Their search results constantly impress me and honestly it’s 10 bucks for unlimited searches, it’s worth it even if it’s not a business expense, plus since you’re paying for the service they’re less likely to track you. I wish their code was FOSS, but I’ll take it, still better than google, bing, and all the others I’ve tried.

Also they actively promote the small web and you can even personalize your search results by removing websites you don’t like from the searches (for example I have a lot of big tech websites blocked)

Actually other search engines do much better with Lemmy. Kagi’s search works wonders if you select the filter for Fediverse Forums. And you can assign that filter to a bang, such as !lemmy, so that when you search “!lemmy query here” it’ll search only on the fediverse A few examples:

And this ladies and gentlemen is why we should try to escape big tech’s grasp.

In general I agree with you. I find that most FOSS software is more polished than proprietary software, and it is generally more powerful.

However, I think that one problem that people somehow overlook in my opinion is that the financial side of the issue is also extremely important. I want more people to work on quality FOSS software, and I want it to become socially acceptable to work on FOSS as your main job. For that one thing is needed in my opinion: we as users of FOSS software need to give developers the financial incentives to work on what they love the whole time. In fact I want it to reach the point where immoral, non FOSS companies struggle to find developers because they’re all working on FOSS.

if you program the firmware directly your program can be stored, but it requires you to also buy the firmware writing tool and the FPGA unlocked version of the product (FPGA can be locked after writing it naturally)

what FOSS library do you maintain?

The concept of competition among tech companies has done a complete 180 on its original meaning. It’s no longer predominantly about crafting superior products; rather, it’s become a race to secure the largest amount of investor funding.

In this transformed landscape, the product itself and revenue generation often take a backseat, or at best, hold a tertiary importance. The heart of customer-centric ethos, especially crucial elements like data security, are now distressingly overlooked. What matters is getting the next investment to become the next “unicorn” and be acquired for billions of dollars. Silicon Valley Companies want the easy way out, do only a fraction of the work for an exponential amount of the benefits.

Don’t get me wrong, there are reasons to seek investment, getting a good product built is actually complex and you actually need a lot of different people working on it. The alternative is losing years of your life on a sisyphean ordeal of soul-crushing, hundred-hour work weeks (and that’s real work, not “let me check twitter” work), making you question your life choices and whether you should just throw it all away, abandon technology, become a hermit and move to a shed in the mountains.

The problem is that the EXPECTATION today is that you’re gonna build a third of a product, care about 1% of the actual business behind it and then pivoting exclusively to the pursuit of investment, letting everything else rot