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A comment on Reddit is still in turmoil. Parent comment

Re:Reddit is still in turmoil by dragonwriter on Friday July 22, 2016 @11:54AM (#12144300)
> The only reason web forums exist is because people are lazy about adopting decentralized Free software.

Well, other than the fact that a whole lot of the software involved in using web forums, on both the server and client end, is "decentralized free software".

And the fact that other software (much, but not all, of it free) was adopted for discussions before web forums got popular. Web forums got popular because -- on both server and client end -- most people are going to have the tools anyway, so adopting a whole new software (free or otherwise) stack for discussions is unattractive.

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Re:Reddit is still in turmoil by mindslight on Friday July 22, 2016 @12:29PM (#12144590)
It ceases to be free software when it is adopted by many people beyond the administrator, as they lack the freedom to study and modify it.

And it's certainly not decentralized - each instance of the software is its own walled garden. I can't install my own instance of say phpbb and use it to communicate with an existing forum.

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