I have very fond memories of being an internet/FOSS/unix geek as an
undergraduate, from 2003 to 2006. It felt like a great time for us. There was
huge community awareness around two particular issues, namely proprietary
formats and the importance of webstandards. Everybody was rallying around
OpenOffice and Firefox as replacements for Microsoft Office and Internet
Explorer, and these tools were actually achieving something approaching
mainstream success. There was this great sense that we had all risen up as a
community, realised that certain aspects of software were either good or bad for
users (note that these issues aren't even about source code availability, but
about avoiding unpleasantries like vendor lock in), and we were winning a sort
of David vs Goliath battle to make the world better. It was great!
Now it's 2017. Microsoft are actually beginning to fade slowly into
obsolescence, which is something we wouldn't dared to have dreamed of in my
student years. And yet, I haven't felt that Firefox-era thrill in years.
Quite the opposite. Frankly, I think the broader internet/FOSS/unix geek
community has totally lost its way and its moral compass. In terms of having
the power to steer the industry, to eliminate competition, to lock in and
control users and given them an increasingly raw deal, companies like Apple,
Facebook, Google and Twitter are today even worse than Microsoft were in the
previous era. And while it's not true that *nobody* is calling these companies
out, the opposition is nowhere close to being as mainstream as opposition
against Microsoft used to be. Making a concerted effort to avoid these
companies and their products/serivces puts you in the hyper-fringe part of
geekdom. What happened?
