Seriously, I've lost so muuuuch time just trying to find where some random program decides to store its config files. It sometimes takes me more time than actually "doing the config"

I'm clearly not an expert in the matter and perhaps this is just my wishful? thinking.

I feel like any type of scientific knowledge humanity has acquired shouldn't be "owned" by any individual / entity and subsequently only benefit an -often small- portion of society. For example, it baffles me how some medications take years and years -usually until the patents expire- to become available to the majority of the patients that need them. I get that companies need a return on their investments. But imo that should never come at the cost of any person's life or health. Like, aside from production costs, the costs of researching a given drug are fixed. So, it's not like the more people that use it takes money out of their pockets somehow. Logically, it should be the other way around.

Idk, it just doesn't make sense to me when the knowledge already exists and people aren't able to make use of it until much later because apparently that's the only way someone's able to make a profit in this current system? Maybe copyright sucks?

What do y'all think?

Edit: I was just made aware from reading the other comments that patents / copyright are actually two distinct forms of IP that serve different purposes. So yeah, definitely not an expert. Not deleting bc I still stand by what I said, but my comment doesn't really answer the question at hand.

They need to add a word limit though, I think I went a bit overboard lol

Idk, you could say they're being "over-protective", but even then I would argue. As I've said in another comment, people who come here expect that... At least I did when I decided to sign up here and not somewhere else. And they do federate with other servers. I mean, you're posting this from kbin after all... so how's that opposed to federation?

Btw, IIRC they literally say in one of their posts: "this is not a Reddit replacement".

And federation should definitely not imply letting your users to see content they don't want to see due to poor moderation from other instances. I mean, people sign up here for a reason... How's that "being picky"

I hope they really don't think we can't just type the address of other instances on our browsers and see the content... if we choose to, that is.

I mean, it's not like they're being picky out of spite... They explained the situation and what led them to defederate.

To me, that first sentence was enough. jk

Or if you're just going to lurk... you don't need to make an account at all! As I did for the first week before deciding on whether or not to join, lmao

The funny thing is I actually got rejected (or put in the limbo) once. After making this account and answering the questions exhaustively, I tried to make another account for foss/programming purposes exclusively (I tend to do that for privacy reasons). The second time my answers were much shorter since I didn't want to take up too much time from the admins , and I guess they weren't too convinced, haha. But no hard feelings, I just hope my username eventually frees up and I can make the account :)

The way I see it, it doesn't take that much longer than writing a post or even a long comment. If a person isn't willing to take the time to do that, I wonder how much they were going to contribute to the community in the first place? lol

Literally one of the reasons why I decided to join this instance. I think other servers should take a similar approach.