Hans-Christoph Steiner @eighthave@librem.one

@mvgorcum the spreadsheet started with #VisiCalc, it was the "killer app" that made Apple computers take off at the beginning. Then Lotus 1-2-3 did the same for the IBM PC. Then there was Excel. Sometimes Microsoft makes good software. That is not what makes them so dominant. Their skill at deploying monopoly-building tactics is. Microsoft bought Lotus, for example, while continuing to make Excel.

@punklawyer@mastodon.sdf.org I wouldn't say that. I think his foundation has given money to some things that are actually good and useful, like the vaccination campaigns. But at the same time, he's using it as a way to promote things he's invested in. Lots of wealthy people operate this way. His foundation does still operate with monopoly mentality, e.g. their way to run vaccination is the "right way", and the only way which they will fund. Like they work against patent-free vaccines:
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/06/03/bill-gates-almost-single-handedly-derailed-plan-could-have-led-peoples-vaccine

Now given that this strategy was conceived and driven by #BillGates, I see no way he can be trusted to do anything but the same in any of his endeavors. That is his clear track record over decades. His "charity" work is also driven my #monopoly mentality, and often directly tied to his investments. Like he's investing in #nuclear and giving "charity" money to promote it as a solution to #ClimateChange .

What is #Microsoft actually good at? Going thru their key products, it is clear they don't create new paradigms, they make often buggy implementations of ideas from other people: #BASIC #MSDOS #Windows #Word #Excel #browser #Bing #Cloud #dotnet. One thing they are clearly good is building a #monopoly. So it seems what they are good at is seeing good ideas, "embrace and extend" to control it, then building monopoly profiteering.

"it’s becoming all too clear that this new tech will be used in the same ways as the last generation of digital tools: that what begins with lofty promises about spreading freedom and democracy ends up micro targeting ads at us so that we buy more useless, carbon-spewing stuff"

There are lots of promises of good around #AI #GPT #LLM etc. This all is being developed by the same owners, people and culture of #BigTech and #SiliconValley that announced "privacy is dead" and that they are "making the world a better place". They aim to disrupt whatever they can to become wealthier from it. That is what #VentureCapital is all about. Even if this tech is a good idea, the forces driving it now have a proven track record of decades of causing harm
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/08/ai-machines-hallucinating-naomi-klein

@raracool @fdroidorg F-Droid allows in-app updaters that respect #UserFreedom. In this case, that means that the in-app updater needs to communicate to the user if it is a different channel then user installed from, and give them the option to not use the in-app updater. People trust F-Droid to review apps, we would be failing them if we let apps steer users away from that review without them even realizing its happening.

@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