this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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I've seen a lot of posts recently about FOSS. I'm not a programmer, so I don't know anything about it. What is FOSS and does it have a big advantage over other software designs?
FOSS is free open source software, which means it doesn't cost money and you can use it for anything you like.
In practice this means you can download these apps and modify them or contribute to them, and you always know exactly what they do (for the most part). FOSS isn't necessarily better than paid software, nor is it necessarily worse, but it is more accessible software.
Sync is ad supported or paid which some people are against, arguing it's monetizing free content. They don't like the ad tracking and I strongly agree with that.
But at the end of the day, if a developer wants to get paid to write software I'm in favor of it, it's not like this is Google or some other large Corp, it's a single developer building and maintaining Sync (though I think the lifetime price is way off the mark).
Free as in speech, not necessarily free as in no money exchanged. The GPLv3 explicitly allows commercial use to both the creator and third parties.