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Warez: Do you pirate software or just use FOSS? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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In the past, most software I used was paid and proprietary and would have some sort of limitation that I would try to get around by any means possible. Sometimes that would be resetting the clock on my computer, disabling the internet, and other times downloading a patch.

But in the past few years I've stopped using those things and have focused only on free and open source software (FOSS) to fulfill my needs. I hardly have to worry about privacy problems or trying to lock down a program that calls home. I might be missing out on some things that commercial software delivers, but I'm hardly aware of what they are anymore. It seems like the trend is for commercial software providers to migrate toward online or service models that have the company doing all the computing. I'm opposed to that, since they can take away your service at any time.

What do you do?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You have to ask yourself- what are you trying to accomplish?

To me- it's not ONLY about getting software that does what I need it to do. This is a very short point of view. It's more important that I have the freedom to accomplish what I want, the way I want to do it. This is why FOSS feels good. For me- It's not so much a matter of paying for the software... it's a matter of creating a computing environment that's healthy for what I think is important. This is part of the reason why I think using FOSS is better than pirating closed source software- you're actually doing them MORE harm this way (and that should make you feel good!)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I agree, and with FOSS you have the opportunity to contribute back to the software. One time I was using commercial software and reached out to the company about how to decode a special file format for use in a script and the response was that it was "proprietary". If it was FOSS or even if they just had given me the information, I would have contributed to growing the ecosystem.