Hans-Christoph Steiner @eighthave@librem.one

The #F-Droid build system can feel restrictive to devs because we require building from source and only use binary build tools that are confirmed to be built from source. That means allowlisting trusted organizations to do the right thing, then looking for exceptions. This is looser than reputable GNU/Linux distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, etc), which build only with system packages. linsui wrote why Maven Central cannot be blindly trusted to provide free software
https://f-droid.org/2022/07/22/maven-central.html

@hund @fdroidorg@mastodon.technology Google did buy Android, but it was proprietary then, and Google open sourced it. They were tactical, doing that to get developers' attention, given all the other mobile platforms were proprietary then. Now Android is the biggest platform in the world, and Google controls it, and they want more control. So they go proprietary.

@cnx I have no specific info there, but switching business models would open up that possibility. I see it more that the business types are starting to think that there is an expiration date for surveillance capitalism business models because people are catching on to how bad they are.

@ben @matthew_d_green I agree, but many pieces can be solved and built into infrastructure. Not everything has to be constantly fought over. Big Tech knows the value of data, so they don't want to shut themselves out of it. #F-Droid is architected to remove as much data as possible: no user accounts, servers can't see devices' locale, signed static files can safely come from any source on the internet, etc. Even if the maintainers wanted to, it would be hard to track users without rebuilding.

@PublicLewdness very true, but that's a separate question from subscriptions vs. surveillance capitalism.

@cnx Sure, there are no magic bullets. The key is that tracking users to sell their attention will never turn out well. Subscription business models aren't in themselves harmful to the user, from what I've seen. Companies find all sorts of novel ways to do harm, regardless of their business model. Moving away from #SurveillanceCapitalism does make it a choice the company makes rather than inherent to the company.

I don't think #ElonMusk is a force for good, and I'm not particularly a fan of #Twitter. But I do think it is a good thing to move to a subscription business model, where the the customer is the user, and away from the #SurveillanceCapitalism business model Twitter currently has.

In the over 3 weeks since #FDroid
shipped a big overhaul of the production buildserver, there have been updates published on most days: Nov16 Nov15 Nov14 Nov13 Nov11 Nov09 Nov08 Nov05 Nov01 Oct31 Oct30 Oct29 Oct28 Oct27 Oct26 Oct25 Oct24 Oct22 Oct21 Oct20

And now, even more exciting, is that this unlocked lots of low hanging fruit that can make the process run much faster.