There has always been something weird to me that in a lot of the radicalized lefty spaces I hang in, that there is this weird resistance to a lot of bigger open source project solutions. But it's not necessarily that a program is OPEN SOURCE, but that it is made by FOSS minded people. Style a website or a brand like it's a tech startup and no one bats an eye. Instead. As long as it's... corporate enough. Which seems like... really effed up values?
And like okay I get it to some level. FOSS people are some of the most insufferable people on earth. I have, in my time, wished to strangle a few hardcore GNU folk. There also always seems to be those... UX shortcomings. Hell, anything I'm going to mention has TONS of valid reasons not to use. You don't have to defend your choices to me. I actively don't care. In fact, I'm going to think you're being Weird if you do. I'm over here using windows instead of linux and I know how to use linux!
From firefox, to blender, to mastodon, to now godot, I feel like people make up reasons and apply weird, strange double standards like 'of course these things could never work' and then support some corporate software with the same exact problems.. People complain Mastodon has no E2E encryption and that instances could be ran by devil men only go on bluesky which literally does not support any kind of privacy on a fundamental design level (handwaving by saying 'we'll figure it out later'). Meanwhile Mastodon is working on. Godot gets criticized for some theoretical performance unoptimization that shouldn't matter? Once everyone tries to build a hill to die on over it, Godot just... implemented what they want... and this is before watching actual industry people practically making shit up about Godot. I don't think they're purposefully lying, but simply so immediately dismissive that they just take anything they read in the worst possible light. I just watched a respected game man say Godot "ain't it" because a... 3rd party company (and no, it isn't that one company that is actually the main people who work on godot) had weird pricing on port tools? And then recommended to someone another engine that isn't even out yet that also doesn't have port tools. But you know, less of that FOSS stink I guess. It's frustrating because as someone who is soon going to be between engines I have to trust the feedback of people who are just spouting bullshit or people a little too eager to support their new pet software. This does nothing but spawn an insufferable cycle.
Blender has slow boiled the "This can never be a serious pro tool" frog until it got to the point of being undeniable. I feel like the corporate internet has ruined our brains a little. We're used to things getting worse. A few years in we end up realizing we've probably hit the "peak" of the thing we like, and it's all down hill from there. Open source stuff keeps getting better. Yeah okay there are some bad design missteps too but it's a world of difference between that and watching something like discord shove itself into the gutter making changes for the shake of change because they have Silicon Valley brain worms.
Like idk I'd be a hypocrite if I was like "We all need to use all this stuff all the time!!" but idk maybe some people need to fight the urge to 'put the free and open option in it's place'?
