In the past, most software I used was paid and proprietary and would have some sort of limitation that I would try to get around by any means possible. Sometimes that would be resetting the clock on my computer, disabling the internet, and other times downloading a patch.
But in the past few years I’ve stopped using those things and have focused only on free and open source software (FOSS) to fulfill my needs. I hardly have to worry about privacy problems or trying to lock down a program that calls home. I might be missing out on some things that commercial software delivers, but I’m hardly aware of what they are anymore. It seems like the trend is for commercial software providers to migrate toward online or service models that have the company doing all the computing. I’m opposed to that, since they can take away your service at any time.
What do you do?
Always FLOSS I even stopped my hobby of producing music because Ardour was just not good enough for that.
That’s a bit extreme though. I hate proprietary BS, but am able to admit that sometimes the right tool for the job is proprietary. Fucking hate licensing, I needed to save my friends’ asses in their CAD classes a bunch of times because the softwares’ proprietary DRM BS decided that their legit license was old, and replaced their software with last years’ version, so none of their homework could be opened.
It was just a hobby anyway and once I didn’t have a Mac anymore I didn’t want to have the hassle of dual booting into Windows just to run Ableton Live, so I just gave up on it.