If we talk about the world of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), two popular but conflicting methodologies tried to battle it out in the early to mid 90s - the GPL and Free Software Movement propounded by Richard Stallman, and secondly, the more "liberal" and commerce friendly Open Source Movement propounded by Eric Raymond (ESR).

Because the West is predominantly a Capitalist System, it's the ESR's movement that ultimately won the industrial battle. Most software projects in the FOSS world today are licensed under the liberal or "open source" licenses such as Apache and MIT, not the commons or free software license i.e. GPL.

But on the other hand, the idea of GPL isn't without merits, it was an ingenious attempt by RMS to use the copyright law itself in order to ensure that software freedom and its control stays in the hands of the people who use it (Commons) and not the proprietary companies who are essentially driven by a profit motive and nothing else. RMS foresaw decades ago that when software controls the user and developer controls the software, it opens whole new flood gates of authoritarianism in terms of how the software works and what it does. To a great extent, this is exactly what is happening today with most of the software (especially popular browsers and operating systems), they are controlled by this small group of conglomerates which we call "Big Tech".

Because of how things work in the tech industry, I don't think this situation will change much in the near term unless lot's of folks somehow realize the importance of Free Software and Commons meritocracy, and how "open source" is destroying its interest. Little peasants like us can do our bit by releasing all software under GPL but even that is getting difficult day by day. The more libraries, frameworks or other components your software uses, you must agree to their own license depending on how tight the integration is - which in all likelihood will be an Apache or MIT, not a GPL.

Going forward, I hope more and more software will be written in GPL, especially the infrastructure software like coding languages, frameworks, libraries, IDE, etc. which is used to create application software. But way things are going presently, I'm more pessimistic than optimistic. I have very little faith in GenZ. But eventually, at some point, GPL and Free Software should win because it's a better methodology and has merit.

Hello, every now and then I find myself looking for open-source "self-hosted" (VPS accepted) Google photos alternatives.

I have searched every now and then but I have never found something I felt that suits my needs.

I don't mind setting it up myself with command lines and stuff from an empty VPS as long as the monthly fees are pushed to a minimum.

I do have a certain set of constraints and I was wondering what would be the best app to do it. Any app that I end up trying fail one of these somehow. Or it is an app that I couldn't test adequately on my 2GB RAM VPS. Should I be upgrading first and then testing them?

Here are my constraints:

I would like to be able to share photos privately to friends and family. Like maybe a secret link to share photos or albums with friends.

I would like to be able to view photos on mobile, using Internet. I don't mind opening a mobile web app but I would like to be able to show it.

I would like to have some privacy-respecting face recognition. This also opens up the question of what RAM of VPS I should be using.

I would like to leave the file and folder structure untouched. I have already somehow arranged the files into albums by using folders so bonus points if the app figures that out. However, I would bite the bullet if there is a good solution that asks to "copy" the files into a new folder thereby doubling the storage needed. But I hope to avoid it.

Any help towards the right direction would be appreciated!