@hakui >Free software was never about costing less >sure, but running a business is. if costs are too high they're just not going to do it
Running a business without much existing competition isn't about costing less (as any costs can be dumped on the customer).

In my personal experience, running proprietary software costs a fortune but free software is very cheap, as you don't need to keep paying rent to an extortionist.

Escaping lock-in does seem to have an enormous cost, but as soon as that cost has been passed, it turns out that such costs were only in the short term and caused by the proprietary software and costs are less.

>original author takes the money and goes "dude trust me lmao"
If the author intends to keep their hard gained trust in the community and any later money, they will deliver on what they agreed to.

Meanwhile, proprietary software developers are notorious for taking the money and not delivering.

>yes because ownership of the code is with the corpo and they didn't release it
Copyright restrictions has nothing to do with ownership - it has to do with controllership.

The corpo did release the code - in object code form.

>you're trying to forbid software owners from enforcing their ownership
He's giving advice to think about how the software restrictors are enforcing their ownership of you.

>unfortunately, you know, there's this minor issue of "most free alternatives are shit"
Yes, gratis, proprietary software written to be an alternative are always shit.

Free software with hard development work put into it and that are written to be replacements of proprietary malware are always great - blender is one example, same as gcc, same as Emacs, same as Linux (1993-1996 only), same as GNU Zebra, same as GNU speex, same as gnupg, same as gnuTLS, same as libgcrypt, same as glibc, same as GNU coreutils, same as GNU readline, same as GNU mailman, same as GNU health, same as GNU unifont, same as GNU make (microsoft used it), same as GNU autotools, same as GNU nano (replaced the proprietary pico), same as Kicad - that really such scratches the surface, there are many cases which demonstrate that free software being better than what they replace are not a mere exception.