No but the company follows a certain direction and you need to buy-in to their idea of the future if you want the seamless experience they promise. For the full Apple "experience" you need multiple Apple devices, an Apple ID, etc...
Windows is slightly more open but similar; you need to buy-in to their ecosystem.
With Linux I can use Gnome, KDE or other... A bunch of distros. A bunch of browsers (without ads, annoyance, etc...). Anything that's an open standard basically works. There is maybe slight buy-in needed to work with my Chromecast (need Chrome on it) but that's an okay compromise.
> Now if you want to participate in developing free software, for good or bad, those things are no longer immaterial, and if you have unpopular ideas about religion or philosophy you will sooner or later be ostracised and some hip code of conduct thingy will be the last thing you will see there.
You can develop free software and ignore those things. Just work on your own thing. But you seem to mean "participate in existing project with existing organization" which is different than your first fragment.
No but the company follows a certain direction and you need to buy-in to their idea of the future if you want the seamless experience they promise. For the full Apple "experience" you need multiple Apple devices, an Apple ID, etc...
Windows is slightly more open but similar; you need to buy-in to their ecosystem.
With Linux I can use Gnome, KDE or other... A bunch of distros. A bunch of browsers (without ads, annoyance, etc...). Anything that's an open standard basically works. There is maybe slight buy-in needed to work with my Chromecast (need Chrome on it) but that's an okay compromise.
> Now if you want to participate in developing free software, for good or bad, those things are no longer immaterial, and if you have unpopular ideas about religion or philosophy you will sooner or later be ostracised and some hip code of conduct thingy will be the last thing you will see there.
You can develop free software and ignore those things. Just work on your own thing. But you seem to mean "participate in existing project with existing organization" which is different than your first fragment.