# I am starting to hate open source **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 7, 2026, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-hate-open-source/1032876 "2026-09-07T14:51:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2026, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-hate-open-source/1032876/61 "2026-09-09T11:56:50Z")
> [@orcenio](#): > > What Open Source does NOT entitle you: > > - a functional, working program or compiled binaries > - a pleasant user experience or even a sane and non-fascist developer > - the right to contribute ideas, suggestions, or your own code into other people’s projects > - a community of users that are sane, pleasant, and non-fascist. > > You get the idea. Open Source means that you are entitled to the code, AND **ONLY** THE CODE But, so what? Just because you’re not entitled to those things doesn’t mean can’t dislike the product for lacking them. If someone gives me a car for free but it’s an ugly color, has a bunch of problems and I can’t figure out how to work half of the ‘features’ it comes with, I can still hate it and telling me ‘but it was free’ doesn’t change that. Regarding all the comments about GIMP, I think we need to keep this in mind: > [@asterion](#): > > So I download GIMP. And quickly find a fairly undocumented user interface that apparently assumes I know both how to use both Photoshop and GIMP already. Yes, GIMP is harder to use than photoshop (at least the last desktop version of Photoshop I used), but there’s a fairly steep learning curve to both of them. At least WRT wrapping your head around working with layers. If you’ve never worked with PhotoShop and don’t have a working knowledge of how that type of image editing works, it’s going to be really difficult. At least when I moved over from photoshop to gimp, it was mostly about figuring out how to do what I already knew how to do just with a different UI. OTOH, my experience with Illustrator is probably less than an hour. That made learning InkScape considerably more difficult as I had to learn how to work with vector graphics at the same time. ---
**Author:** ![orcenio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/orcenio/32/1036_2.png) [@orcenio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orcenio)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2026, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-hate-open-source/1032876/62 "2026-09-09T12:08:59Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > But, so what? Just because you’re not entitled to those things doesn’t mean can’t dislike the product for lacking them. With open source you are not a customer, you haven’t paid someone to give you a good and/or service. Its important to remember this. Open source does not entitle you to anything (except for rights to use the source code). You haven’t paid for anything here. If you do not like the open source project/maintainers, or it doesn’t fit your use case… okay. No one is forcing you to use it. Go use something that fits your needs, or go help in the development of the project, or fork it and develop a project to suit your own needs, or (even better) pay someone to make/develop something that does. That’s what FOSS entitles you to do. It gives you the **legal right** to fix it yourself. Now you are always free to hate anything for any reason. Sunight? It’s too damn bright! I hate the sun. But people can also say “fix it yourself, or pay for a better product pal” ---
**Author:** ![orcenio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/orcenio/32/1036_2.png) [@orcenio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orcenio)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2026, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-hate-open-source/1032876/63 "2026-09-09T12:22:27Z")
That said. If you ACTUALLY paid someone for an open source product… you are 100% a customer and deserve product satisfaction (imho). I am 100% in support for consumer’s rights. The open source definition **specifically demands** that you are allowed to pay for open source products and people have the right to sell open source products. The legal requirements are that the source code is to be always available to all, and that the rights are also available to all to modify/extend. ---
**Author:** ![CaveMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cavemike/32/16379_2.png) [@CaveMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaveMike)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2026, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-hate-open-source/1032876/64 "2026-09-09T13:46:58Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > If someone gives me a car for free but it’s an ugly color, has a bunch of problems and I can’t figure out how to work half of the ‘features’ it comes with, I can still hate it and telling me ‘but it was free’ doesn’t change that. That’s not the right analogy. A better one is someone posted a free car on Craigslist, you took the car and didn’t like it, then you complained about _Craigslist_. As @orcenio said, open-source is not a product, it’s a resource that you can choose to use or ignore. There’s also a strong current of negativity bias in this thread: “I had a bad experience with one or more open-source projects, so I hate open-source”. It ignores all of the good experiences. Not to mention the meer _existence_ of open-source applies pressure to commercial software to be better. Windows Server is better because Linux is an option. Over the years I’ve struggled to build various open-source projects and vented extreme frustration, but I don’t blame the concept. ---
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2026, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-hate-open-source/1032876/65 "2026-09-09T14:38:12Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > 1. This is probably something Claude Code or ChatGPT Codex can do for you, trivially, in a few minutes. I have tried that. I asked several of the most prominent LLMs to produce a Shunn format version. Just as an experiment: (no way am I going to actually submit an MS formatted by an LLM: something like a .docx is all too easy to watermark.) And each one produces something _fairly_ close to a correct Shunn format - but not quite. And as before with other experiments, you point out the deficiencies, the LLM says, oh, yes, sorry I missed that. And confidently produces another one… which is wrong again in different ways. Round and round we go. Interestingly, if you upload the output of one to a different one and ask it to analyse how it’s not quite right, you get differing critiques. Odd, since Shunn’s own website provides clear examples. As I said before, I guess I will just have to learn libreoffice in detail and do it by hand. ---
**Author:** ![CaveMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cavemike/32/16379_2.png) [@CaveMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaveMike)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2026, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-hate-open-source/1032876/66 "2026-09-09T15:43:46Z")
Is Google Docs an option? You can import the official shunn manuscript template into Google Docs, cut and paste your plaintext in, then fix-up anything left. You can do the same with libre office. It depends on if you already know Google Docs. ---
**Author:** ![orcenio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/orcenio/32/1036_2.png) [@orcenio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orcenio)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2026, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-hate-open-source/1032876/67 "2026-09-09T16:02:01Z")
> [@CaveMike](#): > > It ignores all of the good experiences. Not to mention the meer _existence_ of open-source applies pressure to commercial software to be better. Windows Server is better because Linux is an option. I also find it interesting to note that the SDMB is run using Discourse which is, itself, open source [under the GPL-2 licence](https://github.com/discourse/discourse). ---
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2026, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-hate-open-source/1032876/68 "2026-09-09T18:37:17Z")
> [@xtenkfarpl](#): > > Remember the fun when we actually got our hands on UNIX code? It is maybe one of the tragedies of history that the AT&T vs IBM (etc) rivalry kept Unix code locked up in lawsuits for so long. Imagine if, instead of the limping IBM PC, we might have had systems using a better CPU (68000 family, for example) running a real operating system rather than a glorified program loader like DOS… ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2026, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-hate-open-source/1032876/69 "2026-09-09T22:49:35Z")
> [@xtenkfarpl](#): > > I have tried that. I asked several of the most prominent LLMs to produce a Shunn format version Did you try an agentic harness already? (They let the LLMs add a self-verification loop, with tests, renders and validators, and self-iterate until they get it correct.) It wasn’t clear from your posts what exactly you were doing with the LLMs, but if you were using just the bare chatbots (like “Claude” instead of “Claude Code”, for example, or ChatGPT instead of Codex), a harness can help a lot _for this specific use case_. Your choice of harness (and the instructions you give it) can matter more than your choice of model or provider for something like this. A bare chatbot usually can’t see and check its own output. A harness can render the finished .docx, write tests and scripts to validate that the output matches the spec, and use a vision model to do a visual pass. Most importantly, it can do all of that autonomously, in one long cycle of iterative test-driven development, and then report back to you after a few minutes (or hours), and only after it’s reasonably confident about its results — because the deterministic tests against your on-disk render verified it in code, not just because it’s pulling more nonsense out of its training. A harness still isn’t a perfect system, but for the purposes of software development, it is a big improvement over the bare chatbots. Anyway, whether you WANT to keep at it is entirely up to you. Let me know if you want a free 1-week guest pass to Claude Code (along with a sample prompt). I’m happy to chat if you want to discuss it more, or send me a sample, but otherwise, just use one of the non-AI tools? > [@xtenkfarpl](#): > > As I said before, I guess I will just have to learn libreoffice in detail and do it by hand. I mean, of course you’re free to do that if you want. You just don’t necessarily _need_ to. I guarantee you this problem has been looked at and tackled by many people already… their existing work could be a good starting place, rather than trying to do this from scratch? There are existing open-source Shunn exporters made for this specific use case already, including the Obsidian exporters mentioned back in [post #22](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-hate-open-source/1032876/22). Did you ever try those? Do they not work…? Do they not fit the bill for some reason? (Or do you maybe just not want to use Obsidian?) There’s also an existing Pandoc template for Shunn outputs: [GitHub - prosegrinder/pandoc-templates: An opinionated set of Pandoc templates and scripts for converting markdown to DOCX manuscripts that adhere to William Shunn's Proper Manuscript Format guidelines using Pandoc. · GitHub](https://github.com/prosegrinder/pandoc-templates#md2shortsh) Or a simple standalone Python script if you prefer: [md2shunn](https://pypi.org/project/md2shunn/) Any of those should get you close to the goalpost, if not 100% of the way there. They should make the final LibreOffice cleanup easier, if nothing else? Worth a shot. Of course… if you were really just venting about how difficult some FOSS software can be, well then… I entirely agree, and apologize for the word vomit of unsolicited advice 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2026, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-hate-open-source/1032876/70 "2026-09-11T02:16:49Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > > [@xtenkfarpl](#): > > > > I have just spent two frustrating days trying to build a toolchain to convert my plaintext short stories into Shunn .docx submission format, using pandoc etc. > > It was obvious from this opening sentence of your OP that you are far too knowledgeable and skilled. LOL > > For example, as a humble user with limited knowledge, I downloaded Linux Ubuntu, followed the simple installation directions, and then followed the simple directions for using it for the one reason I downloaded it in the first place. I have no frustrating conflicts because I know far too little to have any! This is pretty much my reaction to this thread. My Ubuntu laptop is working fine. Honestly, it looks and feels a lot like a pre-cluttered version of Windows. Even the icons for the main things i want to do look similar to the windows icons. I’ve been shocked to the degree it “just worked” ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2026, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-hate-open-source/1032876/71 "2026-09-11T02:26:13Z")
As for other open source stuff I’ve used… - I, also, gave up on GIMP. But that was a really long time ago. - I use Audacity regularly. - I use libreoffice sometimes. Often, i need to be truly compatible with MS office, so i own a copy. (Actually, a few copies, as i run it on several machines.) Other times, i want to share, any i use Google docs. - I use signal. It’s really easy. If you can use any other text app, you can download it and use it. I’m pretty sure i use other open source stuff. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2026, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-hate-open-source/1032876/72 "2026-09-13T17:09:34Z")
> [@CaveMike](#): > > It ignores all of the good experiences. Not to mention the meer _existence_ of open-source applies pressure to commercial software to be better. Windows Server is better because Linux is an option. Like I was saying, I think the biggest gripe against open source software in general is inherent to the beast. In general, the sort of people who like working on open source projects aren’t the sort of people who work on user interfaces or user experiences. Open source folks tend to be engineers and problem-solvers, and in my experience, tend to view user experience type stuff as wimpy, non-technical stuff best left for sub-par programmers. So open source projects tend to have user interfaces that are unpolished compared to the commercial stuff, because the commercial people realize that the UX is often the differentiating factor between their software and someone else’s, assuming they all do the same stuff. Software like Lightroom, DXO Photolab, and Capture One all do the same basic thing. It comes down to _how_ you want to do it that substantially distinguishes them. Same thing for open source packages Darktable and Rawtherapee, but they’re massive pains in the ass by comparison. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2026, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-hate-open-source/1032876/73 "2026-09-13T17:47:26Z")
I feel like there is the sort of corpo version of open source licensing, like the “Apache License”, and the “copyleft” open source licenses which prevent, not necessarily cashing in, but subsequently turning it (and all the contributors’ work) proprietary. As for whether the software sucks or not, that is on the project managers, not the license. Plenty of closed-source software is abysmal, the problem is that you cannot do anything about it even if there is something to salvage, so the situation is strictly worse. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-starting-to-hate-open-source/1032876.md?page=3)