Re: Organic Software

Alex White dropped a new post titled Organic Software, and...I have thoughts. Mostly hopeful, but still thoughts. The key point I wanna reply to is this:

My hope is that Linux becomes the family grocery store. You go in expecting to find highly quality, well made software and you accept that you'll have to pay a premium for it. As it is now, Linux users tend to expect things to be free as in freedom ✱and✱ beer. I hope this mindset can slowly change, and breed a platform filled with tools like Nova, Transmit, iaWriter, OmniFocus, CodeKit, Bike Outliner, BBEdit, TablePlus, etc. Tools built by small teams of passionate people (or even solo developers), offered at premium prices that support development.

The thing is, I've seen people consider it, but in my experience, the biggest hurdle always comes from three points of contention: no unified toolkit, compatibility issues, and dealing with the toxic parts of the userbase. I won't touch on the third point, as that's something I've not been able to deal with myself. The other two are kinda linked, and I can at least provide my own opinions on them.

Compatibility in this case isn't about the hardware itself. Not always, anyway (nVidia vs AMD vs Intel, anyone?). In this case, it about system configurations, and how Wayland Compositors aren't really standardized. This is because there are multiple toolkits, including Gnome/GTK and QT, and while you can make something from one of those toolkits, the application could have problems if your users run something else. It shouldn't be a problem, but it can happen, because not all compositors implement all of the same features, or may implement some features slightly differently. Gnome Desktop is well known for having this issue with some games, and how styling GTK apps can leave some of them visually broken at times.

The thing is, MacOS doesn't have this issue, because for the most part, all applications use the same underlying toolkit. Windows (usually) doesn't have this issue, because Windows has standard toolkits to use, like WPF and Metro/Modern Apps. Even the likes of MorphOS, ReactOS, and Haiku have their own general visual toolkits to keep things looking relatively uniform, and make applications easier to develop and support. All of them use a single display compositor as well.

Linux is mostly a "Build it yourself" OS, and while the likes of Flatpak, Snaps, and AppImages have made things much easier for this purpose, not everyone uses those options, and you still have to deal with compatibility issues between Wayland compositors. There've always been issues for the most part with X11/Xorg/etc desktops as well, though not quite to the same extent. It still adds mental overhead for developers and users, though.

I think that, if someone encouraged something similar to the old Xt (X toolkit) that could be targeted agnostic to the user's desktop compositor, it could help toward the goal of more professionally-coded software targeting Linux. They'd still have to contend with the community (which in some cases includes distro makers), but it could be something targeting Flatpak/Snap/AppImage to bypass issues with distro package managers, and delivered straight to users akin to an EXE/MSI installer on Windows, or a pkg/dmg and App Bundle for MacOS.

I do think it's possible, and even that Linux is making small steps toward that potential future. It's just that everyone will have a slow climb toward that goal as long as Linux itself is such a broad concept outside of the kernel.

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One other thing I want to reply to:

Honestly, I feel the mindset has to change. If it doesn't, I'm not very confident for the future of computing. Making a leather bag by hand takes time, experience and high quality materials. One expects to pay for that time and skill. On the other hand, if quality doesn't matter to someone, they can grab a pleather bag made in a factory for pennies on the dollar. If everyone goes for the pleather bag, there's no incentive for the leather craftsperson, and soon enough it will become a lost art. If the perception comes to pass that people will only use free, data harvesting, online only, LLM built software, the desktop is in peril.

So, yes. You have the problem of "if everyone goes for the cheap option, there's no incentive for the professional" in computing, except that you also kinda don't. See, I'm going to mention something about the Furry Fandom here as well, because a similar concept holds true.

People will pay for things if they feel it's worth the value. That's why many Furry artists can charge $100+ USD for a pre-made adopt as an auction, and people will sometimes pay double the asking price just to get it from that artist in particular. A cheap artist who charges $10-$50 USD can sometimes get by (barely) while getting few takers, but someone much more well known will be swamped with commission applications seconds after opening them, because people want an art/story/song/fursuit commission from that artist. Enthusiasts will always flock to where their hearts desire.

The same holds for computers. The general public will swarm for cheap machines if they meet their needs, but enthusiasts will always pay top tier for something if they want it. Not everyone needs that $2000+ USD gaming rig and $1500+ USD trio of monitors to make a digital battlestation, but system builders won't go hungry as long as those enthusiasts are looking to get what they want. It's why people stick with Apple or Microsoft, despite any "controversy" or "scandal" or accusation of "overcharging".

People will gravitate toward what makes them happy. If someone is happy and content with a cheap Windows 11 laptop, that's their perogative. If someone wants a Linux machine, they'll go for that Linux machine. If someone wants that old Mac SE/30 to admire on their desk, or that $1000+ USD Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh to proudly display in their living room, the only thing stopping them will be their bank account (and sometimes no even that).

Software is the same way. People will pay for software as long as they find real value in doing so, and are able to. It's why I stuck with tools like Scrivener and Scapple and Aeon Timeline for writing, and why I have Microsoft Office and Adobe CS3, using them instead of LibreOffice and GIMP. Most FOSS options don't make me happy to use right now, so I pay for tools that do (even if they're old licenses at this point). I'm more than capable of writing in VIM/Emacs, typesetting in LaTeX, and hand-coding vector art in SVG. Much like programming things myself, I just don't enjoy it, and a large number of people are of a similar opinion.

Yes, market values are going to drop for software, but the same happened for hardware in general, and computing survived. People will eventually grow tired of how poor quality the AI slop applications are, and they'll move elsewhere toward applications that actually have value. It's just that they need to find that out for themselves, because if you try to nudge too hard, it's gonna turn people off of the very thing you're trying to promote. That's why Linux has its toxic community problem, because people either try to nudge too hard, or even force that change, only to make people turn away instead.

Organic software will be a thing, despite the markets, because enthusiasts will be there to back them as long as they possibly can.