Say you don't have a lot of cash and you want microblogging and VoIP. Do you spend money to host your own Mastodon and Mumble servers, or use one where many admins (understandably) require payment or donations to cover costs, or do you use the free-because-you're-the-product Twitter and Discord? Do you use GMail or pay for Posteo/ProtonMail/Fastmail/etc.? Do you use the centralizing, closed-source GitHub or pay for SourceHut or host your own Gitea server? Can you afford to build a rack at home to self-host and invest in the skill to maintain and secure it? Do you invest time in learning GIMP despite lower-quality, community tutorials because it's free (as in beer and freedom) or do you follow the crowd and use Creative Suite or Affinity Studio because it's the tool most your jobs will expect you to use?
I think it is (unfortunately) a privilege of being able to afford the FOSS and privacy-focused alternatives--through money and time. A good salary gives you room for privilege. I don't think you can separate finances from the equation. Many people are just out there trying to take the easiest route to survive, and FOSS isn't as easy.
(Heck, even speaking English is a privilege many here on HN have. Many FOSS projects are only in English. I've been in Thailand for a while now and while the much of the youth demographics resents its government, almost no one knows about decentralized, private, FOSS services because it hasn't been localized and people can't afford the bill either--and as such the government has many times censored Facebook and YouTube and other centralized systems.)
>I think it is (unfortunately) a privilege of being able to afford the FOSS and privacy-focused alternatives--through money and time. A good salary gives you room for privilege. I don't think you can separate finances from the equation. Many people are just out there trying to take the easiest route to survive, and FOSS isn't as easy.
"I understand that “teaching a man to fish” is a thing, but that metaphor breaks down under the constraints of time and the pressures modern civilization. The ability to make tools stems from access to time. The freedom of time comes from having money. There’s a reason all those Renaissance dudes knew 7 languages, had spare time to write poetry, write essays on philosophy, and built their own laboratories. It’s because someone was doing their dishes and laundry for them. Someone else was subsidizing the overhead."
(The article make a rather different point and that quote is slightly cherrypicked, btw. It's a good article, I recommend it.)
I think it is (unfortunately) a privilege of being able to afford the FOSS and privacy-focused alternatives--through money and time. A good salary gives you room for privilege. I don't think you can separate finances from the equation. Many people are just out there trying to take the easiest route to survive, and FOSS isn't as easy.
(Heck, even speaking English is a privilege many here on HN have. Many FOSS projects are only in English. I've been in Thailand for a while now and while the much of the youth demographics resents its government, almost no one knows about decentralized, private, FOSS services because it hasn't been localized and people can't afford the bill either--and as such the government has many times censored Facebook and YouTube and other centralized systems.)