@oblomov@sociale.network
I think it is important to mention where the money is and where it goes, because ultimately the money drives the technical choices that are made. Web apps bring much more money than hyperlinked documents: imagine what online commerce would be without Web apps. So, none of the big players care about documents.
If we want to build an alternative, we have to think how to make it economically viable first, otherwise there is no chance of succeeding.
So, how can we make Librewolf, Servo, or any of the alternatives sustainable from an economic point of view? I have no answer.
@glipari@social.sciences.re I've hinted at this towards the beginning of the thread
https://sociale.network/@oblomov/115592755280348920
and I'm getting back there through a rather convoluted path 8-D
@oblomov@sociale.network
Yes.
I find that a lot of people passioned about open source alternative do not think hard enough about the financial aspects of a software project. For many people, coding is still a thing you can do in your spare time.
So, many smart programmers are burnt out (so many stories!).
Users, on the other hand, expect everything to be free, all the time. Hence the need for making revenues from advertising. It's a trap that is difficult to escape. It's a societal and economical problem, not a technical one.
@oblomov@sociale.network
Also, recently I started to think that many of the problems we have today in software come from two "revolutions" that are generally considered positive. The first one is open source: to make it short, I think thar the wide availability of open source libraries and tools has raised the wrong impression that software is cheaper than it really is, and nobody wants to pay for it anymore.
The second is "agile methods": they 1) removed the need for initial specifications and requirements ; 2) in some cases project managers tend to view the user as a beta tester, so they can accelerate deployment of not-so-carefully tested software. The combination of these two factors implies that every app, every web site, every interface changes all the time, in often unexpected ways.
glipari
Oblomov