SOFTWARE FOR SOMEONE ELSE

I wrote this a few days ago, trying to finish it quickly in the 
morning, and I ran out of time as usual. I don't know if I really 
believe in it that much, or at least I feel I couldn't defend it in 
an argument. It seems like the sort of thing I'd say in person but 
not normally online. Though maybe that's just because in person I 
wouldn't be talking to anyone who actually understands what I'm 
saying, because I don't know anyone like that to talk to in person 
anyway.

Well I don't think I should get so fussed over what I say here, so 
I'll just post it anyway. I don't claim any particular confidence 
in the accuracy, even just in representing my own opinion, of my 
other posts anyway. Maybe it's just that in this case I really 
don't want to believe that I won't be able to forever find a cheap 
and easy way to keep using computers the same way.

-- START --

The thing about free software, especially open-source Linux/UNIX 
software, is that it gives you so much that it's all the more 
frustrating when you find nobody's catered to one of your own 
requirements.

That sounds selfish, the idea of course is that you should create 
what you want for yourself and share it just like everyone else 
does in the open-source world. But in the real world certain things 
are just damn hard, and somehow the very work of other people 
developing software that doesn't meet your personal needs tends to 
make it harder. Primary examples are web browsers and operating 
systems.

Why is it that at the same time I can buy a car from the 80s and 
keep it going mostly by myself, and if not then with the aid of a 
normal garage in a nearby small country town, without any
particular engineering skill or exceptonal financial investment, I 
can't possibly keep a computer from the 90s, or even the early 
2000s, doing the same tasks it was capable of when it was made? 
It's because my money, and that of others like me, matters in the 
automotive world - I pay for parts, lubricants, time. I don't pay 
for the software, and that's why it doesn't really serve my 
purpose. But actually with the significant software, the web 
browsers and operating systems that aren't approachable for meer 
mortals to make an impact developing, someone does pay for those. 
They have their interests, which are not all the same but share a 
common term, 'new'.

In technology 'new' is growth, "new model" means more sales, "new 
hardware" means greater efficiency, "new feature" means more users. 
Growth is money, and that's the money that funds open-source 
software, that's the direction it steers towards as a ship 
following a compass bearing. Hangers-on would make their mark, try 
to pull projects in their direction. Maybe their efforts come along 
for the ride, like the entire UNIX subsystem, made up of so many 
little single-person efforts for writing tiny programs to serve an 
individual need, which is still dragged around behind 
corporate-backed beheamouths of code such as GNOME, Systemd, and 
X.org (or increasingly Wayland). Or maybe they just break and go 
unsupported, as it becomes too hard to fit them into the software 
world that's changed so much.

-- END --

Well not really the end, but that's the last finished paragraph and 
I don't feel like writing the rest. My Internet Client is still 
working well and gets me around most of the issues, though it's a 
shame Firefox works so inefficiently displaying over TCP with X, 
and for that matter I'll be stuffed if it goes Wayland-only one 
day. OpenWRT's outgrown my router, though I'll try their Image 
Builder for making a custom image that I'm guessing will work, 
however they say it only runs on x86_64 so I can only do it using 
my Internet Client machine because since my new (to me) laptop died 
it's the only x86_64 system that's set up. Just examples, are they 
evidence that the above is wrong, or that it's right? I don't know.

 - The Free Thinker