Apple intentionally makes iPhone-Android interoperability crap in order to sell iPhones. That’s not conspiracy theorizing, Tim Apple blatantly admitted to it.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/7/23342243/tim-cook-apple-rcs-imessage-android-iphone-compatibility

This is why the marketing around flatpak bothers me. It’s touted as some kind of “universal Linux package manager” but Linux is just a kernel - all the stuff that apps depend on comes with the distro. So, in order for flatpaks to be “distro independent” they basically have to supply all the stuff that normally comes from the distro - effectively building a second distro on top of your existing one.

Nix and Guix are the same but at least I think they’re more up front that they are effectively distros that can run on top of your existing distro or as a standalone operating system directly on top of Linux.

FUTO changing the definition of open source to suit their business model is like that time US Congress decided that pizza was a vegetable because it has tomato sauce.

FUTO’s EULA may superficially resemble a true free software license (and may be good enough for you, personally) but it fundamentally undermines core tenets of the free software movement in order to preserve their business interests. All pseudo-FOSS licenses (whether of the “ethical” or the “business” variety) do this, because they prioritize the interests of the rightsholder above those of the community and the user. If important free software projects like Linux and Firefox were released under this license the free software world as we know it would not be possible.

As proprietary licenses go, it’s certainly far from the worst.

Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. It is perfectly legal and ethical to sell free software. Keep in mind if you’re using third party code (whether it’s libraries or external contributions to your application) you must abide by the terms of whatever license it is under, this is whether it’s paid or gratis.

It’s even perfectly legal to fork an existing free software project and sell it on the play store, although whether that is ethical or not is up for debate - depending on what efforts you put into your fork before selling it, an orthodox Stallmanist might have no problem with it but the original developer(s) of that code may perceive this as “theft.” Keep in mind you must abide by the terms of whatever license the project is under, so if it is a copyleft license like the GNU GPL you must either provide corresponding source code or an offer for such.

Assuming they own the copyright (which I believe they do, since they were able to relicense it to begin with) they can absolutely offer it under a dual licensing arrangement even if the licenses are incompatible. It would only be an issue if other peoples’ AGPLv3 licensed code was in there, but as it is not the only copyright they would theoretically be violating is their own, which is literally not possible.

Dual licensing under a free software license and proprietary EULA is a common business model, especially when the free software license is a strong copyleft like the AGPL, since the proprietary licensors do not have to abide by certain conditions that free license users have to.

Vivaldi’s target audience is people who don’t mind proprietary blobs as long as they are “good” or make things “work better.” Given that Vivaldi itself is essentially a proprietary blob combined with a Chromium backend this makes sense.

The most obvious difference going from Debian stable to GNU Guix is that Guix is a rolling release distro, not stable (in the Debian sense) at all.

Package management is also very different as it’s fundamentally a source based distro, although sometimes the build servers can provide prebuilt packages if they’re available. Also, Guix has the concept of “profiles” which group sets of installed packages; typically, there is a system profile as well as a profile for each user, but users can also create their own separate profiles. This means that a user can install packages to their own profile without needing root permissions.

Profile updates are done in an atomic manner, such that changing the set of installed packages (installing, updating, or removing a package) actually creates a new generation of the profile, and it’s possible to roll back to a previous generation if something breaks. This is true of the system as well as the user profile(s), of course. A profile generation can also be exported as a manifest, which can then be imported to create a profile generation on another system, allowing package management to be done in a declarative manner.

Finally, Guix has a commitment to ship only free software, and uses linux-libre as its kernel. Debian has a clear separation between free and non-free components but does ship non-free software, including firmware blobs, and I believe as of recently the installer provides them by default. There are unofficial Guix channels (=repositories) that provide these things.

Currently I run GNU Guix on my desktop, laptop, and servers. I like the dedication to software freedom and the way package management works. Before that I used Debian until 2019, Trisquel until 2014, and Ubuntu until around 2010. Debian and Trisquel are fine and I don’t have anything against them, I just like the Guix package manager more. I’ve used Xfce with all of these (and before then, GNOME 2). I set it up the way I like it and it never changes.

I typically run LineageOS on my mobile devices, without microG or any proprietary apps. As I’ve said before my preferred OS would be some variant of GNU/Linux, preferably Guix as well, but LineageOS works well enough.

I run OpenWRT on my router, and had a previous router than ran LibreCMC (a variant of OpenWRT using Linux-libre).

Windows games are made for Windows so I prefer to use Windows for them. I don’t particularly want to turn GNU/Linux into Windows, I think it deserves better than that.

It’s worth noting the reason why Molly isn’t available on F-Droid proper: it’s entirely F-Droid’s decision. F-Droid policy requires that developers support (or do not oppose) inclusion in F-Droid, which Signal’s developers haven’t. Signal’s developers are also hostile towards forks and do not want them interoperating with Signal. Thus, F-Droid does not allow Signal or any fork of Signal.

https://gitlab.com/fdroid/rfp/-/issues/2297

I am not really a fan of this decision, I don’t think it’s logical that an upstream can forbid a fork from being published anywhere - but that’s F-Droid’s call to make.

Notice they avoid using the exact term “open source” in this press release. I’m ~90% sure it’ll turn out to be under some proprietary source-available license.

I don’t think the ffmpeg maintainer is complaining that Microsoft is using ffmpeg, rather that they are opening “high priority” bug reports based on customer complaints. This might be a high priority problem for Microsoft but that does not make it so for ffmpeg.

The license allows Microsoft to use ffmpeg but they aren’t entitled to demand free labor from the project. Really, no one is entitled to do so, but Microsoft being a large company who can definitely afford to put money or talent on the problem makes it only that much more egregious.

edit: I would note that asking for help or reporting a bug is usually welcome, the problematic part is demanding help because it’s a high priority issue for YOUR customers.

A tool with fewer features that is harder to use is by definition an inferior tool.

That’s only your opinion, not an objective truth, and I only partially agree with it. Having the most features is not as important as having just the right set of features, and there are anti-features to consider as well. Feature creep can actually impact the usability of a tool, so these two criteria are sometimes in contradiction.

Ease of use is subjective and depends on the user, because users’ needs, ability, tastes, and concerns differ. Of course, I don’t think anyone deliberately chooses a tool because it is hard to use.

I don’t agree that freeness is purely an ideological concern. I don’t think a tool that works against me, or imposes arbitrary restrictions on me is a good tool by any measure. A good tool doesn’t enshittify, or spy on its user, or refuse to work for arbitrary reasons. If a tool doesn’t work and you are legally not allowed to fix it (as in the printer which inspired the movement in the 1980s), it’s not a good tool. If a tool punishes you for something you didn’t even do (as BitKeeper did to the Linux developers) it’s not a good tool, even if it has the right features.

I don’t tell you that your opinion is wrong, only that I don’t agree with it. We are told our concerns are invalid and don’t matter.

This is proprietary software even if it’s been put in a git repo (presumably without the consent of the rightsholder) and run offline.

As has been pointed out in this thread, someone already got hit with a DMCA takedown for this.

I don’t understand why we spend so much time praising proprietary software in these communities.

As to your question, I have a separate Windows machine for gaming, but that’s it. I keep one foot in the free world and one in the proprietary. As for productivity tools I can’t think of a proprietary tool I “can’t quit” or that I would pick in favor of a free tool.

Fans of proprietary software have this weird belief that free software users choose inferior tools for purist or idealist reasons. This is offensively ignorant. No one chooses bad tools on purpose; we just consider freedom to be part of the criteria of a good tool.

They do say that

They will be using a different repository with a different license for some of its new features

“different license” suggests to me it might be a proprietary/fauxpen source licene, since this is explicitly being done to punish a fork.

I prefer to use, where possible, the term “software freedom.” This keeps the focus on the four freedoms enjoyed by the users.

If I need an adjective, I’ll prefer libre, then free. “Libre” has the disadvantage of not being a native English word, but it has relatives such as liberate or liberty, so it’s not too much of a stretch. “Free” has the disadvantage of being misconstrued as meaning free-of-cost, but this can be explained away.

“Open source” is problematic for several reasons. Firstly, “open source” is just as easy to misconstrue as “free” is - it can be misconstrued as “you can look at the source code” and many companies and organizations actively take advantage of this misconception. Also, “open source” puts the focus on source code, with the idea that having more developers with access to the code makes the program better technologically. This claim is debatable, but putting the focus on the source code makes it seem like open source only matters to developers and is simply irrelevant to those who don’t have the want or ability to use the source code. However, even non-developers can avail themselves of freedoms 0 and 2, and can hire other people or make use of the community to exercise freedoms 1 and 4. Sometimes, open source is misunderstood to refer to the community-based development model that is more properly known as the “bazaar model.”

“FOSS” and “FLOSS” are problematic for similar reasons as “free” above: they are very easily misconstrued to mean “free of cost and also open source” (whether open source means actual open source or simply “can view the source code”). It’s not uncommon for something to be described as “not OSS but free” for example.

For non-libre software I tend to just say proprietary. I’ll sometimes say non-free or non-libre, but non-free and closed source have the same problems as free and open source.

Although I’m a firm supporter of free software

Unless I’m misreading this, your argument seems to be that software freedom is irrelevant in the face of technical superiority or popularity. That’s exactly the opposite of “firm support” in my view.

I’ll offer a counterpoint to the “best tool for the job” thing: before git existed, Linux development relied on a proprietary VCS called Bitkeeper. Licenses for Bitkeeper were “graciously” donated for gratis by the Bitkeeper developer. Andrew Tridgell, who was not party to the Bitkeeper EULA, telneted to a Bitkeeper server and typed “help”. The Bitkeeper developer, in retaliation, revoked the Linux developers’ gratis license to use the proprietary “best tool for the job.” This was what forced Linus to develop git, which became the most widely used VCS in the free software world. (read: Thank You, Larry McVoy by Richard Stallman)

Proprietary tools can seem to be useful in the moment but developing a dependency on them, and encouraging their use, is dangerous. Discord might seem like “the best tool for the job” until it enshittifies, just like its predecessors did, and just like its successors inevitably will. We’ve seen it happen often enough.

Grayjay is proprietary. https://hiphish.github.io/blog/2023/10/18/grayjay-is-not-open-source/

I dont have a better one though.

I just say non-Android Linux systems. GNU/Linux if I’m talking about that type of system, but there are some like postmarketOS that are strictly not in that group (it’s based on Alpine)

I had hopes we could rise above reddit brain, but you can’t take the reddit out of the redditor so easily.