Boycotting FOSS projects in the wake of the "buy canadian/european" movement makes no sense

I've tried to extol the virtues of FOSS for a long time. Not many people even care about it or their privacy, always parroting the adage "If i do nothing wrong what do I need to worry about" without a further thought.

FOSS is not American. Foss belongs to literally everyone.
- I kept saying it all over the place regarding the fascistic rejection of Russian (as in race) code and got flamed as result. These people use FOSS, especially GNU/GPL software and yet they have no clue about the license themselves.

I have been following some of these movements in the last few weeks and, at least the ones I know of, include FOSS in the alternatives to American products and services. So while I support what you say 100%, in my experience so far, it looks like most people are aware of this.

Free software is the antithesis of capitalism. It doesn't make sense to boycott them.

I always like to say the fruits of FOSS labour are the common heritage of mankind. It belongs to all of us as a public good, created and maintained by selfless workers. (Nevermind the fact that most FOSS projects are based out of Europe anyways).

I think there is a different problem. Many of the best FOSS products are unknown to the general public ;/

Lol, first time I hear that, as European😆 what a stupid movement..

I'm the most anti-American user on here and I agree.
I'd rather use USA-linked free software than Spotify.
- Wasn't Spotify Swedish tho? But yeah
  
  I think that's the point, he's saying he'd rather use USA-linked FOSS than non-USA proprietary software.
  
  Didn't microsoft buy them?

Is someone doing that? If it's FOSS it's from the internet.

Seeing people look for corporate social media alternatives is painful.
- @Irelephant
  "Hey guys, I want to leave X, should I go to Bluesky or Threads? What? Mastodon? Never heard of that. Looks very complicated, I'll pass"
  -- CEO, founder, IT wizz on LinkedIn
  Every time!
  
  Or the classic "guys I am leaving WhatsApp, moved my whole family to Signal, another centralized US-based silo that requires phone numbers and runs on AWS, CloudFlare, etc."
- I agree, but am happy that X is losing users to Bluesky, so I don't try to convert friends and family from Bluesky to Masrodon. I'd rather they start changing other stuff instead that is easier.
  
  Oh definitely, Bluesky is far better than twitter. Honestly, seeing the fediverse piss itself over bluesky is annoying, because the alternative is people still on twitter.

FOSS is definitely not boycotting capitalism, but its still an objectively good thing. I see FOSS work as a way for relatively rich imperial core citizens to give back to the world.
Definitely do not boycott FOSS projects.
- I don't understand why you say FOSS isn't boycotting capitalism. I don't disagree, but I also don't know enough to agree yet.
  
  Look at the success of Linux. It's not in opposition to capitalism, it's ba kernel widely used by capitalists. If Linux was truly a threat to capitalism, google wouldn't use it in their phones.
  I still think that Linux and open source are great. They're just not neccesarily anticapitalist. They definitely can be in certain circumstances, and definitely make some rent seeking impossible

lol who is suggesting boycotting foss projects?
- nobody. op is insane.
- I think OP means that one shouldn't boycott FOSS projects just because they are from USA. That said, I don't like to be told what I have to do and don't agree to "FOSS projects, which should always be preferred to corporate software". My pc, my LAN, my rules.
  
  you seem to hold your individual freedoms high, there is a kind of software i think you'll really like
  
  I don’t like to be told what I have to do and don’t agree to “FOSS projects, which should always be preferred to corporate software”. My pc, my LAN, my rules.
  ...he said, without a hint of irony.
  Meanwhile, "my PC, my LAN, my rules" is precisely the reason I do agree with always preferring FOSS to corporate software.
- Almost all the lists shared in the communities exclude FOSS projects.
  
  Which lists?

From a purely "vote with your wallet" standpoint it doesn't make sense, because there's no money paid. However, one might worry about data/information getting in the hands of a fascist/compromised government. So I think people should judge this themselves case by case.
- There is a lot you can do with your wallet to contribute to FOSS.
  Companies, Governments they all can be enshitified but freedom lives on!
- I think the important part is about who is running the server, rather than who made the software
  The fediverse is interesting in that context because each instance can decide where they set up the infrastructure or how they process data / requests. The same applies to self hosting
  I saw an article that outlined which country each fediverse platform "originated" from, such as Canada for Pixelfed and Germany for Mastodon. That's fun to know about, but otherwise not important to users compared to the instances themselves
  At most it might speak to which laws will govern the project itself, but even then someone can fork a project that goes astray
- People should pay for foss. Donations are oftentimes welcome
- I mean, any FOSS project from anywhere could be being used by a fascist government or corporation, to be fair. That's literally one of the very serious and real downsides of FOSS. It's able to be used for good or ill.
  I mean, it can easily be argued that the US corporate technology class has benefited far more from FOSS than end-users worldwide.
  Amazon's EC2 especially:
  Initially, EC2 used Xen virtualization exclusively. However, on November 6, 2017, Amazon announced the new C5 family of instances that were based on a custom architecture around the KVM hypervisor, called Nitro.
  Amazon leveraged FOSS to create their own successful closed-source offshoot. AWS pretty much runs the web. Amazon... is not a good company.
  That being said, the US has chosen to be isolationist, whether all of its citizens agree with it or not. Having less of a presence on the international stage, including in the FOSS world, is simply a consequence of isolationism. So boycotting US FOSS is likely to happen in some ways on purpose, and in some ways just from diminished international respect and involvement.

There are some pretty corporate "open core" software companies tho, that's a more grey area
- Are they open or free? That's the point here.
  
  It's hard to say. "Open core" means that most of the software is open source (licenses vary) but some features are locked behind a paywall. Gitlab takes this approach for example, also maybe onlyoffice.

Agree with the main point, though disagree that FOSS is "boycotting capitalism", many for-profit companies contribute to FOSS and FOSS can be used by for-profit companies too, much of today's capitalism runs on FOSS.
The point of free software is that it does not have owners, so what exactly are you "boycotting"?
- Tell it to the Russian Linux devs that foss has no owners :-) Theory and practice are 2 different things
  
  FOSS doesn't mean that you are entitled to a place at the table or that your contributions have to be accepted. Nothing prevents these Russian devs from continuing to to work on the kernel.
  
  They can fork it, if nobody wants to work with them anymore that's their problem

I get it as an European that it means more to me to consume "locally" and to prioritize services that are European-based. But due to the nature of computers and FOSS, borders are redefined and it is more about ideas and politics rather than physical location. However, computers and servers are also physical and submitted to legislations of countries, we cannot ignore laws such as the Patriot act and the power that the American state can have even on FOSS projects.
For me the priority is to use software that match my needs; if I have the choice between an American and an European solution, I'll tend to choose the latter one.
- I canceled ongoing donations to several projects based in the US and stated that my reasons for doing so was US policy against my country. It doesn’t matter if the dev or project lead supports those policies or not, I refuse to contribute to the US economy if I can at all help it.
  
  By donating to contributors to free and open information and software you support the movement against tyranny inside the us and also everywhere.
  compared to that foss devs buying groceries is negligible to the us economy.
  
  I understand, but I am also thinking about the dev of those projects, as an individual who (probably) really despises the current US Gov, and even though they have to engage in the US economy, as they need to eat, pay bills, etc. It is a very tricky problem for those individuals and how to emancipate from. It is like with Russia where such individuals do not endorse at all the ongoing war but still live in that system 🤔
- If you are worried about US laws affecting FOSS projects, it can always be forked, perhaps even be rewritten.
  
  Of course, but what about the individual behind it, if it is someone who is also against their current government, while having to live in that country? It is tricky to ask how to reconcile the need for EU solutions while encouraging American citizens to fight against their system!

I would think it depends on the project
- Are there US open source projects?
  
  Firefox/Chromium?
  
  There definitely are FOSS projects run by the US government: Ghidra is an open source reverse engineering tool developed by the NSA.
  
  I mean, open source projects can be started or based in the US. But that doesn’t mean it’s an American project; it’s just that the people who started it happened to be American.
  I guess if we had to point to a specific American OSS, maybe Tor would qualify? It was initially developed by the CIA, so that may qualify it as US OSS. But it has since taken on a life of its own and the CIA doesn’t have any hand in active development anymore… So it’s still hard to say that even “being made by the literal US government” qualifies an OSS project as “American”.
  It’s sort of a Ship of Theseus situation. At what point in the development process do we consider it a non-American project?
  
  I think the majority
- Use common sense. The nation isn't the only consideration.

Counterpoint: Fedora is a testing bed for Red Hat. One of Red Hat's notable customers is the US military. I'd prefer to stay off that path if I can help it. It's a matter of trust, and it's a matter of indirectly contributing. I've seen people say the same things about Deepin and everyone nods in agreement, but why the hell should I trust a US project, for the same reasons?
- Honestly this should be a wake call to the FOSS community that we are way too reliant on the US.
  Every default we have is US centric and if FOSS is really meant for everyone we should move away from that.
- Same with NixOS treating with Anduril, I jump to Guix-SD and never looked back
- why the hell should I trust a US project
  Bekuz Amerika fridom wurld polis, best kontri in da world!
  But on a more serious note, did you know Linus banned those Russian contributors like a month after redhat and DoD signed a new deal. Can you guess who owns RH stocks?

Agreed.

Totally agree. The majority of Americans are great people. Not everyone is MAGA. We need to support the good ones. Sanctions and boycotts tend to unite.
One exception would be if the project imposse a security risk because key people and servers, within the US, may be blackmailed or pushed by the new administration. We're not there yet though. And I hope these projects and people migrate if this becomes the case.
Also, FOSS projects run by big tech are probably also wise to avoid for strategic reasons.
- The majority of Americans are great people
  They're not the majority if they can't win an election — just sayin'.
  
  77mio out of 340mio voted for trump which is roughly 22.6%
  
  a minority of the population voted for trump though, it's not like 50+% of the total population voted for him, it's 50+% of the voters, a lot of people just didn't vote.
- Totally agree. The majority of Americans are great people.
  Not choosing to vote or speak is endorsing the establishment. We are not great people. We are dumbfucks.
- if its run by a big company then it's just open source and not free, or do you mean something like a company contributing to the code?

@notIO
I agree on that.

I think you're missing the point a bit.
Both BuyCanadian and BuyEuropean are about supporting their respective economies as they are boycotting America's.
For Canada, we're looking at a recession (brought on by our "ally") so people are trying to help fellow Canadians out as things get rough and people lose jobs.
While I support FOSS and recommend them in threads etc I fully understand why they don't meet all the goals of those movements. (That being said, I think one of the most rocking counter punches would be EU investment in stabilizing Linux enough to make it a feasible alternative to Windows/Apple for casual and corporate users, solid shot to 2 of the magnificent 7.)
- investment in stabilizing Linux enough to make it a feasible alternative
  Do you care to elaborate? If I had to write a list of reasons why Linux might not be ready for your average cubicle... Stability wouldn't be one of them.
  
  Stabilizing might not be quite the right word I'm looking for. But for example, trying to connect a new wifi card etc. Or when one program updates but this causes instability and you have to undo the update. Even from the handful of linux wizards I know, their battle stories with updates or new configurations are enough to terrify someone.
  
  Not the other commenter, but they likely meant stability with respect to device drivers. The kernel is great at not degrading with a high uptime, but there's consumer stuff that's just perpetually unimplemented, buggy, or minimally-functional:
  Sensor monitoring on Ryzen platforms
  Realtek NIC chipsets
  Nvidia cards and proprietary drivers for anything and everything other than compute workloads
  Nvidia cards older than the RTX 2000 series and FOSS drivers
  Peripherals targeted towards "gamers"
  None of this is the kernel maintainers fault, of course. The underlying issue is the usual one of shitty corporations refusing to publish documentation and/or strategically abusing the legal system to stifle reverse engineering for interoperability.

I came into this thinking its more like "Oh no open sores is full of communists let me pay for worse software I never own" which is an argument that comes from the same camp as "this software I don't like is woke"

- @not3ottersinacoat @notIO
  Too worries!
  Fedora is something different from Red Hat
  
  Fedora benefits Red Hat. It's upstream. I'll avoid what I can, especially something so obvious.