I’ve gone through a lot of periods in my life where I’ve chided myself for not using more FOSS, but what you said is one of the reasons why I don’t think it’s as black and white in my mind recently.
I’ve been doing iOS development for work, and I have to say that their emphasis on building accessibility features into apps from the beginning is something I really love to see. I’d love to be proven wrong on this because this is very anecdotal, but accessibility is something I don’t see mentioned too often in FOSS spaces.
That and languages. I’m a long-time learner of Japanese, and I’ve noticed language support in FOSS apps is inconsistent. There was a time when I was looking at a more privacy-focused Android OS to run, but there aren’t any Japanese keyboards on F-droid (the only strictly Japanese offering was unmaintained and incompatible with my phone, and the multi-lingual keyboards that I found didn’t support Japanese). Not being able to interact the way I need to made those OS’s into non-starters for me, sadly.
I hate to complain like this because it’s no one’s fault necessarily; there are only so many people working on FOSS, those people only have so much time and energy, and there might not be enough demand for certain features. When I build something I try to do what I can to live up to my own expectations, but as someone that doesn’t really have the necessary skills (in tech or in Japanese, in this case), or the time to create and maintain my own alternatives, then those issues put up some heavy barriers. I’d love to use more FOSS but right now I’m sort of stuck straddling the two sides.
I’ve gone through a lot of periods in my life where I’ve chided myself for not using more FOSS, but what you said is one of the reasons why I don’t think it’s as black and white in my mind recently.
I’ve been doing iOS development for work, and I have to say that their emphasis on building accessibility features into apps from the beginning is something I really love to see. I’d love to be proven wrong on this because this is very anecdotal, but accessibility is something I don’t see mentioned too often in FOSS spaces.
That and languages. I’m a long-time learner of Japanese, and I’ve noticed language support in FOSS apps is inconsistent. There was a time when I was looking at a more privacy-focused Android OS to run, but there aren’t any Japanese keyboards on F-droid (the only strictly Japanese offering was unmaintained and incompatible with my phone, and the multi-lingual keyboards that I found didn’t support Japanese). Not being able to interact the way I need to made those OS’s into non-starters for me, sadly.
I hate to complain like this because it’s no one’s fault necessarily; there are only so many people working on FOSS, those people only have so much time and energy, and there might not be enough demand for certain features. When I build something I try to do what I can to live up to my own expectations, but as someone that doesn’t really have the necessary skills (in tech or in Japanese, in this case), or the time to create and maintain my own alternatives, then those issues put up some heavy barriers. I’d love to use more FOSS but right now I’m sort of stuck straddling the two sides.