Free Competitors

Blender Dumbass
November 27, 2024

👁 33

https://blenderdumbass.org/reviews/megalopolis:_the_high-brow_bullshit_i_enjoy : 👁 1
https://blenderdumbass.org/posters/digital_safety_guide : 👁 2
https://blenderdumbass.org/software : 👁 11
https://blenderdumbass.org/ : 👁 1
https://blenderdumbass.org/articles/lets_discuss_moderation__misinformation__censorship_and_freedom_of_speech : 👁 1

License:

Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike

A lot of people tend to say that they must use this or that proprietary software. But I have enough experience with GNU / Linux and Free Software that those claims make little sense to me. It is just finding what to use often appears to be hard.

There are lists of Free Software such as the Free Software Directory. Which is good in general to search through. There are websites like AlternativeTo which lets you look for alternatives, but has two major downsides: 1.) It lists proprietary alternatives too; and 2) It lists alternatives, based on the fact that people find those programs be an alternative.

For example, somebody might have been looking for an alternative to Adobe Acrobat, the PDF reader. An alternative might be Evince or something. But you could also use Firefox. It has a builtin PDF reader. Or you could use GIMP ( the image editor ) because it can import PDF files and convert them into images. Those websites usually fail to find those connections. So I wanted to make one where the alternatives are measured in functional similarity. Not by UI design, or the developer's goals. Which in theory should find more solutions to people who are just looking to do one simple job, that their proprietary program is capable of, and that they do now know has an alternative. Because nobody associated one with another.

The algorithm I came up with does recommend Gimp and Krita when searching Photoshop. But it also recommends FreeCAD when searching Adobe Illustrator. Because both apparently can edit SVG files.

Source Code of Free Competitors

Free Competitors Live Instances:

This very website's Search

xhxcyntzwnbkdkpqqjmlsy7kmjgqubgtyghuh5yyd5j4ne54dbgdgkyd.onion ( a tor server that I run personally )

Poster inspiration

The software is designed to look like a poster I designed some time before it.

Main Page, Poster: Digital Safety Guide

Happy Hacking!!!

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The Danger Of Good Intentions

^Unread

Blender Dumbass
👁 48 💬 4

Paternalism - a world view that states that sometimes forcing a person against their freedom, if for their own good, is acceptable. A good example is the collapsing bridge thought experiment. A bridge is about to collapse and you know it for certain. You advertise this fact so people will not go onto the bridge. You put signs. You tell people about it. But somebody still walks toward the bridge with what looks like an intention to cross it anyway. You show that person the signs. No response. You yell at the person "The bridge is about to collapse!". No response either. You realize that the person probably doesn't even speak English. Is it okay to force this person, to reduce his freedom, and force him out of the bridge?