Hans-Christoph Steiner @eighthave@librem.one

@waltercool @fdroidorg If F-Droid does censorship, then we're pretty terrible at it, since we give developers and users all the tools to easily circumvent it. https://f-droid.org/2022/11/23/why-curation-and-decentralization-is-better-than-millions-of-apps.html

@lispi314 I think it is clearly still true now, from what I see, especially for devs set up to freelance. But perhaps not everywhere. It might mean doing something that is a bit out of the ordinary to find the work.

@copyrights @fdroidorg There aren't any #dotnet people involved currently, that is probably why this hasn't happened yet. Also, another aspect of this is that we need a way to verify that any libraries that an app downloads are also free software. We know how to do that for Maven repos, for example.

@copyrights @fdroidorg That's the basic idea of how lots of toolkits are handled in #FDroid. The devil is in the details, and someone just needs to actually get it building within the F-Droid setup.

A pattern popularized by the #SiliconValley is taking innovative social ideas, and building structures where wealthiest portion of society gets to live them, leaving everyone else behind. #OpenSource is a great example of this. Kubernetes is a case in point: it is built collaboratively by a bunch of #BigTech competitors, they are enjoying the benefits of #UserFreedom and #FreeSoftware, but for their users, they stick them with #tracking and proprietary lock in.

It turns out that #Bitwarden is not yet included in @fdroidorg because of the difficulty of confirming that #Xamarin setups are fully #FreeSoftware. We welcome help here, to unlock lots of apps built with Xamarin. https://gitlab.com/fdroid/rfp/-/issues/114

Jean-Baptiste Kempf on earning a living with #FreeSoftware:

"Money can restrict you. Of course you need a decent income, but you’re programming, you’re a developer in one of the most active industries, where there is virtually no unemployment, you’re going to be earning enough no matter what city you’re based in. Sure, more money would be fun, but most of the people I know who have more money are annoying. And if it makes you a slave to your work, what good is that?" https://www.welcometothejungle.com/en/articles/kempf-interview-vlc-videolan

@gwagner it really should be that way, and for all traffic tickets. #Finland does it that way, there have been speeding tickets over $100,000 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/world/europe/speeding-in-finland-can-cost-a-fortune-if-you-already-have-one.html

So the #Bitwarden ad on this #FLOSSWeekly episode says: "Bitwarden doesn't track your data, only crash reporting, and even that is removed in the F-Droid installation." at around 16:30 https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly/episodes/720

Maybe not a big deal, but it seems like a new level for #FDroid: people paying money to promote based on F-Droid's principals, in this case, opt-out data collection is tracking.

@indyradio yeah, I think it is totally clear that happens in the Defense Dept, since that pattern happens in any organization I've worked in. Except that of course in the military's situation, "budget" also means destroying stuff and killing people.

@indyradio A classic example comes from SAGE during the Vietnam War: the US wired up all sorts of sensors along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Vietnamese figured out they had mics and urine sensors. So they'd play recordings of trucks next to the mics, and spray urine on the sensors, then run away and watch the US drop millions of dollars of bombs on places where they were not. The US chalked these up as kills, until they noticed they counted more kills than all the gear the Vietnamese had in total.

One of the things that has become clearer to me over my three decades of work with #software as a student, at big companies, universities, startups, and doing grant funded development: #FreeSoftware is about freedom for the user of the software, while #OpenSource is mainly about freedom to make money with software. This struck me when listening to how much #Amazon loves Open Source https://www.redhat.com/en/code-comments-podcast/amazon-web-services-open-principles

I sometimes have the feeling that there is certain kinds of essential #software that either requires developers to already be assholes to be able to build it effectively, or working on it turns the developers into assholes. This is stuff that we all need, that society is built upon. I appreciate the work, but personally want nothing to do with those communities. Yet it is also important that essential software is free software and open to contributions. It is a paradox I often think about.

For about two decades, it's been clear that #WiFi can easily and cheaply cover cities with good internet access. The hard part has been finding ways to make it sustainable. #Tokyo now says that they have 20 times as many WiFI routers as is needed to cover the whole city. They're trying a #cryptocurrency model to get more sharing happening. How about also considering just building out #CommunityWifi and #government networks? There are many proven examples of both all over https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/27/ntt_network_sharing_blockchain/