@freakazoid Convenience is meant here in a selfish term, not a usability term.

@craigmaloney But I don't think people are by and large selfish. I think we just don't really understand what their needs are and don't consider the things they want to be legitimate.

Like, for example, I don't think most people really want to use Facebook; they want to connect with their family and friends, and Facebook just happens to be where they are. Likewise Facetime, etc. They want to have calls with family and friends. So they just look at you blankly if you suggest different software.

@freakazoid @craigmaloney
In my eyes the issue is different. Your refrigerator or washing machine are not made to be easily customizable or fixable by you, they are preconfigured and likely pre-installed for you, and you happily adhere rather strictly to their usage manual. Crucially you also know, that if something were to go wrong, or some upgrade or fix was necessary, or even if you just need an advice, there is a free market of affordable local experts to choose from to help you (not to mention warranty). The proprietary software culture has made sure this free market does not exist, and even the few islands of FOSS that exist have to adhere by the standards set by it: No infrastructure, no quality standards, no competition, only marketing and pop culture.

Many people think that FOSS has been tried and didn't work, or didn't work well, but as long as most people accept proprietary software and its culture and consider FOSS just an alternative, you can't say it has been tried. It's still the same old battle. It's only natural that first you need to win over the niche expert markets and then move on to general public, but we haven't yet fully achieved even that.

@craigmaloney Of course, this is not limited to FOSS - it's a symptom of the misguided "developer"/"user" dichotomy. Why is it that if I want to do anything interesting on Mac OS, the thing that I open is Bash?

@freakazoid @craigmaloney and if you actually take the time to try and fix those problems, you spend a year bogged down in trying to get build systems and packaging to work before you can actually do the work you want to do, and everyone hates you for doing it! 😂

Signed,

The guy who fixed a software package with an ableist slur for a name and still wants to make an accessibility dashboard for it at some point

@trechnex @craigmaloney And the software you're fixing has been a posterchild for unusability since its inception, even before people in the community started caring about ableism. I think the main thing that's gotten people using it is the high price of the alternatives and reduced ability to pirate those alternatives. And its Windows port doesn't suck nearly as bad as it used to.