this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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Don't know what a Foss is
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.
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.
So... how do I use it? I tried signing up on the site, but.... it said something about an organization it was poorly transltaed from French to English, so I couldn't tell what I was doing.. I got as far as registering my current email address
It might be a bit early for you. It's in a way like Lemmy, somebody has to put it on a server and let you use it.
It's meant for government agencies to deploy and use (although anybody with some self hosting knowledge can do on their servers, including hobbiests and companies)
FOSS (free and open source software) is software that is completely open source and is free for everyone to use. It's much harder to enshittify, and if it ever does people can fork (make a copy, and make their own changes to the software).
In case you didn't understood by now, it's free open source software
So how do I use it?
free and open source software
Free open source software