I'm sure this is a wonderful project with talented people behind it, and what I'm going to say isn't a criticism of this project in particular.
But. I'm always a little disappointed when I see a project that's Libre[something proprietary]. It's always a wonky copy, where the selling point is that it's a free version of something, rather than a better version of something. The only people who are going to use it are those who care more about the fact that it's free and Libre than they do about a good learning experience [0]. Everyone else will just use Duolingo. And that's fine if the goal is for it to be a programming exercise, but it's a limiting one.
Instead of making a knockoff of Duolingo, which clearly been eaten by the pressure to drive engagement and MAU, why not use time and energy to explore different or more radical ways of online pedagogy free from commercial pressures? It's harder than copying something, but the results could be much more worthwhile. [1]
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[0] This is why Mastodon will never go mainstream, because it's built by and for people who care more about decentralisation than they do about creating a first-class microblogging experience. The friction points that deter the mainstream are acceptable for the true believers because for them the benefits are worth it.
[1] This is also my problem with Linux desktop environments. The desktop war was won by Microsoft 30 years ago and the desktop died as the primary computing paradigm in 2007. Yet Linux desktops are still fighting the last battle - so much time and effort is poured into them, yet they still don't work right (Wayland is how old now?) and are basically just wonkier versions of macOS or Windows.
Surely that time and effort could be spent on investigating new ways to interact with computers - why is the desktop metaphor still the best we've got, nearly 60 years after it was first invented?
I agree with your overall point - I'd also like to see more novel FOSS projects rather than knockoffs of proprietary software - but at the same time, there's a lot of value in FOSS clones for a few reasons.
The main one being: proprietary things tend to get worse over time, while FOSS (with enough momentum) tends to get better. Windows vs Linux desktop is a great example of this; while Linux and its DEs have steadily been improving over the past couple decades, Windows has been in a slow downward spiral since 7, and nowadays I would say KDE/GNOME/Mint are actually less janky overall than Win11.
Mastodon, despite its jank, largely has the traction it does because of the X/Twitter enxittification. Godot and Unity are another good example of my point, the former being largely superior to the latter nowadays despite a lot of similarity, and as with Mastodon it gained a lot of popularity through the blunders of the proprietary version, which is significantly less of a risk with FOSS.
Also - while there are some Windows/MacOS knockoff DEs, there are also plenty of unique ideas in things like GNOME or Budgie, not to mention tiling window managers.
I think clones just tend to get the most popularity. Case in point, there are easily hundreds of FOSS language learning apps out there that do their own thing, but "LibreLingo - FOSS Alternative to Duolingo" is the one that ends up on the front page.
Blender is another good example – incredible product with a great community. It's becoming the default choice for 3D now, unless you're working for a company that already uses something else. (As an aside, I don't use it much but really enjoy reading the release notes as they're well written, engaging and show how they're regularly delivering real value.)
Don't want to seem like I'm being down on open source - I'm not, it's genuinely a beautiful thing, but I would love to see more innovation and not just copying existing things. Or maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places, like someone complaining about how there's no good new music but never listening further than top 40 radio.
But. I'm always a little disappointed when I see a project that's Libre[something proprietary]. It's always a wonky copy, where the selling point is that it's a free version of something, rather than a better version of something. The only people who are going to use it are those who care more about the fact that it's free and Libre than they do about a good learning experience [0]. Everyone else will just use Duolingo. And that's fine if the goal is for it to be a programming exercise, but it's a limiting one.
Instead of making a knockoff of Duolingo, which clearly been eaten by the pressure to drive engagement and MAU, why not use time and energy to explore different or more radical ways of online pedagogy free from commercial pressures? It's harder than copying something, but the results could be much more worthwhile. [1]
---
[0] This is why Mastodon will never go mainstream, because it's built by and for people who care more about decentralisation than they do about creating a first-class microblogging experience. The friction points that deter the mainstream are acceptable for the true believers because for them the benefits are worth it.
[1] This is also my problem with Linux desktop environments. The desktop war was won by Microsoft 30 years ago and the desktop died as the primary computing paradigm in 2007. Yet Linux desktops are still fighting the last battle - so much time and effort is poured into them, yet they still don't work right (Wayland is how old now?) and are basically just wonkier versions of macOS or Windows.
Surely that time and effort could be spent on investigating new ways to interact with computers - why is the desktop metaphor still the best we've got, nearly 60 years after it was first invented?