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Comment by raw_anon_1111 | Hacker News Reader

Stallman doesn’t exactly make reasonable arguments that appeal to most people and his lifestyle based on his belief system is laughable.

And when most consumers look at open source alternatives to commercial software and hardware they are already “shitty”.

Are you really going to say that you would hand an open source product to most users and hand them a product by Apple or Microsoft and they would say the open source alternative is “better” for them?

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Your empty accusations of Stallman aren't helpful to the discussion. What exactly do you find unclear or laughable? Perhaps you didn't understand that. I did.

> Are you really going to say that you would hand an open source product to most users and hand them a product by Apple or Microsoft and they would say the open source alternative is “better” for them?

This is exactly what happened when I replaced Windows with Debian for my non-technical relatives.

He uses software and hardware that doesn’t have the qualities that most people want.

Now give your relatives FDroid over their iPhones and Android devices and see which one they would prefer. Give them an M series MacBook Air that runs quiet and cool with a battery life of 15+ hours.

Wait until they want to run Photoshop, Office or any of the other popular commercial software and you show them Gimp or LibreOffice. Or their children want to play the latest PC game with their friends.

> He uses software and hardware that doesn’t have the qualities that most people want.

This is true, and by design: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45025116

> Now give your relatives FDroid over their iPhones and Android devices and see which one they would prefer. Give them an M series MacBook Air that runs quiet and cool with a battery life of 15+ hours.

Supporting freedom requires some compromises. Any improvement in quality of life for the people can only come with huge efforts. Some people aren't able to spend these efforts due to the personal problems. It doesn't mean they don't care.

And you still haven’t said how it would improve their lives?

In the same way any kind of freedom improves people's lives: Indirectly, in subtle ways yet dramatically. Examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45569667 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45557185

Yes so we should optimize for the insignificant number of people who want to use FDroid outside of your bubble?

What do you mean by "optimize"? It's already optimized just fine.

Companies should cater to customers who want something like FDroid?

Companies should respect users' freedom and not take control over their computing without giving a choice. See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html

Do you have a personal grudge against F-droid? If you hate the UI, the UI isn't an end all be all. there is droidify which has a different UI/UX to the f-droid repository https://f-droid.org/packages/com.looker.droidify/ Download this but f-droid is not just the UI but rather it creates reproducible verified/audited android builds which can be installed easier and through multiple alternative frontends including drodify/f-droid official websites etc.

>Companies should cater to customers who want something like FDroid?

Yes. Why not? Can you give me reasons why not because I can give the reasons as to why.

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