gadgets), and its so much for devs if everyone do that. Wherever you want to buy some chineese gadget, donate it to actually great software instead of chineese scammer please.
- to be fair, most of those Chinese scammers probably need the money more. Most of them are in effect slaves and convincing westerners to give them money allows their handlers not to kill them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPpl2ISKTg

Voyager for Lemmy is some seriously gourmet shit.
But seriously the answer is usually that the big company is trying to apply to ALL USERS and usually only pleases a subset or none of those users.
Voyager isn't for you? That's fine, Lemmy has a nice API and you can build whatever you like. Lemmy is also open so if that API isn't nice you can provide suggestions and fixes.
I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's a pretty good place to be.
Look at early Twitter or formerly Reddit. A nice API. Tons of fantastic clients. Open source is the best, but even just "open" is a fantastic first step.
- Voyager is indeed a really good app for Lemmy. It is based on Apollo app which was the best, and IMO, the only sensible way to browse Reddit on iOS.
  I am glad @aeharding@vger.social had a working version ready merely days after the new TOS came into effect.
  I have been using it since it was called Wefwef (which I still feel was a better name, more playful), and I liked it so much that I use it on my Android phone as well as my iOS daily driver.

But when the open source app becomes the best one, it becomes impossible to beat it. Look VLC for example.
- Or Blender
  
  Depending on what you're trying to create blender is very easily beat by other programs. Almost every time a friend watches me use blender I'll get hit with "this would be so much easier in fusion 360"
- Vlc is basically what it is because of ffmpeg and the likes, which are... Corporate supported :p
  That said ffmpeg didnt start that way, but at one point it was and vlc quickly jumped into popularity because of it and it quickly supporting new formats ( like mkv back in 2003/2004 ).
  Youre not wrong, but its more complex than that xD
- There are a few examples where the foss version of the app became the best one. I am having trouble remembering others. But I think BitWarden is just as good as any paid password manager.
- mpv can beat it but that's also FOSS

Cause one was created to make money, while the other was created to actually be used...
- Sometimes not mutually exclusive. Its not common but it does happen. Iphone rocked the industry. Photoshop dare I say it, was the standard. At least at first.
  
  Enshitification comes for everything

Sometimes the open source equivalent is better. SmartTube is a much better app than the official YouTube app for Google TV / Android TV even though there's just one developer working on it.
Similarly, pirate TV/movie apps often have a much better user experience than the legit ones. Compare Weyd, Syncler, or Stremio+Torrentio to the Amazon Prime video app for example.
In both cases, the people who work on them usually care about the user experience and use the app day-to-day themselves, rather than being told to do whatever makes the most money for the company.
- Sometimes, the developers also being the users helps, as in your example. Sometimes, it's a hindrance, where the developer will just create UI that makes sense to them, but not to others.

the problem is that in the vast majority of cases, designers aren't involved. it's just code monkeys trying their best to implement functionality but without UI/UX design they are barely usable by the average person. I guess just by its nature open source is less of a concept in design so you don't get many volunteers. also designers are probably more averse to doing work for free since every goddamn costumer tries to get them to work for free.

Organic Maps is the upgrade over Google Maps.
- You're not wrong. I use it a lot. it's super for short local trips and maybe medium trips.
  When I asked it to go a few states over, routing cost me a couple of hours last time before I realized something was off.
  Use it, but scrutinize it.
  
  The same should be said for any GPS app.
  Card end up down pedestrian paths because the driver didn’t think about what the GPS was telling them.
- The only reason I use Google Maps is I use an old ass phone with limited storage space, and it won't let me remove Google Maps.
- I use it on my daily basis. Never disappointed me in about 2 years now. So yeah, great app. (Sometimes I use waze too to avoid you know :)

And it's actually not slightly worse but better in every way.

Do you have any idea how many jira states our development workflow has?
I wonder how much appetite there is for project managers and scrum masters in the open source world.
- What's funny to me is, the agile approach seems like it's a much better fit for open-source, non-commercial software development.
  The corporate world and is management practices based around quarters and deadlines can't seem to see how anything could get done without deadlines, but that's usually less of a factor with open-source. People laugh at "scrum masters" because in a corporate environment, all the scrum stuff tends to be mostly performative. But it seems to me that open-source projects with multiple contributors already kind of work in an agile manner.
  
  I don't see the two environments as necessarily being at odds in any way.
  If implementing feature X is going to take a developer 10 days... It's going to take a developer 10 days. I can say the deadline is 1 day all I want, it's going to take 10 days.
  If I want to get my Volkswagen golf down a 1/4 mile, it doesn't matter how hard I push the gas pedal, it's going to take as long as it takes.
  In a corporate environment, if deadlines are what you're optimizing for, you have options. You can cut scope. You can add resources. You can decrease quality. You can forgo time intensive processes designed to reduce risk. These are still all agile activities. Making deliberate decisions, and continually evaluating those decisions is agile.
  Agile doesn't mean there are no timelines or goals. It's just that the design and implementation are routinely examined for suitability to your ultimate goals.
  So I actually think agile is better suited to corporate environments because of how volatile the definition of delivered value is. Open source projects usually have a less volatile vision

It might not be as polished and pretty but I prefer the simplicity and focus on just doing the thing it was made to do. Medilog is perfect example for this I'd say, it basically just storing text nothing fancy just regular inputs and calculates BMI. But best is I don't have to deal with internet connection and having an account cuz it's all just stored locally and that's why I love lots of Foss stuff it's just simple and doesn't need account and internet access depending what app it is. Still discovering Foss bus so far am very pleased.

That sounds like exploitation of free labor with extra steps and a vegan coat.

They made the RTX version, so now I can see it in 4k, thank you developers!

Reddit experience: 3 ads for reading 5 comments
And now, Reddit is down (HTTP ERROR 500)

Honestly, I have more free and open source apps and programs on my PC and phone than not because the exact opposite of this meme has been my experience.

Closed sauce app isn't always better, and big corp don't have 'all stars' teams (but do have marketing teams) - the question is why the fossy app doesn't change UI design every few months (mostly in stupid ways) :D.

Well, for one Lemmy has zero respect for privacy. You can't even delete a comment. A comment is eternal. At least you can do that on reddit.
- I made an account here without an email address (I done that on reddit too but you can't anymore)
  I can use various websites to view deleted reddit comments
  I would never consider anything that I have let leave my device as "deleted" anyway
- At least you can do that on reddit.
  You literally can't. People have deleted their whole comment histories and have them restored by reddit admins.
- Interesting. I didn't know that about deleting comments. The web client on my instance has a delete button, but is there some kind of issue with that change not necessarily propagating to other instances?
  It doesn't bother me much personally since you never really can be sure that you deleted something from the internet. Even if reddit deletes a comment, you can possibly find it on an archive somewhere. Anything you toss onto the web should be something you're comfortable with the world knowing.
- If you expect privacy on social media you should take an iq test
- You can delete and edit comments on lemmy. But that doesn't mean all severs or users will honour that request. Same is true for reddit, hence why it is possible to see deleted reddit comments on 3rd party websites. (And deleted tweets, etc. on other sites.)
  People post on lemmy for the purpose of sharing thoughts and ideas with the world. If your stuff is private: don't post it! This is true for all social media. Also note, lemmy doesn't ask for your phone number or other unrelated personal information.
- Virtually anything you post on the internet is eternal. A better example would be your upvotes as they are also synchronized according to instance admins - something many people do not expect.

Slightly?
Also, let's say it's truly just slightly, how long was it way worse before it became slightly worse?

- Is that hyperlink a bad copy/paste or is there some connection there that I'm not understanding?
  
  Brought to you by carl's jnr
  
  The bots have become sentient

Hah! Like a corporation will improve a product when they're milking it out for a decade.

Repost, but the post is good enough so I don't care

Because you are the product, not the software that you use.
I think a lot of paid commercial software is significantly better than FLOSS
- you are thinking of SaaS not Free Software.
- Name paid commercial software to replace grep
  
  you dont replace perfection.

Open source is the free bicycle that will get you to the coffee shop. Priority software is the SUV you lease to do the same.
Enjoy being poor.
- So open source is superior then, as it promotes fitness and climate friendlyness?
- So this is why FOSS software is often faster, no traffic jams.
- I like to tell people "have fun staying poor" when they don't use open source money.
  
  I'm willing to bet the poster isn't aware just about every website they visit is built on an open source stack.
- Brain dead comment.