Show more

After my current understanding of how and affects and anyone who contributes to it:

* F-Droid org makes the "product" so it would be liable
* F-Droid is currently entirely non-commercial, handles no money
* Volunteer contributors are very clearly exempt from all this
* Donation funded contributions are also exempt
* Contracted contributors are helping build the regulated product, so the legal entities of the contractors would not be liable for F-Droid's "product"

This week in F-Droid (TWIF) was published again.

Our highlight this week:

F-Droid and F-Droid Basic were updated to the stable version 1.19.0. It brings automatic background updates and a new and better workflow for adding repositories. Please note: this version is not yet the suggested version, so you need to enable beta updates, if you don't want to wait any longer.

Also we talk about notable updates oft some apps and the ongoing spring cleaning.

f-droid.org/2024/02/01/twif.ht
#FDroid

EU to delay new green rule in bid to appease protesting farmers - theguardian.com/environment/20 stupid move: you shouldn't give in to blackmail, they will just do it again...

I'm working on a small project on the history of built-in "app stores". My hypothesis is that this idea actually originates from distros like . That was my personal experience of it. I started using computers in 1981 and have used DOS, Apple ][, C64, OS/2, GEM, Windows, MacOS, NeXTSTEP, MacOSX, Solaris, AIX, IRIX, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and many distros starting with Slackware. I know the history of Debian, iOS, and Android well. Anyone have any other examples I might have missed?

Study finds that once people use cargo bikes, they like their cars much less - arstechnica.com/cars/2024/01/s "Even some one-car households ditched vehicles in favor of cargo bike-sharing." #transport

If people get together and build themselves a really nice neighborhood that is pretty, fun to be in, good people nearby, effective services, etc. is it then inevitable that it gets turned over to mass tourism? Or gets sold out to foreign oligarchs? Both of these outcomes ruin the place. Those are both true for the places where some of my family are from, where I grew up, where I went to university, the city I lived for 20 years before returning to said city where some family live.

provides an alternate model that fits better: fund essential free software from taxes, which companies cannot avoid paying, then everyone gets the benefits without worrying about sustainability. Kudos to Red Hat for making a market-driven approach work as well as it has for decades, but it is clearly not the best solution for funding infrastructural software.

4/

Show thread

At the same time, RedHat has been a major funder of free software development, with key contributions to GNOME, Linux, GNU and more. Oracle is very unlikely to contribute anything near those levels, yet Oracle is a thread to RHEL. The non-profit RHEL forks might be able to raise real amounts of dev funding, but as much as I like that model, it is far from proven.

/3

Show thread

Markets are a useful tool but they are not always the best tool for sustainable funding. 's recent decision to restrict access to source code provides a good example of that. via RHEL is the foundation for so many large companies but market-driven companies work to avoid paying for anything extra, even when they clearly benefit from it.

/2

Show thread

's policy of sharing source code with paying subscribers highlights the key differences between and thinking. Free Software focuses on and users have that since it includes source code. focuses on business model freedom, where companies are free to do whatever with the source code, including taking it proprietary and restricting the user. RedHat behaves Open Source, adding restrictions where it can.

sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/ju

1/

Last May, for the first time, we generated more electricity from wind and solar than from fossil fuels.

Renewable energy is homegrown and creates high-quality green jobs in our Union.

On the#InternationalDayofCleanEnergy, we reaffirm our commitment to accelerate the clean energy transition and strengthen our energy independence ↓

#EUDelivers

The promise of USB-C is huge: standard plug for everything including charging, devices sharing power with each other, all the things over a single port. But wow, it is buggy compared to the old USB days. Like sometimes, devices just decide not to charge from a given USB-C connection. Hopefully this can still be improved, and USB-C doesn't turn out like , where almost everyone feels like it regularly pranks them. I guess that's why there are still so many devices with headphone jacks

I am again trying to set an (opt-in) open book exam with the whole Internet being allowed as a tool for students during the exam (just no other persons to collaborate with). While Bard is getting a lot better at mathematical/logical examples compared to the (free version of) ChatGPT, both are still really bad at text comprehension mixed in with logical reasoning. To my students: Yes, some of these questions will results in confused answers when simply pasted into the LLMs - please still engage your own thinking processes!

In my experience, the best UX for consistency and flow was Mac OS X circa 2008. Back then, was moving more towards and had gotten really good at defining Human Interface Guidelines and getting developers to follow them. Basically all the apps I used had the same UX for the core things (key commands, open/save dialogs, window management, etc). Then they got distracted by iTunes and shifted to working on devices that prioritize consuming rather than creating.
2/

Show thread

The situation on desktops regularly pisses me off: desktop apps technically are much better suited to providing a system-wide, consistent and easy UX. But means that all the money for development is going to the web, where tracking is built in and each site defines its own core UX patterns. So now the desktop can't keep up in terms of developer time, and sadly the web is often easier. 1/

With all this news about doing layoffs because they are replacing people with , I wonder if that is actually PR spin and what is actually happening is all the actions are actually biting the monopolists where it hurts: their bottom line

This week in F-Droid (TWIF) was published again.

We have a lot of information in it, so jump right in: f-droid.org/2024/01/25/twif.ht

In short:

- FOSDEM is around the corner.
- We specifically talk about the following apps: Money Manager Ex, Open Video Editor, Tachiyomi, Fossify Phone, KOReader, OnionShare, Organic Maps and OsmAnd~.
- The spring-cleaning of our repo is underway, and we have found some proprietary dependencies. The affected versions were removed.

#FDroid

Court ruling rejects spyware vendor’s motion to dismiss lawsuit filed by Apple. Judge says anti-hacking laws fits #Pegasus case „to a T“. #NSOGroup will fight on theregister.com/2024/01/24/us_ #Staatstrojaner

Fun fact: it's data privacy week 🔒 so here are some of our favorite extensions for a safer online experience.

1. Multi-account containers! cookies are separated by container, so you can use multiple accounts at the same time.

2. Privacy badger: this extension automatically blocks invisible trackers and opts you out of data sharing & selling.

3. History cleaner: this deletes browsing history older than a specified number of days 👀

Which ones are you currently using?

Show more
image/svg+xml Librem Chat image/svg+xml