I’ve seen many threads suggesting products but they often don’t mention FOSS projects, which should always be preferred to corporate software. With FOSS you are already boycotting capitalism, on either side. Free and Open Source ignores borders and shouldn’t be categorized in nationalist terms, no matter where some of the maintainers happen to live.
Lol, first time I hear that, as European😆 what a stupid movement…
I think you’re missing the point a bit.
Both BuyCanadian and BuyEuropean are about supporting their respective economies as they are boycotting America’s.
For Canada, we’re looking at a recession (brought on by our “ally”) so people are trying to help fellow Canadians out as things get rough and people lose jobs.
While I support FOSS and recommend them in threads etc I fully understand why they don’t meet all the goals of those movements. (That being said, I think one of the most rocking counter punches would be EU investment in stabilizing Linux enough to make it a feasible alternative to Windows/Apple for casual and corporate users, solid shot to 2 of the magnificent 7.)
investment in stabilizing Linux enough to make it a feasible alternative
Do you care to elaborate? If I had to write a list of reasons why Linux might not be ready for your average cubicle… Stability wouldn’t be one of them.
Stabilizing might not be quite the right word I’m looking for. But for example, trying to connect a new wifi card etc. Or when one program updates but this causes instability and you have to undo the update. Even from the handful of linux wizards I know, their battle stories with updates or new configurations are enough to terrify someone.
OK, now I get it. Yes, my experiences with Linux have been ridiculously good for a long time, but that is indeed also due to being careful with what I buy.
Nowadays it’s generally gotten pretty easy compared to a few years back, but there are still rough edges there.
I also expect this is more of an issue with cheaper solutions? Because nothing I touched in the last 10+ gave me any real problem. With maybe the exception of getting NVidia Optimus to work?
For a company it wouldn’t be so unreasonable to say “we’ll transition to Linux over this period of time” and replace incompatible hardware as you progress. The hardware replacement will be a small fraction of your switching costs.
The company I work at has decided to be Linux centric a long time ago, and basically all laptops are years old refurbished Thinkpads that run just fine with no intervention and no hacking.
But the university where I worked at before had a framework deal with Dell, and while I was one of the few people using Linux, I never had trouble with hardware compatibility on those Optiplex and Latitude. To the point that when I was getting a new machine, I would clone the old partition and just boot into a perfectly working system.
I use Arch, BTW.
Not the other commenter, but they likely meant stability with respect to device drivers. The kernel is great at not degrading with a high uptime, but there’s consumer stuff that’s just perpetually unimplemented, buggy, or minimally-functional:
- Sensor monitoring on Ryzen platforms
- Realtek NIC chipsets
- Nvidia cards and proprietary drivers for anything and everything other than compute workloads
- Nvidia cards older than the RTX 2000 series and FOSS drivers
- Peripherals targeted towards “gamers”
None of this is the kernel maintainers fault, of course. The underlying issue is the usual one of shitty corporations refusing to publish documentation and/or strategically abusing the legal system to stifle reverse engineering for interoperability.
stifle reverse engineering for interoperability.
Nothing will get better until the rent seekers are cast out of the temple.
I’m going to add Broadcom to your list, but otherwise it is a great, concise explanation of the root issues behind why some users will struggle with older hardware while others will have no issues.
There are some pretty corporate “open core” software companies tho, that’s a more grey area
Are they open or free? That’s the point here.
It’s hard to say. “Open core” means that most of the software is open source (licenses vary) but some features are locked behind a paywall. Gitlab takes this approach for example, also maybe onlyoffice.
Agreed.
I always like to say the fruits of FOSS labour are the common heritage of mankind. It belongs to all of us as a public good, created and maintained by selfless workers. (Nevermind the fact that most FOSS projects are based out of Europe anyways).
I get it as an European that it means more to me to consume “locally” and to prioritize services that are European-based. But due to the nature of computers and FOSS, borders are redefined and it is more about ideas and politics rather than physical location. However, computers and servers are also physical and submitted to legislations of countries, we cannot ignore laws such as the Patriot act and the power that the American state can have even on FOSS projects.
For me the priority is to use software that match my needs; if I have the choice between an American and an European solution, I’ll tend to choose the latter one.
I canceled ongoing donations to several projects based in the US and stated that my reasons for doing so was US policy against my country. It doesn’t matter if the dev or project lead supports those policies or not, I refuse to contribute to the US economy if I can at all help it.
I understand, but I am also thinking about the dev of those projects, as an individual who (probably) really despises the current US Gov, and even though they have to engage in the US economy, as they need to eat, pay bills, etc. It is a very tricky problem for those individuals and how to emancipate from. It is like with Russia where such individuals do not endorse at all the ongoing war but still live in that system 🤔
By donating to contributors to free and open information and software you support the movement against tyranny inside the us and also everywhere.
compared to that foss devs buying groceries is negligible to the us economy.
If you are worried about US laws affecting FOSS projects, it can always be forked, perhaps even be rewritten.
Of course, but what about the individual behind it, if it is someone who is also against their current government, while having to live in that country? It is tricky to ask how to reconcile the need for EU solutions while encouraging American citizens to fight against their system!
Free software is the antithesis of capitalism. It doesn’t make sense to boycott them.
Is someone doing that? If it’s FOSS it’s from the internet.
I’ve tried to extol the virtues of FOSS for a long time. Not many people even care about it or their privacy, always parroting the adage “If i do nothing wrong what do I need to worry about” without a further thought.
Agree with the main point, though disagree that FOSS is “boycotting capitalism”, many for-profit companies contribute to FOSS and FOSS can be used by for-profit companies too, much of today’s capitalism runs on FOSS.
The point of free software is that it does not have owners, so what exactly are you “boycotting”?
Tell it to the Russian Linux devs that foss has no owners :-) Theory and practice are 2 different things
FOSS doesn’t mean that you are entitled to a place at the table or that your contributions have to be accepted. Nothing prevents these Russian devs from continuing to to work on the kernel.
Pretty sure American laws explicitly prevent them from working on the Kernel. It’s stupid but that’s what happened iirc
US laws prevented them from contributing while employed in a sanctioned company. Sucky situation for those individuals.
They can fork it, if nobody wants to work with them anymore that’s their problem
FOSS is not American. Foss belongs to literally everyone.
I kept saying it all over the place regarding the fascistic rejection of Russian (as in race) code and got flamed as result. These people use FOSS, especially GNU/GPL software and yet they have no clue about the license themselves.
Weren’t Russian contributors (from very specific sanctioned companies) rejected from contributing because of US sanction laws and with Linux Foundation being HQ’d in the US?
I think that was mainly due to the concern of hostile actors committing code to the kernel.
I think it was US OFAC sanctions
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/navigating-global-regulations-and-open-source-us-ofac-sanctions
https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/23/linus_torvalds_affirms_expulsion_of/ (links to the OFAC sanctions set up after Russia invade Ukraine)
The OFAC sanctions do have quite a few lists, with one of them being “Russian Harmful Foreign Activities Sanctions”, so it could be fear of harmful actions and not just retaliation for the invasion
Seeing people look for corporate social media alternatives is painful.
> “Hey guys, I want to leave X, should I go to Bluesky or Threads? What? Mastodon? Never heard of that. Looks very complicated, I’ll pass”
> – CEO, founder, IT wizz on LinkedInEvery time!
Or the classic “guys I am leaving WhatsApp, moved my whole family to Signal, another centralized US-based silo that requires phone numbers and runs on AWS, CloudFlare, etc.”
Signal: over a decade of leaking nothing and providing a great service for free, with some weird hiccups along the way like cryptocurrency.
Privacy “advocates”: fuck signal
- if they leaked something you wouldn’t know because US government law doesn’t allow them to disclose if they requested data.
- uses AWS servers that also the gov could ask for access to Amazon directly without even talking to Signal, being centralized and depending on AWS infra is also a weakness.
- needing phone numbers to register, often tied to passport and it is super easy to get your whole network when compromising 1 device
- all centralized services start nice, attracting users, once they have you, and money starts being a problem… meet: enshitification
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If they were leaking there would be prosecutors using the evidence in court, on the public record.
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It doesn’t matter what infrastructure that they use because the service provides end to end encryption. This remains secure even if a third party is able to record all of the traffic between the two devices.
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Has there ever been a single instance where a Signal client had a RCE exploit? Of all of the software on your phone likely to be exploited, signal is low on the list (your browser is where they get you).
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Enshittification is a reason to leave, speculation about maybe possible enshittification in the future is not.
Finally, common sense. Thank you.
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i mean… it is massively better, but yes it still sucks. but what do you move friends and family to? last i looked into element it was not an option for several reasons, and i don’t think anyone would switch to basically noname apps like simplex or similar, even if they might be decent solutions. i really want the last few contacts i have on whatsapp to move, but i’m not gonna push hard to get them to use signal just to get it enshittified in the near future. also a few switched to telegram, which while not facebook, is not really better mainly because it doesn’t even e2ee by default.
I moved my whole family since years to Delta Chat, eventually started contributing to the project and even created my own fork that is what my family is using, see: https://lemmy.ml/post/26007254
ArcaneChat is dope. I’m testing it out with my partner right now. The built-in Jitsi button is super helpful. My extended family (about 30 people) switched over to signal a few years ago, so there is some inertia there, but for any new chats, DeltaChat (and ArcaneChat for Android users) is what I’m going to push for.
Nice! 🤩
i huge recommend both SIP + XMPP software :)
What’s the reasons against Element :)? Currently testing it with some friends of mine, before trying to lure my family on it instead of iMessage. So would be interested in why you don’t think it’s feasible.
tons of reasons against element :
-huge/heavy interface on both web/software client
-2 passwords, 1 for session, 1 for encryption keys
-takes huge storage on server
-it’s the whatsapp of OSS
here it is :
https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/matrix-vs-xmpp/
I don’t mind a lot of the arguments against; but this might be enough to make me switch to something else: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/matrix-vs-xmpp/#-matrix-is-linked-to-israeli-intelligence-
@EySkibidiBabBab Element? That’s just one of the apps, and frankly, not the best one. You are looking for Matrix. For android I’d recommend FluffyChat, for desktop/web Cinny. For iOS I’d recommend throwing it to a lake.
Element?
Element! :D
I’m fully aware of the relationship between Matrix and Element as well as alternative clients existing. I actually find it kinda hard to communicate about. Whenever i say something like “i sent you a link on Matrix” the few people i use Matrix with get confused. People are used to referring to app/client-names: fb messenger, outlook, iMessage (even if i’m sending an sms) and not the underlying technology.
I’ve tried explaining it like email - you can register an email somewhere and access it through several email clients. But i mean, people who’s not as much into software as i (and i suspect you as well due to your fine recommendations) – and still refers to their email as “outlook” – they can have a hard time wrapping their head around that relationship. An app is just an app… Right?
The reason i referred to it as “element” in my comment, was because the comment i replied to referred to it as Element tho.
Thanks for sticking it to the Signal shills, I use Telegram and I understand how bad it is but I’d never use signal in a million years
and the thing is: Telegram having a proprietary server feels more opensource and open to 3rd party clients and developers (ex. bots, mini-apps etc) than Signal, Signal’s issue tracker has a bot auto-closing stale issues and several people are completely ignored, never receive a reply
I highly recommend you to give a try to https://arcanechat.me/ (I am the developer) it is heavily inspired by Telegram, if you want to test it you can join this community group: https://i.delta.chat/#6CBFF8FFD505C0FDEA20A66674F2916EA8FBEE99=&a=invitebot%40nine.testrun.org&g=ArcaneChat+Community&x=3KvvQZfzU4t-9u5s0PF3USGp&i=AQKH9_8x0R0&s=dbGW9xOhRQX
“Hey guys, I want to leave WhatsApp, should I go to Telegram or Signal?"
-- you guys are NOT helping, that’s still exactly the same problem. Just stay away from anything that isn’t open source, decentralized, self-hostable, e2e encrypted (without rolling their own crypto). That basically leaves only Matrix or XMPP.
we’re not classic, we’re advanced nerds engineers : signal is one church without any interoperability, so we’ve moved to both SIP and XMPP variants using differents provider in the family : everything is decentralized, exactly like email (we dont use gafam ones). It’s not that hard to enjoy xmpp, and really decentralized tools, a bit like for SIP (we have several Voip providers here).
I like SIP and XMPP, but in practice I don’t have any contacts to use it and the apps are lacking a bit compared to ArcaneChat/DeltaChat, besides the problem of losing groups because the XMPP server went down etc. there are some downsides but yes, if I was not satisfied with ArcaneChat I would use XMPP and SIP, or anything that is open source, decentralized and doesn’t require a phone number
I agree, but am happy that X is losing users to Bluesky, so I don’t try to convert friends and family from Bluesky to Masrodon. I’d rather they start changing other stuff instead that is easier.
Oh definitely, Bluesky is far better than twitter. Honestly, seeing the fediverse piss itself over bluesky is annoying, because the alternative is people still on twitter.
Counterpoint: Fedora is a testing bed for Red Hat. One of Red Hat’s notable customers is the US military. I’d prefer to stay off that path if I can help it. It’s a matter of trust, and it’s a matter of indirectly contributing. I’ve seen people say the same things about Deepin and everyone nods in agreement, but why the hell should I trust a US project, for the same reasons?
why the hell should I trust a US project
Bekuz Amerika fridom wurld polis, best kontri in da world!
But on a more serious note, did you know Linus banned those Russian contributors like a month after redhat and DoD signed a new deal. Can you guess who owns RH stocks?
Honestly this should be a wake call to the FOSS community that we are way too reliant on the US.
Every default we have is US centric and if FOSS is really meant for everyone we should move away from that.
Same with NixOS treating with Anduril, I jump to Guix-SD and never looked back
Totally agree. The majority of Americans are great people. Not everyone is MAGA. We need to support the good ones. Sanctions and boycotts tend to unite.
One exception would be if the project imposse a security risk because key people and servers, within the US, may be blackmailed or pushed by the new administration. We’re not there yet though. And I hope these projects and people migrate if this becomes the case.
Also, FOSS projects run by big tech are probably also wise to avoid for strategic reasons.
The majority of Americans are great people
They’re not the majority if they can’t win an election — just sayin’.
a minority of the population voted for trump though, it’s not like 50+% of the total population voted for him, it’s 50+% of the voters, a lot of people just didn’t vote.
a lot of people just didn’t vote.
So they decided that it was just fine if he won and saw no reason to oppose what he stands for…
Yeah, that’s some good people right there I can see that /s
Voter ID, gerrymandering, not allowing absentee voting, no day off.
Not everyone was able to vote, and that disproportionately affected Democratic voters.
All true. But the world also watched a huge amount of voters rejects dems over gaza. While trump had no better plans on gaxa.
Much like Ukraine his only argument is “i am better and every one else was stupid”
The argument often heard. “Voting the lesser of 2 evils is still voting evil”.
So yes these folks very much voted the greater of 2 evils by refusing to vote the lesser option. And much of the rest of the world is rightfully sorta pissed at the evil they allowed in.
Maybe a system that regularly gives us “evil vs lesser evil but still evil” as our only options isn’t worth saving
Sorta like the trolly problem.
You can flip the lever to kill 5 or 1. But if you choose not to and also don’t fucking bother to hit the breaks. Your still responsible for killing 5 instead of 1.
If you are not willing to actually stop the evil fai.ing to selects make you the bigger evil.
“Great people on both sides,” as a very stable genius put it 🙄
Either way, this is probably OT for an open source thread…
Fair enough. I’m still smarting from that election result, all the way across the pond.
On the other side, I don’t count people as “great” who can’t be bothered voting against bigoted authoritarianism. But different strokes, I’m sure.
the us electoral system is designed around preventing BIPOCs from voting especially in the southern states. You have to do a lot of paperwork to get into the system and sometimes you get kicked out of the system by arbitrary rules without being notified. You also have to vote at the place assigned to your part of town, or in some cases miles away, The place often is systematically understaffed in poor neighborhoods which means huge lines, also the vote is held during work hours and many more things.
Yeah, a minority of people voted for Hitler, too.
77mio out of 340mio voted for trump which is roughly 22.6%
Totally agree. The majority of Americans are great people.
Not choosing to vote or speak is endorsing the establishment. We are not great people. We are dumbfucks.
Not choosing to vote […] is endorsing the establishment.
Where is the logic in that? By voting you’re actively acknowledging the legitimacy of the State. How would not voting be an endorsement of anything, as you see it?
if its run by a big company then it’s just open source and not free, or do you mean something like a company contributing to the code?
I’m the most anti-American user on here and I agree.
I’d rather use USA-linked free software than Spotify.
Wasn’t Spotify Swedish tho? But yeah
I think that’s the point, he’s saying he’d rather use USA-linked FOSS than non-USA proprietary software.
Didn’t microsoft buy them?
No, they’re still independent with majority of shares owned by their founders.
Ah ok, maybe that’s why they arent enshittified that much then!
Spotify donated to trumps inauguration
https://www.avclub.com/spotify-donald-trump-brunch is just one of the many reasons not to support spotify.
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify for lots more
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Useless post of the day.
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