Captain Beyond

microG replaces the Play services application on your device, but it’s still going to be dependent on Google servers if you are using push notifications. There’s no way around that unless the app supports a non-Google alternative such as UnifiedPush or even just a web socket.

open source, but not free

Free here means free-as-in-freedom. The free software definition and open source definition are almost identical, there are very few apps that are only one or the other.

It’s the free software movement, though - the four freedoms are literally the cornerstone of the movement. They’re not simply a “nice to have” they’re the bare minimum of what we should ask for. If we promote non-free “alternatives” we are saying that these basic freedoms are not an expectation, but are optional and negotiable - we are moving the message away from the four freedoms and towards “evil” proprietary applications, while making exceptions for the “lesser evil” ones.

When I say Obsidian is non-free I am not saying Obsidian is evil or you are not allowed to use it. As non-free apps go Obsidian is probably one of the least-worst, as you and many others point out it is just a markdown editor so there is no vendor lock in or weird proprietary format. I am simply saying, this is a movement focused on “the four freedoms” and Obsidian does not meet those four very basic criteria.

Proprietary software is proprietary no matter how “nice” it is. It should not be advertised in FOSS communities and falsely presenting it as “FOSS adjacent” is harmful to the movement IMO.

There are many places so called “good proprietary apps” can be promoted and discussed.

Plenty of people who (I assume) are smarter than Trump don’t understand that FOSS refers to freedom, not price. It’s not a very good term and I don’t like how widely used it is now.

The one that says that Android is Linux therefore every Android device is a Linux phone (or tablet, etc).

This is often dismissed as a technicality but as every thread on so-called “mobile Linux” demonstrates, so-called “Linux phones” are judged basically on how well they can run Android crapware… just as “desktop Linux” is more or less judged solely on how well it can run Windows apps. Unlike Windows, however, Android is open source(-ish) and already a Linux operating system.

Most people who want to “switch to Linux” don’t actually care about Linux, they just want Windows that doesn’t suck. I imagine most people who want “mobile Linux” similarly want a non-sucky Android… which actually exists, unlike Windows.

If what you want is “Mobile Linux that can run Android apps” go install GrapheneOS or LineageOS or whatever.

This is not so much an “ActivityPub problem” as it is just how things work when you move something from point A to point B. You can’t unsend an email (or physical mail) or untell a secret.

The idea that you can just delete something on a whim is an illusion created by the centralized silo networks, and it’s not even true those cases as it’s generally a soft delete, and archived by other means anyway.

“linux phone”

Don’t make me tap the sign

Framing this as a problem specific to open source implies that proprietary applications are inherently more trustworthy. Regardless, the reason to use free software is so you can have the four freedoms, not necessarily because it is easier to audit.

This is strikingly similar to an account on reddit that has been posting variations of some LLM-generated screed about the supposed problem of trust in open source. I wonder what the end goal of this is.

It’s a cultural thing mainly. Things like rust and npm came out of the “Github generation” of open source developers which trend towards permissive licensing, in part thanks to Github’s own anti-copyleft bias. Github’s founder openly advocated to “open source almost everything” (the “almost” part being “core business value”), arguing that open source serves as a foundation upon which to build proprietary products. In this world, participating in open source is merely a way to gain PR and volunteer labor for the proprietary product.

I’m not automatically opposed to permissive licensing (nor is FSF/GNU, in fact!) but in making it the norm we put proprietary software companies in control of what ultimately becomes available in the commons.

It’s not free and open source.

I am not exactly defending this particular scheme but the source code is available under a free software license. It’s only the binaries that are under a proprietary EULA.

No part of a free software license requires that binaries be made available (gratis or otherwise) or that users be allowed to submit bug reports or feature requests. It is also not against the free software movement philosophy to sell free software.

But I’m one of the few privileged users who can build from source.

There are avenues available for less-privileged users to obtain builds of free software projects (e.g. GNU/Linux distributions, F-Droid, and so on).

Yeah I feel like this is the one instance of applying EULA’s to free software projects that I don’t disagree with on principle, because the source code remains free software (unlike FUTO, Commons Clause, and so on). For another example, Mozilla applies an EULA to Firefox binaries and still releases the source code under a free license, which is an overall good to the free software movement.

Maintainership of a free software project can be very taxing so it’s refreshing to see attempts to address that that aren’t intrinsically at odds with the free software movement. Remember that users of free software have no entitlement to anything other than source code. There is no requirement in any free software license that a project have maintainers, take bug reports, accept pull requests, offer support, etc.

Also remember there are avenues to obtain third party builds of free software projects (e.g. GNU/Linux distros, F-Droid, etc) and those third parties should be able to take up the support burden for their user communities.

Edit: From their faq, this is the most concerning thing to me:

Also, if you choose to not pay the Maintenance Fee, but find yourself returning to check on the status of issues or review answers to questions others ask, you are still using the project and need to pay the Maintenance Fee.

This seems like an over-reach. Limiting participation in communities to fee-payers is understandable but attempting to restrict people from even reading in these communities is a bit too far (and I am not even sure if it can be enforced, but I am not a lawyer).

People buy copies of proprietary software and then share them for free.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Freeware

Please don’t use the term “freeware” as a synonym for “free software.” The term “freeware” was used often in the 1980s for programs released only as executables, with source code not available. Today it has no particular agreed-on definition.

There is a misunderstanding that the free in free software or FOSS refers to price (and is hence a synonym of freeware). https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.html

Others use the term “FOSS,” which stands for “Free and Open Source Software.” This is meant to mean the same thing as “FLOSS,” but it is less clear, since it fails to explain that “free” refers to freedom.

Different senses of “free.” “Free software” refers to freedom, not price. “Freeware” refers to price, not freedom.

“Freeware” typically has the connotation of being proprietary but it doesn’t have to be. Most people call actual free software “free software,” “FOSS,” or “open source.” I think this is a side effect of proprietary being the assumed default.

There is a misunderstanding that “FOSS” means it is freeware and open source. You can see that misunderstanding even in this thread.

FOSS is always Freeware

“Free software” refers to freedom, not price. It’s possible for free-as-in-freedom software to be sold.

“Freeware” is always about price, not freedom.

“Free” in free software refers to freedoms, not price.

“Free” in “freeware” refers to price, not freedom.

The two are not at all synonymous although typically most free software is also freeware.

Why? Thunderbird announced it is not adopting the Firefox EULA.

https://mastodon.online/@thunderbird/114112105485771954