Captain Beyond

This article is clearly about beans, not onions.

But they told me I can just not connect it to the internet and it’ll be just like any dumb device.

Eventually these things will come with modems built in so you can’t even do that.

Ironically a Linux-derived OS.

Nothing ironic about it. There’s nothing mystical about Linux, it’s just a kernel. The guy who made it says he doesn’t care about anything but code.

Personally, I only care about the code. When I say maybe there are people who worry about walled gardens and cloud providers who take ownership of your data, I am not one of those people. That’s not what I actually care about. That’s not what I do. What I do is code. What I care about is code.

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.

“purple-discord” is the only free software Discord client I know about. It is a plugin for Pidgin and other libpurple based messengers such as Bitlbee.

“rdircd” the “reliable Discord client IRC daemon” might be an alternative but I’ve never used it.

Neither of these run out of the box on mobile but you can run them on a server you control, or maybe you could run them under Termux (have never tried this).

You can also use a Matrix or IRC bridge if you control the Discord “server.”

I don’t count client mods or web wrappers as they are fundamentally coupled to the proprietary client.

NFT Bros 🤝 Twitter Artists

Seething about their jpegs being stolen

Discord is a proprietary centralized service that is hostile to privacy and third-party clients.

People are recommending the proprietary FUTO voice app. This app, and other FUTO apps like Greyjay, are non-free.

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

It is in fact non-free. (The article is about Grayjay, a product from the same company that uses the same license)

Not a copypasta, although given the average community member’s understanding of this issue comes from memes and copypastas, maybe it should become one.

I guess I’m being called out here, so wall of text incoming.

Linux and GNU are completely separate projects that have no relationship organizationally or technologically. As basic as this is, this is important to understand as the backdrop for “the GNU/Linux issue.”

Linux was started in 1991 as a project to build an operating system, one that is “not as big or professional as GNU.” In practical terms, Linux is just a kernel. It has no terminal, no command line tools, no desktop, no package manager, no web browser. Yet, people speak of it as if it’s a fully featured operating system that contains all of those things, an alternative to Windows or macOS.

GNU was started in 1983 as a project to build an operating system, but as GNU’s own kernel (the Hurd) is in development hell, the userland components (libraries and tools) are generally used with Linux to form a complete operating system, which is referred to as GNU/Linux. The “slash” is meant to signify that it’s a combination of these two projects. Note that, as the GNU project has adopted the Linux-libre variant of Linux, the Hurd is no longer really a priority project.

Of course, you can have Linux without GNU (Android and Alpine are the best examples of this) and you can also run GNU on non-Linux platforms (Debian has a port that runs on the FreeBSD kernel, and the tools themselves run on any Unixy operating system and even Windows). So I don’t really think you can conclude any of these are the “most important part” of the operating system, and it more or less comes down to whatever brand name you feel the most comfortable with.

And, of course, most GNU/Linux operating systems contain much more than GNU and Linux these days. Therefore, I prefer to understand Linux as a family of operating systems (as Wikipedia defines it) and GNU/Linux as a subfamily. The ironic thing is that, from a UX perspective, Linux, the kernel, is probably the least prominent component of the operating system, as it is furthest away from the user interface - but it is most prominent brand name and so gets applied to the whole “ecosystem.”

A lot of Linux fans think an operating system has to have more than Linux to be a “real Linux” operating system, or that it has to be community run or “anti-corporate” or meet some ideological criteria. But, Linus himself has no such ideology, and Linux is a very corporate project. Android is the most widely used Linux operating system. It is as much “real Linux” as Debian is.

The myth of the fictional operating system called Linux naturally leads to other myths, such as the myth of fragmentation. In that sense I feel it’s harmful, but the damage has been done and even the conversation around the myth has its own myths (such as the idea that Stallman wants to “rename Linux” or is jealous of Linux’s popularity, that “Linux should be called GNU/Linux” because “it contains GNU” or because it was built with GNU tools or licensed under the GPL). It’s hard to argue for “calling it GNU/Linux” when people don’t even understand what “it” is, or even what the admittedly convoluted name is supposed to signify. So, for that reason, I don’t think the “battle” is worth fighting anymore.

For the record, though, I refer to my preferred operating system by its own name, GNU Guix System, and make an effort not to center any particular project or brand name when talking about the free software community and ecosystem in general. I don’t characterize myself as a fan or user of Linux, just a free software enthusiast - the fact that all of my preferred operating systems contain Linux is a consequence of the fact that Linux is the most widely used free software kernel, not because of any brand loyalty on my part. Non-Linux operating systems such as the BSD’s should be considered as part of the free operating system family.

10+ years of experience in the thing you created 5 years ago, even.

I think you’ll find it is no longer “My Computer” but now “This PC”

It feels like last week we were defending proprietary software, ads, and tracking against those mean old FOSS zealots who actually care about privacy and freedom. Are you saying we care about those things now?

As an end-user I believe I am entitled to the freedom to use, modify, and share the software I use. If your business model is incompatible with my values I won’t support you, simple as. I don’t have any problem monetarily supporting developers but not if they disagree with my principles.

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this exact argument made against ad-blockers, too.

I prefer my version of stage 3: I still care about software freedom and advocate for it (as well as related issues like interoperability, privacy, and right to repair) but without being an obnoxious fanboy for “Linux” or talking down to people who still use non-free technology for whatever reason.

Simply caring about an issue doesn’t make one a cultist or zealot, and not caring about anything does not make one enlightened.

I say this as someone who is probably one of the biggest supporters of software-freedom around here, but bullying or shaming people for preferring non-free apps does nothing but incite resentment towards the movement. I value the four freedoms because I think I deserve control of my computing, not because I think it’s my place to dictate what others should value.