FOSS != "makeshift solutions with pieces duck-taped together and inconsistent UX".
Many highly polished, widely-used pieces of software are also FOSS. Firefox, for instance.
FOSS can also be a software suite built by a well-funded international partnership for the specific purpose of making something that can replace Europe's current dependence on proprietary US-based software.
Yes, it's important to try to make sure Europe is in good shape with the software (and hardware) it depends on now, but a solid long-term strategy can—and, IMO, should—include building new packages from the ground up to fill niches not currently well-served by the independent, distributed FOSS community. It's likely to take years to truly come to fruition, but if done thoughtfully it will benefit everyone.
> Many highly polished, widely-used pieces of software are also FOSS. Firefox, for instance.
> FOSS != "makeshift solutions with pieces duck-taped together and inconsistent UX".
Sure. Firefox is good. The fact that it's FOSS is of second nature
But let's not kid ourselves, the majority of "User facing" FOSS apps has terrible UX.
And then it always goes back to "it sucks but it's free"
We should go for FOSS choices that are good, free/open shouldn't matter (if they are from European vendors)
> include building new packages from the ground up to fill niches not currently well-served by the independent, distributed FOSS community
Sure, who should do that? Pretty much all linux vendors went out of business, and managing those solutions is easier said than done, also it looks much cheaper than it actually is.
The reason Europe should use FOSS software is that it cannot, inherently, be beholden to any company or country. It can't be bought, or subverted without that subversion showing up in publicly-viewable code repositories. These are attributes that inherently go with the fact that it is built in the open, with anyone able to take the source and make their own version of it even if the people who originally built it want to start doing nefarious things. And there's nothing about this that makes software hard to use; that's a consequence of the volunteer, distributed nature of most independent open-source software, combined with the lack of strong incentives to create good UX.
So if Europe wants to get serious about this, it can, and should, make some that's high quality and still open. There are a number of ways it could do that, and the amount of money it should cost to make it happen should be pocket change by the standards of the entire EU working together. There are plenty of good programmers and UX engineers in Europe.
unfortunately nowadays almost every software has terrible UI and UX
commercial because of the insane dark pattern hell and contact us for pricing and 345 step signup onboarding madness to get the sweet sweet data juice
FOSS, on the other hand, because it starts with build it yourself with CMake or cry because there's only a 3 years old prebuilt binary but not for your platform/architecture
Right, I don't understand how these people are legitimately talking about "UX" and then looking at Microsoft products (???).
Are we blind or something? Is there a single Microsoft product that has an even halfway decent UX? We're up to like a dozen setting panels in Windows. Excel can't open two workbooks with the same name. Nobody likes Outlook.
then they fucked it up gradually but royally. Office is completely ridiculous for like 20-30 years. (I still think people who heralded the ribbon menu as some kind of UX panacea should have stopped sniffing glue before it got too late.)
Many highly polished, widely-used pieces of software are also FOSS. Firefox, for instance.
FOSS can also be a software suite built by a well-funded international partnership for the specific purpose of making something that can replace Europe's current dependence on proprietary US-based software.
Yes, it's important to try to make sure Europe is in good shape with the software (and hardware) it depends on now, but a solid long-term strategy can—and, IMO, should—include building new packages from the ground up to fill niches not currently well-served by the independent, distributed FOSS community. It's likely to take years to truly come to fruition, but if done thoughtfully it will benefit everyone.