I wasn't aware of that. I guess it was thought to be a mod driven community. Anyway... Cool question. I hope we will see some creative solutions here.
Please also consider posting to !challenges@programming.dev
-1 is what you get back from fork() when it fails. Normally, it returns a pid_t which is positive if you're the parent, or zero if you're the child.
-1, when handed to kill() on Linux, means "target every process but myself and init". Therefore, when you take the return value from fork(), fail to check for an error, and later hand that value to kill(), you might just kill everything else on the machine.
Great story.
And because Windows and it’s eco system of applications he listed gets worse, he extrapolates this to all software.
They admit that bias in the article:
[...] since I've always been working in the Microsoft tech stack, I use a lot of it. Thus, selection bias clearly is at work here.
Now, I mentioned free software as the exception. I don't have any data as to how big free software vs proprietary software. But I think his points extends at least to other proprietary software and is not limited to Windows.
Some software get better, some get worse.
I can agree with that.
I'm not sure it's that simple, really. And I definitely don't think this is limited to Windows. I agree with other comments that this is mostly related to complexity. The more complex the domain the more difficult it is to implement/maintain a good solution. Delivering the new shiny feature is more exciting for all people (product management, development, users, etc.) than to fix bugs. And if you don't have the resources/maturity to keep technical debt under control, the software quality will suffer over time. Free software may be the exception here as profit is not always the primary concern.
I cannot answer the technical question as I don't have enough experience with that. But I think sites like reddit mostly don't care about search. They probably think: "People can use google if they want to search."
Not sure I got the question right, but it sounds like you can benefit from code reuse via shared projects or packaging different parts of the code into chunks.
Did you take a look at write freely or other blogging software with native ActivityPub support?
I would definitely have the "Vital Contributor" badge if it existed.
I was upset when Reader was killed. But looking back and seeing what Google has become over time, I think it was for the best. Now we have entire companies that only do one thing: RSS, and they are good at it. If Reader was still a thing, I'm afraid it would have extinguished RSS.
Names matter, and Reader told everyone that it was for reading when it could have been for so much more. “If Google made the iPod,” he says, “they would have called it the Google Hardware MP3 Player For Music, you know?”
This is funny, but I think Reader was a good name. At least it reflected what I want to do with the product.
This is the best I could do
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.