Message-ID: <67708431@news.ausics.net>
From: not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev)
Subject: Re: GIMP 3.0.0-RC1
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy
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In comp.os.linux.misc D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Dec 2024, Andrzej Matuch wrote:
>> On 2024-12-27 18:04, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>> On Fri, 27 Dec 2024 14:57:55 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Well, I appreciate that I can get gratis a piece of software that is
>>>> that good.
>>> 
>>> If you think Free Software could be better, and you would rather not give
>>> money to a proprietary company, why not contribute some of that money to
>>> the development of the Free Software and help make it better?
>>
>> Especially since projects like KDE and LibreOffice really need it.
> 
> Note that money is not the only way to contribute. Even by using the 
> software you contribute,

This is something I wonder a lot about actually. On Windows free
software developers can see download stats from their website.
Linux software is usually installed from distro packages though, so
the author only sees a single download from the package's
maintainer. Sometimes you see a project on Sourceforge that's had a
relatively recent update but the monthly download stats for the
main release file are near single digits. I feel like downloading
it more times myself just to make the author think they didn't do
all that work (of documenting and publishing the software, even if
they're developing it mainly for their own use) for next to nobody.

> by making others aware of it, you contribute. I actually like
> projects that are not super wealthy. The linux foundation and
> firefox are excellent examples of how power corrupts. Would never 
> dream of contributing with money to those two.

They're interesting cases. Google is determining the direction
that the Web evolves, thus the direction Firefox development has
to go, and they're the main ones paying Mozilla (for now). Hardware
manufacturers determine how computers evolve, and thus how Linux
is developed to work well on them, and maybe the Linux Foundation
gets some funding from the computer hardware companies (is this
info public?), or at least many code contributions from Intel and
the like.

So that development is really about making existing open-source
projects fit the aspirations of businesses, and one can see then
how the culture of those open-source organisations might start to
reflect that more than their original goals. Still, it's much
better than having to buy software off those companies directly, or
using more closed-source drivers in Linux.

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