When you look at any app store, you’ll find that the many apps that are infested with ads, spyware, malware, and dark patterns are pretty much always proprietary. Conversely, any FOSS app that tries to introduce such garbage would be forked to remove their offending attributes, which makes FOSS apps much higher-quality than proprietary apps in general.
You are using false equivalence by incorrectly implying that proprietary software is commercial while FOSS is not. Both FOSS and proprietary software can be sold and commercialized with various monetization strategies. For example, you are currently using Lemmy, a FOSS social network whose development is funded by donations. Nobody here believes that Reddit is better because it is proprietary adware.
Free and open source software licenses provide users the right to use, modify, and redistribute the software. Proprietary software does not. That difference makes FOSS inherently better for users than proprietary software.
zarenki@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
“not updated in years” didn’t used to be considered a bad thing. Why is it one now?
If something works well for me as it is and runs locally in a way that doesn’t open itself up to remote exploits, I don’t necessarily need it to keep changing all the time. Even if it would be nice if it had more features, the software works fine for me as it is. I don’t need those updates now or this year.
The only true “need” is that it doesn’t stop working for me when the various platforms or compilers change. I used to use a Python2 program, and I could keep using it for about a decade after its last update, but eventually I did need to move past it because Python3 had long since replaced it and distros stopped shipping Python2. A year or two of no updates it’s nothing.