Discussion
When I was out on my daily walk, I pondered the shape of software. What is it for?
Every year we talk about it being the year of the Linux Desktop. Who is it for?
Some Projects aimed to be a direct replacement in organisations because they are aiming for those organisations. I remember NT4 and the companies I worked for having a common desktop.
Conversely we also aimed for the domestic computer market which had a different set of requirements.This is how we got to where we are now
By the shape of software I don't just mean what it does.
To me the shape includes what are the values of the developers. What are the values of it's community or customers if you prefer.
See? Two different values already.
So when you have a large software project that's replacing an office stack, perhaps what we should have been asking is, why are we using tools that were developed for a corporate market in the first place?
I loved NT4 and the simplicity of packaging for that corporate environment. That's when I was working for a corporate.
But the stack for that corporate was overkill for a home pc.
@dentangle introduced me to Conway's law last week.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law
That and the question of values stuck in my mind yesterday while walking.
So perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise at the LLM infestation on our projects. The system is working as designed and we've all got a lot of thinking to do.
"[O]rganizations which design systems (in the broad sense used here) are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations."
— Melvin E. Conway, How Do Committees Invent?
In all seriousness, what the Frick was FOSS community thinking? What was I thinking?
Why on earth are we letting software created for corporate America into our lives?
Because it's what we used. What can we change? We need to change.
@onepict I suspect that it's one of those "coalitions diverging" situations. For a very long time, the interests of users and the interests of people whose *meal ticket* was the users, those were much more aligned than today. Never 100% obviously but it was easier to find "politically neutral" common ground. And category 2 always had more cash to throw around.
As we got into a place of the old proverb "man cannot serve two masters," a lot of what we've seen is users losing.
@MaddieM4 While windows did make its way into a lot of homes, it was a bad thing for our communities over all.
There's a captive market and ever since, our communities have been trying to capture it, rather than considering what if we created something else?
I find myself gravitating to that something else nowadays.
@brad @MaddieM4 I'm loving sway at the moment.
I started watching the KDE documentary the other day. KDE seems to be trying to be for everyone and everything, but it also started from not liking CDE. Which was *nix attempt to be what NT4 and ecosystem was.
I find I like choosing my tools rather than having a suite. I object to installing software I'm never going to use.
@DjityDjity @MaddieM4 That would be funding which for sustainability would be good, money alone will not fix this.
The technology also will not fix this.
We need to be clear and open about what our values are.
Things like no Fascists, no Fascist technology. Intersectionality and also recognising that we incorporate our politics into our tech.
Which would make our Governments nervous.
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@onepict Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes! We used to have microcomputers you could switch on and write programs with, immediately. With a couple of basic (hur hur) commands you could then load and run any number of different programs from games, to astronomy chart creators, text editors, and so on.
They came with manuals explaining how to use this amazing tool on a level that 10-year-olds could understand and learn from.
Nearest I've come to replacing them for my kids is RPi running Debian, and C64U.