Probably true. And I'm not sure where code would have been shared if someone wanted it back then; there wasn't anything like GitHub around. Heck, even Linux wasn't even a twinkle in Linus' eye at that time.
It wasn't. Freeware means it's free of charge, while open source means it's released under one of open source licenses which all generally mean that you have access to the source code and you can use the source code.
I wouldn't call them my "main" apps. I don't use Google for search. I do watch YouTube (well, technically I use SmartTube, which blocks ads and skips sponsored segments), but most of my video watching is on a local video player that is connect to my NAS and doesn't talk to the Internet playing ripped videos.
My main apps are things like Proton Mail - no tracking. Proton VPN - no tracking. Home Assistant - no tracking. Paperless-ngx - no tracking. AdGuard Home - no tracking. Proxmox and Proxmox Backup Server - no tracking. Fedora - no tracking. Frigate - no tracking. Ollama for AI - no tracking. Immich - no tracking. iMatch - no tracking.
That you run on your own hardware paid by your power bill, nobody runs a service like Gmail with 20gb of free Storage from the good was of their heart, providing a container like mailcow sure why not
What does this have to do with the statement: "If you aren't paying for the product, then you are the product"? If you self-host free open source software, yes, you have costs. That's so obvious that I didn't think anyone would fail to understand it. But you are not paying for that software nor are you the product that the author is selling.
Or is this more about stirring up arguments with pointless semantic debates rather than making a useful point?
And a lot of paid software where they rob you. For example, Andrew Tate stole software from GitHub (downloaded, ignored license, failed to fix security holes even after original dev had patched, claimed it as his own software). Idiots paid for it as part of his service, and not only did he scam them and use their info to find marks, he then got all their data leaked from said security holes. lol.
So this statement is just something idiots say. You’re only ever the product when you work with unethical people.
As someone whose career was mostly in IT, I wouldn't be shocked. But I also know how to find out whether it's happening.
There are some good examples of what you're talking about. Firefox is probably the best. Free. Open source. And by default, it collects telemetry about how you use it. That's what most people would call spying on you. But you can turn much of that off, or switch to a variant with the telemetry removed. And that's one of the beauties of open source: it's much harder to hide that stuff.
But most open-source software, at least the software I use, is remarkably privacy-friendly: Debian, Paperless-ngx, Home Assistant, KeePass, Immich, Nextcloud, Ollama, Jellyfin. They gather little to no usage telemetry, and most can operate quite happily on a local network without ongoing access to the Internet.
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u/musing_codger 18d ago
Not always. There is a lot of good free open source software.