I’m a FOSS (free and open source software) contributor and enthusiast. So I prefer to use such products (Lemmy instead of Reddit, Linux instead of Windows, Firefox instead of Chrome, Signal instead of WhatsApp, you get the idea). Was just thinking that if everyone moved to such solutions, the tech and ad industry would lose billions of dollars. That would translate to governments losing billions of dollars in tax revenue. Would such a move ever be encouraged then by the governments?
Governments pay huge amounts of money for software licenses, mainly to Microsoft. So it would save them a lot of money too.
That is quite true. Though there’s another con if everyone moved to FOSS, the governments will then have less control and access to user data. Right now they can just ask Microsoft, Meta and Google and they readily give minute by minute account of a person and hordes of data. Signal, linux distros, etc don’t collect anything in the first place.
How is that a con? Seems like a pretty big “pro” to me.
Con for the governments, big pro for us obvious.