this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2025
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[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 days ago (3 children)

There is a difference between "free & open source" and "free because you don't pay with money".

The first means it can be peer reviewed by anyone to make sure they aren't doing anything shady.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

Yeah that's right. Really, the difference is between free software and free services.

Software can be free and open source and that can be a viable model, even a preferable model. Services can not be free without some party being exploited. In the best of cases this means services are provided by volunteers (and they are being exploited), but more commonly in business, it's the users who are being exploited.

But as a rule, you should be suspicious of free services.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

UBO is also free as in beer.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

That's why we need to start using libre