Has the number of Free Software users increased or decreased over time?
Now, I'm not talking about "market share", I'm talking about for those that go to user groups like Libre Planet.
I'm not concerned about market share, I'm concerned about old population vs new population. If there was 1,000 people at cons 10 years ago, but there's 5,000 people now, but the number of people using computers has decoupled, (10x) meaning the market share has gone in half, but who cares as long as the raw numbers went up?
This isn't a race. I told somebody I'm thinking of moving to free software by 2020 and he said "there's not many free software users out there" and I replied with "well, they're getting one more".
I don't care where free software as long as it's going forward. Sure some would say using 12-year-old hardware isn't "forward", but it's forward compared to where free software was before they had that. Sure it's inconvenient, but it's the price for freedom.
Increased.
By how much would you say in the past 8 years? Also what are the most common reasons?
My reason is I've just been burned too many times by black boxes.
> My reason is I've just been burned too many times by black boxes.
That, and there was an intense uptick in interest when Edward Snowden began exposing the fact that the governments and tech companies were all very sneakily working together against our best interests. People began to really want to know just what in the heck those black box programs and hardware were doing with our personal and financial and medical data and browsing history and purchase history and emails and so forth.
To the classic "You shouldn't be worried if you got nothing to hide", "Ok, let me see Area 51, you smartass. If you don't trust me with privacy, why should I trust you?"
Iv only considered my self in the FSM in last 3 years. This spot has alot of veteran vanguard. Easy to think you're last line. Only time will tell on how this forum changes, and what new members see Floss as.
We may not still have up to date libreboot, but there Purism OS. Things might be rough , hope still lives strong.