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what thing needs an open source alternative?
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2026
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The big non-obvious issue is certification and responsibility.
I both agree and don't about the certification.
Most of the reason we have certifications and the like is not actually to prevent harm to the user of the product, it is for managing liability. If you make a product and it causes harm that creates a litigation risk and companies try to avoid being sued because it reduces profit.
In the open source community people want to make good things. They want to solve a problem by making the software or hardware they are working on. It isn't about the profit motive, it is about making something good because you want that thing to exist.
Under that set of motivations I think certification can still be useful, but it is much less important than it is for companies making a profit. You don't need to balance the drive to make profit against the risk of causing harm because the profit motive is not involved.