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> Europe should be making industry-leading apps. Europe should produce software startups that make products that get used worldwide.

I've kind of lost hope when it comes to commercial services and proprietary apps. They're sadly all sooner or later enshittified. We need something different, not by promises but by design (FOSS).

> EU subsidized clones of popular American products feels like admitting defeat.

I think it's a fresh and needed take on the financing of our common digital infra.




I can't think of too many apps that I use that are truly FOSS.

Databases, compilers/interpreters, web servers, operating systems...but apps? (Other than gnu/bad command line tools of course)


For me: Emacs, NetNewsWire, Gimp, Inkscape, Calibre, Firefox, Chrome, occasionally VS Code, very occasionally whatever Audacity is called today.

And I’m a Mac user!


To add to your list: Atril (PDF Viewer), Vokoscreen (Screen recorder), Transmission (Torrent CLient), Simple Scan (Scanner Tool), LibreOffice, Keepassxc, Thunderbird, Element Desktop, Dino, Handbrake, Beets (Music Collection Tagger/Manager), VLC, Kodi, Rhythmbox (Music Player), Syncthing

If I look at my phone, it's possible that I have more apps installed via F-Droid than through Google Play


Typically a FOSS community seems to take a while to get started, but once it gets going (Blender, Linux, etc) it tends to stick around and even seriously gain traction.


I think the main problem is lock-in. If you can't get your data out you can't leave. This is true for open source and for commercial products alike.

If you own your data and if you have the option to self-host you can always opt out of updates you don't like.




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