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Comment on What are some FOSS programs that are objectively better than their proprietary counterparts?

some proprietary apps have more functionality, are more stable, are easier to use, etc. because it’s very hard for a community of hobbyists to compete with the likes of multibillion corporations. Honestly, I really respect the FOSS projects that ARE really good, competing with these huge companies with pretty much only donations and their determination.

Some good examples of proprietary software I think that are functionally better include a bunch of apps used in professional workflows (though there are many FOSS apps used professionally like Blender!) and Unity/Unreal Engine (Godot is amazing for what 90% of most people need and is a lot lighter too, and is catching up in terms of 3D graphics/lighting. Unreal/Unity and Godot both have pros and cons)

If everything was FOSS and received the kind of funding proprietary apps get, the world would be very different indeed.

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sith@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I mean the best big tech “products” are FOSS as well. But I guess it depends on which definition of FOSS that you use.

Usually, nowadays, proprietary software is built on 95% FOSS and then you maybe have a thin layer with your own stuff (which will become FOSS in a year or two when there’s someting better that can replace your own hack). The rest is content and marketing.

Proprietary software which doesn’t have an objectively better FOSS counterpart (that I can come up with right now):

Nvidia GPU stack. But ROCm and IPEX-LLM will probably catch up in a year or two (both are mainly FOSS).

Some videogames that still use their proprietary engines. Though they are certainly not good because of their in-house engine, rather the opposite. I.e. they are good because of content, not software.

Many people bring up proprietary CAD and graphics software. Though I suspect that’s a more subjective opinion. My experience is that proprietary CAD apps and the Adobe suite are buggy as hell. My experience is that the people who use these softwares have learned how to cope with the legacy crap and they refuse to learn new and better ways.

I had to integrate Photoshop into a project a few years ago. The whole software just smelled huge legacy bad quality code base. Buggy as hell. But good marketing and/or user lockin I guess.

I don’t consider anything from Apple to be good in an objective way. Unless you count social status symbols as an objective quality. I do consider price to be an objective quality though.

The only good things that has come out of Microsoft are open source. VS Code, dotnet core and Lean. Same goes for Google.
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- scheep@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Proprietary CAD/design software is very subjective. I’ve seen many people saying that the proprietary stuff is more “professional” and that FOSS software isn’t. I don’t work in thise kind of workflows so I can’t comment on that, but my personal experience with things like kdenlive and inkscape have been AWESOME
  
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