• kerrigan778@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          I was going to make a joke but honestly it’s refreshing and a good sign that Lemmy is starting to get used by people who don’t know what FOSS means now. Welcome.

        • Allero@lemmy.today
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          3 hours ago

          Nice to see Lemmy is not just a place for complete nerds!

          FOSS is free and open-source software. In simple terms, it is any program for which the source code (i.e. the actual code that forms the program, its entire backbone) is available for anyone to see and modify as they see fit, without any technical or legal limitations.

          This is normally seen as very positive, because everyone with the knowledge of respective programming languages can inspect the program to see it doesn’t do anything malicious, and everyone can change the program to their needs. Also, the original creator of the program does not have power to put any limitations on its use, like introducing payment requirements, or deleting important features, because everyone can immediately spawn a version of the program that doesn’t have these changes, while still having the rest.