I’m thinking of ways to help people move from established software to more open, flexible forms that don’t lock them to another organization.
For programmers, WSL with Ubuntu is a good starting point for those who are scared of Linux.
If you are thinking about transitioning an organization to open source, pricing and vendor lock-in are generally good arguments.
If you are thinking about helping individuals transition, that’s a bit more difficult. Pricing could still work, but is not always that effective. It boils down to the willingness to try something new.
In both cases projects with good documentation and a healthy community also helps, but if the open alternative lacks features, it’s a though sell.
Points that can help them change to FOSS:
- Cool new features not available in proprietary alternatives
- Awareness of privacy risks & issues
- Battery life improvements
- Storage size reduction
- Security improvements
Sites that can help them find FOSS alternatives:
- https://www.opensourcealternative.to/
- https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome
- https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/
- https://f-droid.org/en/packages/
In my experience it’s extremely hard to make someone not interested in software to try out new FOSS apps though…
The software should speak for itself.
But it has to start speaking to them in the first place and I think OP was specifically looking for the “conversation starters”
