Captain Beyond @ beyond @linkage.ds8.zone

Caretaker of Sunhillow/DS8.ZONE. Free (Libre) Software enthusiast and promo

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4 yr. ago

It's a misconception to say that free software is "about privacy." Many people in the free software community care about having the four freedoms (the freedom to use, share, modify, and share modified copies). We don't like free software because we think it's more secure, we like it because it's free software. Freedom doesn't need a justification other than freedom itself.

For us, a catalogue offering only free software isn't an "arbitrary rule" that's the whole point. If F-Droid carries an app I know I have the four freedoms with that app, because they put in the work to verify that, by building the app according to their (relatively strict, not strict enough IMO) standards. Accrescent and Obtainium fans have different priorities, which is okay, but I don't understand why they spend so much time shitting on F-Droid and the free software movement.

Security is important in free software, but security in proprietary software is often user-hostile (for example, DRM and WEI). Often times the only way to regain freedom in a proprietary environment is to exploit a security hole, so sometimes we prefer that proprietary software actually not be very secure.

As for F-Droid's and the free software's community towards "old" apps, we understand that software does not lose value simply by being unmaintained. Of course, if something is particularly security-critical and/or has a large attack surface (for example an operating system or a web browser). I would stay away from anything unmaintained. That doesn't apply to all software, though.

The point of free software isn't security, but freedom. For people who want control of their computing, this is not an "arbitrary restriction" but rather a basic requirement. Just because you don't particularly care about a concern doesn't make it "arbitrary." I'm not a vegan or vegetarian but I don't complain about the "arbitrary restriction" of a plant-based diet.

We live in a timeline where desktop apps all run in a browser, whereas mobile websites are all their own apps.

According to StatCounter, Android accounts for 39.2% of OS marketshare. Android is Linux. However, that is not what people think of when they advocate for "Linux."

But, that's what happens when you want Linux to get a majority of marketshare. You don't get your free software friendly GNU desktop, you get a weird proprietary locked down thing.

My complaint was in the context of someone in a community asking a question relevant to that community, where it is expected the community would have the answer. Telling the questioner snidely to "just google it" trains them to become dependent on the google algorithm, which can show them whatever it feels like at any given time, which may or may not even be the best answer to the question.

I suppose if the community itself has a search engine you could tell them to use that, but better would be to just link them to the relevant FAQ (assuming you don't have the time or energy to personally answer it).

AI and similar technology but not for the reasons you may think. As we offload more and more of our human thought onto these machines and algorithms we become more dependent on them, in effect we let them think for us. If we don't control the technology, we let it control us, and by extension we let those who control the technology control us. On some level it feels like that laughably corny Star Trek episode "Spock's brain."

For example, every time someone answers a question with "let me google that for you" I die a little inside. Not only does google give different results for each person, what it displays isn't always going to be the same. You can't say for sure you're pointing them in the right direction. We used to have things called FAQ's, maintained by humans, that were used for this purpose.

Single board computer (such as Raspberry Pi). As someone who used to host a matrix server I would agree it is fairly heavy and I was the only user of it. There are guides out there for setting it up on a Pi (example) so I suppose it is doable.

VSCodium can't use the official Microsoft extension marketplace, but there is an alternative. You can also install extensions manually.

Mostly same list as for GNU/Linux:

• Kate editor (Notepad++ and VSCodium are good here too)
• KeePassXC or KeePass 2 password manager
• Firefox or firefox derivative
• Unison file synchronizer
• Dolphin or Explorer++ file manager
• VLC for audio/video
• 7zip file (un)archiver
• Chocolatey package manager (would like to try alternatives)

I think you'll find it is no longer "My Computer" but now "This PC"

I'd just like to interject for moment. What you're refering to as Linux, is in fact, Steam/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, Steam plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another component of a fully functioning Steam system made useful by Steam Proton, DXVK, and vital Wine components comprising a full OS as defined by Valve.

This isn't a throwaway account per se but I do have another account on lemmy.ml for interacting with other communities. This account (and this instance) is focused on free software and free culture advocacy. It's not really about embarrassing behavior, but more about compartmentalizing interests.

A valid use for a throwaway would be to ask a sensitive question that you don't want to be traced back to any of your main identities. This would be a question that is asked once, answered once, and never revisited again. There would be no need for it to be associated with any of my identities.

The reason F-Droid builds from source is to ensure that they can enforce their inclusion criteria. If you go outside F-Droid you lose that guarantee. For example, self-published apks in github or google play may contain anti-features or proprietary code that are forbidden by the F-Droid standards.

From another point of view, what you call a single point of failure is a third party that represents the interests of the user community, independent from individual developers. This is the same model used in GNU/Linux distributions, and Drew DeVault explains here the role that software distributions play in the free software community.

Of course, this represents a trade-off, in that you are placing trust in the software distribution instead of or in addition to the upstream developer. The question is, how can you solve the problem without foregoing F-Droid's inclusion standards? The answer is reproducible builds, where F-Droid builds from source and compares to the developer's apk, and publishes the developer's apk with their signature if the build reproduces successfully.

Until Reproducible builds are the norm in the Android free software world, I accept the trade-off because I value having software freedom in my computing, and I know I can't trust upstream developers to care about that as much as F-Droid or I do.

Are you talking about a particular app? Usually apps are rejected because they don't meet the inclusion policy, not merely because "they don't feel like it."

As I understand it, the argument isn't so much "if you use a thing made by a bad person, you are a bad person by association" but rather that using a commercial product made by a bad person, who spends his money on bad causes, is directly helping him spend more money on said bad causes. Since he has never apologized or shown any indication that he has become a better person, not wanting to monetarily support him is a valid reason to not use his product.

I don't believe you can get F-Droid from Play Store. I would get it from their official website just to be sure.

Unfortunately, this is not actually free software, it is distributed under an EULA: https://github.com/harmonoid/harmonoid/blob/master/EULA.txt

Android already contains Linux, and you can run a GNU operating system such as Ubuntu on that existing Linux, which is what OP is doing.

I wouldn't either, but you see the sentiment especially among the !linuxphones@lemmy.ml crowd. The fact that Android is Linux is significant because it does in fact allow you to run so-called "Linux apps" (either under Termux or under a dedicated chroot set up by something like UserLAnd) and that is something to be lauded. Android has problems but not being "real Linux" is not among them.

but user adoption is abysmal comparatively

I guess this is a matter of perspective. What I was saying in my previous comment is that what people commonly refer to as "Linux" (as in "Linux distributions") is not just Linux (which is just a kernel) but also includes a bunch of other stuff, including GNU (that is what GNU/Linux refers to). If you're talking about the actual thing called Linux, you'd be right, because most GNU systems are GNU/Linux systems, whereas arguably most Linux systems are not GNU systems; Alpine and Android are non-GNU Linux systems.

However, if like many in the Linux fandom you discount Android, then most Linux systems are GNU systems and vice-versa.