Librem 5 concern

Hardware Librem 5
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Fellow software engineer here as well, and I have one question regarding your take on the pluses of open source software:

If OSS is so superior to proprietary programming efforts, than explain to me why proprietary software is consistently more polished, feature rich, and functional? Why if the collective efforts on a OSS project are so important, do those projects never really measure up to proprietary software? GIMP and Blender are two great examples. They are both excellent pieces of software, but try comparing them to industry leading software. (Photoshop and 3d Studio Max, for example) They don’t hold a candle to them based on feature set, usage, etc.

I know this might be a hard point to fathom by many of the more seasoned FOSS community but just because they’ve never used this software out of principle.

Think about it: If OSS software was really so much better than proprietary software, why wouldn’t the whole industry instantly switch to it? They’d have every reason in the book to do that!!

OSS is not a clear cut better way of developing software and the reality of software development today is evidence of that.

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Blender does infact hold a candle to other software, as not only is it free compared to the other products, but it does nearly everything those do and more in some cases (i mean at one point it literally had it’s own game engine in it too… and it’s used for much more than game models). And yes, photoshop still has more features, but it also has alot more money to go around compared to gimp or krita.

Photoshop has also been around much longer than Krita and even Gimp.

Further, there are plenty of areas that FOSS is ahead in terms of features, performance, and security. Not to mention it’s free. Your paying for other products, wheras you don’t need to pay a dime to use FOSS software.

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There is a chasm 1,000 miles wide that fits into that statement. Also have you ever used any of the proprietary software that are used for similar purposes?

With the hive like nature that OSS trumpets, time would be a diminishing factor as you would have exponentially more (in theory) people developing it. Your argument of Photoshop being older as an excuse undermines OSS more as it disproves this notion. (I’m not saying that more people working on something doesn’t speed development, I’m saying if you can’t get people to work on a project, it doesn’t matter.)

Give me an example, and I’m fairly certain I can show you a proprietary version that is better (better meaning more features, more polish, more functional, etc.).

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Exponentially more people developing it when it’s a free program that is being worked on by people donating blood, spit, and tears?

Foss runs on donations (of anything people can spare), that don’t measure up to the level of funds that a big corporation pushing such software to make money off of would get.

Just because it’s not got every bell and whistle imaginable, doesn’t mean it’s bad. Maybe one day it will have all those bells and whistles, but most people in foss aim to keep things simple and make sure they work, while respecting user privacy and freedoms.

If it’s missing something, add it. Don’t just sit and complain it’s not there. Donate to it, contribute, and push it forward. That’s how it’s prospered, and why it’s valuable.

Further, time doesn’t mean a program is magically going to get 10x more contributors than the project before it. In the case of Foss it’s much more likely the project will take some of the ideas from the existing project and improve it while preserving the Foss ideas, not go out on a crusade to add more features than the original or beat it in some way. (which does have it’s downsides, but at the same time it has upsides)

And if you still can’t get over a free peice of software not having as many features for whatever your edge case, then use the propeitary stuff and go back to windows. You don’t have to use it, and that’s a right too. But i know plenty of people who find free software much better for their use because it’s free, and because it’s still plenty useful. Your probably never going to get everything you want (XYZ may need something, but alot of people don’t), but you’ll likely find things you can’t live without too.

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I think Pixar now makes heavy use of Blender. Here’s one of the first links I can find where a Pixar employee says Blender does pretty much everything their own software could, and they even open-sourced parts of their own software.

Additionally, while I believe Matlab has certain areas without much FOSS competition (yet), in my field (physics) everyone is ditching Matlab for Python. I don’t think Matlab has much staying power.

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Better is subjective. You should always use the right tool for your needs. More features, polish, and functional sounds like more bloat, so if your using something with all the extras you won’t use you will be getting poorer performance.

So I think you should rethink your terms of “better”. Maybe a home hobbiest doesn’t care but when you run enterprise systems bloat can cost 100’s of thousands if not millions of dollars.

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Here are three examples:

  • gcc (GNU compiler)
  • apache (web server)
  • Linux (kernel)

Those are FOSS and I think many would say they are “better” than anything proprietary.

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Despite the fact that i hate gnome on the desktop personally, it does have great UI consistency compared to proprietary desktops. Each gnome application has a consistent menu layout where you find all the options, which are generally simple and straightforward. Further the Gnome shell UI itself is one of the most simplified UIs out there imo, sticking with very basic menu options and simple toggles or gestures.

Linux desktops in general also have much finer control of settings, such as effects and theming, toolbar positioning, button location, etc. Budgie, XFCE, and Plasma also have much more refined and polished notification history and parsing than windows 10 has.

FOSS software is generally more secure, due to requiring permissions to do important tasks, wayland’s permission isolation, flatpak sandboxing, each distro coming with a firewall enabled by default, Linux kernel security modules, etc. Yes, there has been exceptions to this rule, such as the recent gnome extension vulnerability, snap cryptominers, and plasma’s script vulnerability, however nothing is ever perfect, and that includes security on any system.

Most mainstream Linux desktops (besides gnome) are modular. You can remove each component you don’t like and mix them with another desktop environment’s component. In general each component interacts just fine as well, due to freedesktop specifications and standardized design concepts and toolkits.

FOSS applications generally have more plugins and extensibility. If you don’t like a feature, you can most likely remove it or tweak it. Mobile integration is extremely good for the desktops as well, due to kconnect and forks of it. And screenshots are generally much easier to take compared to windows because you get a popup that lets you manage them as soon as you take them.

FOSS file managers generally offer alot more integration with network sharing and remote servers than windows explorer, and Wayland or Xrandr fractional scaling is often better than windows in terms of applications not misbehaving and looking odd.

Most of what i mention is around linux distros, the kernel, or the desktops… I don’t use many applications on a daily basis, so i didn’t really go much into those. But i can assure you there are many, many things that FOSS applications offer too that proprietary ones have only just started, or still don’t offer, and that are very much useful.

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I’m not trying to be critical of OSS software. I agree with many that the software you’ve all highlighted is great.

But let’s not nitpick on the subjective.

I’m simply saying you can’t say that OSS is better than proprietary because the reality of the situation doesn’t support the claim.

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Instead of sidetracking this thread an regurgitating all the arguments that have been exchanged before, how about excavating this old thread? :slight_smile: https://forums.puri.sm/t/how-is-the-expectation-for-free-and-open-source-software-fair/3702

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You’re right of course. I guess what happens, is I bring it up, get the same kinds of responses, but no real concrete answers. I get tired because it’s like talking to an echo chamber. Things die down, and then I see more people talk about how great it all is, and that reignites the question.

The short and simple is I should know better.

The Librem 5 is most excellent and I genuinely look forward to getting it.

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You’ll never get satisfactory answers because your questions are already wildly biased:

I thought it did. But maybe I dreamed that the majority of MS Azure servers run Linux.
Whenever somebody gives good reasons, you either dismiss it, or you accept it and later seem to forget you accepted it (above thread).

Funny. I thought that about your initial statement how proprietary software is consistently better.
@supermammal put it best.
If you follow their advice, create a new thread with new, non-subjective categories / definitions of “better”, then take a dozen of software (kernel, OS, desktop, DTP, Browser, etc.) and give your examples of the best proprietary software in each, and rate them according to that standard. Else, this will go nowhere :slight_smile:

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FOSS is also used in 100% of supercomputers (At least that was true at the beginning of the year). It’s doing consistently well imo.

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So because a subjective response to a subjective question is not accepted, I’m ignoring responses? Come on, I think that is a bit unfair.

When I talk about adoption of a system, I’m talking about the average user. Not enterprise and not commercial users. When OSS becomes more popular than proprietary then I’ll believe the claims it makes.

My will to continue fades, because it is not that I don’t hear what I want, but that the crowd of response are so clearly one sided. I talk about this stuff because I want someone to genuinely convince me I’m wrong. I want to believe. I just can’t based on the rational hangups I see with the model.

But I’ll let it die, and promise to not bring it back up.

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I’ll be ‘100% Librem 5 proof’ as soon as i can get rid of whatsapp :smiley: Everything else was abandoned a long time ago.

Believe it or not, I have No F—ing Idea what “WhatsApp” is.

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Super popular in Europe. It’s signal before signal. Good piece of software that was bought by FB, and absolutely can’t be trusted now.

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I’m honestly convinced you cannot be convinced because you’re not even sure yourself what the actual question is.
You were asking for “better” and it was pointed out to you that professional users are very aware of advantages of free software.
Now you are basically asking why average users who grew up with proprietary software don’t feel the urge to switch to something different that they most likely don’t even know about.
It’s the reason why many want WhatsApp on the L5: they can hardly convince loved ones to switch to an alternative (matrix), even though it’s free, doesn’t spy on them, cannot effectively be force-backdoored by governments, has bridges to other messengers and even allows to use an account on multiple devices.
I realize that C++ and bash are ugly, but I lack the willpower to learn alternatives.
People stick to what they know.
MS and Apple know that, and that’s why they make sure their hardware and software is used in schools.

Your new question is no longer about quality, it’s more about human nature, psychology, advertising, peer pressure, monopolies and walled gardens.

Your old question was more like “how come well funded software has more features than weakly funded software” - which also is not about free software.

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I first heard of it only as a criticism to what it had become after FB acquisition. There are different niches and bubbles, in some OSS is considered as under-soft, in others proprietory is considered bloatware. So this is religious war (flame).

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The real issue in some cases is that 2disbetter is judging software by one set of criteria (usability, features, and polish) and at some others are judging it by another (libre/free). I wouldn’t expect something developed by lots of dedicated amateurs (and I mean that word in its positive, original sense, “out of love”) to have the polish of proprietary software. So like everything else, it’s a tradeoff.

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For the record: C++ is beautiful. My first and preferred language.

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