We pay to Steam, Netflix, Amazon prime, Spotify. But not to Wikipedia, Archive.org, Librivox, Project Gutenberg, for our favourite Linux distro.
The huge asymmetry between corporate and community has not emerged naturally. It is a product of our choices of not supporting community oriented projects.
The short conveniences vs the long-term good. We always chose the former.
In face of surveillance capitalism, we must and must change.
@dajbelshaw @aseem People have seemed to forget that Netflix started out as the internets worst, most obnoxious ad spammer ever
@aseem Don't forget the direct support of small projects and developers.
I agree with your main point, though. We often do forget to support the things we use if we don't have it behind a pay wall.
@aseem The first part is what people consume. The second list is what people create.
I'd not pay for Wikipedia, because they are easily manipulated and anyone can edit it, with any information. I simple don't trust information on it.
So it's not really about survcap, but what we put our energy into. A well made video, a well-written article about a distro can help others.
Wasting your time on Netflix on shitty movies (this while I am watching The Boys), doesn't help anyone.
Niklas
@aseem I never payed for Steam,never used Netflix,don't use anything from Amazon anymore but I just bought a PinePhone and donated 10 dollar to the PostmarketOS team by that 😃 I totally agree with your statement but I'm already trying to do it right.
@aseem I get your point and I support it, but saying that this is a product of our choices is not enough. It is a social fenomenon driven by the capitalist structure, in which is easy to reproduce the status quo and hard to break it.
@preto Yes. But the silent submission to it, has been our (community's) choice.
@aseem That is a potent comparison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer
@flab
sounds like they do "need" it but really shouldn't. Oof, I just donated a couple weeks back.
Thanks for sharing that.
@aseem The vocal few here giving you flak do not represent the majority. Most people don't give a second thought to monetarily supporting the FOSS and free resources that they use. Many cannot give monetarily, and that's OK.
Thanks for the reminder.
@aseem "We" ? I mean, talk for yourself, don't generalize this. I pay/donate to my Linux distro I often use, if they accept any donations tho. I pay for my open source Email service provider etc.
I donate to Mozilla, I donated to Wikipedia too (but will never support this site again in the future).
I don't pay anything to Spotify, the service is horrible. TIDAL is so much better.
Anyway, not sure what you mean with "we". Maybe you do not pay/donate, doesn't mean others don't do it.
Arguably we pay to those projects by spending time doing things like editing and writing Wikipedia, creating commons for Archive, replying to questions in #Debian or helping to find and fix bugs in apps etc.
Yes, they also need some money for server costs etc, please donate if you have the money, but it’s not as if those orgs are gonna put all of us volunteers (which could include you♥) on a payroll any day soon.
Let’s be careful so we don’t turn commons culture into a pyramid scheme where all the money goes to Linus and Jimmy while there are thousands of people that are collectively doing a lot of the labor and getting zilch.
well put
cash accounting is the hammer that makes all contributing look like a nail
I've seen attempts to account for the value in dollar terms for the work that's gone into other free culture projects, maybe the Linux kernel at one point?
I don't know if that's been tried for WMF projects to compare with this fundraising effort.but even getting an order-of-magnitude estimate might be useful for comparing to the level of donations and cash outlay
@aseem good reminder. I recently switched my monthly donation from the big public radio nearby to the smaller local stations that focus on community radio and jazz. There will always be more to do though so helpful to be reminded now and again
@aseem Long story short, we pay for entertainment, not for knowledge / tools /...
toda la verdad papa
@aseem: Some are tradebased services, some trade-free. The trade-free ones are the "community" based - they don't ask anything in return for what they offer. We built this directory of trade-free goods and services https://www.trade-free.org/directory and this operating system https://www.tromjaro.com/ and we curate hundreds of trade-free apps. Anyways. Would be more sane of we label such services based around "trade".
@aseem: Some are tradebased services, some trade-free. The trade-free ones are the "community" based - they don't ask anything in return for what they offer. We built this directory of trade-free goods and services https://www.trade-free.org/directory and this operating system https://www.tromjaro.com/ and we curate hundreds of trade-free apps. Anyways. Would be more sane of we label such services based around "trade".
@aseem Maybe except Wikipedia and a few commercial Linux distros, these aren't "community oriented projects", but "community projects". There's a big difference there.
That's ofc not to say we shouldn't support these projects both monetarily and via participation like @Sandra says, but the needs of the two kinds of projects are very different and some need way more volunteer work than dollars.
@aseem thanks for the reminder. I often forget to give something back to very important projects like lineageos. I dislike wikipedias agressive yearly donation campaign...but i donate every year because of it!
@aseem Nicley said! FYI the German S. Fischer Verlag sued Project Gutenberg in a German court for copyright infringement. For that reason German users are banned from gutenberg.org. IMHO the German publisher could have known it better because of his and its writers experiences in Nazi Germany.
@aseem I'm guilty too.I almost donated to Wikipedia during their last campaign, but didn't get around to it. (On the other hand, I've only recently started paying for online services; I don' thave that much income so I usually just used what came free).
Planning to actually go ahead and donate next time. One small step at a time, let's move forward! 👣
@aseem
On paye pour Steam, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify. Mais pas Wikipédia, Archive.org, Librivox, le projet Gutenberg ou pour notre distribution Linux préférée.
La très grosse asymétrie entre le corporatisme et les communautés n'ont pas émergé naturellement. C'est un produit de nos choix de ne pas aider les projets orientés en communautés.
Les intérêts à court terme versus le bien à long terme. On choisit toujours le premier.
En face du capitalisme de surveillance, nous devons changer.
@Sebbaz Merci pour le traduction!
@aseem I donate to Wikipedia nd the Internet Archive regularly, but point taken 👍