this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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If everyone moved to open source non-profit solutions, the tech industry would lose billions (programming.dev)
submitted 1 year ago by gogosempai@programming.dev to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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I'm a FOSS (free and open source software) contributor and enthusiast. So I prefer to use such products (Lemmy instead of Reddit, Linux instead of Windows, Firefox instead of Chrome, Signal instead of WhatsApp, you get the idea). Was just thinking that if everyone moved to such solutions, the tech and ad industry would lose billions of dollars. That would translate to governments losing billions of dollars in tax revenue. Would such a move ever be encouraged then by the governments?

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[–] squirrel@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Governments pay huge amounts of money for software licenses, mainly to Microsoft. So it would save them a lot of money too.

[–] gogosempai@programming.dev 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That is quite true. Though there's another con if everyone moved to FOSS, the governments will then have less control and access to user data. Right now they can just ask Microsoft, Meta and Google and they readily give minute by minute account of a person and hordes of data. Signal, linux distros, etc don't collect anything in the first place.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How is that a con? Seems like a pretty big "pro" to me.

[–] gogosempai@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

Con for the governments, big pro for us obvious.