Guix is currently hosted on FSF infrastructure and, as another commenter pointed out, is in the process of migrating to Codeberg. It has never been on Github.

microG replaces the Play services application on your device, but it’s still going to be dependent on Google servers if you are using push notifications. There’s no way around that unless the app supports a non-Google alternative such as UnifiedPush or even just a web socket.

open source, but not free

Free here means free-as-in-freedom. The free software definition and open source definition are almost identical, there are very few apps that are only one or the other.

It’s the free software movement, though - the four freedoms are literally the cornerstone of the movement. They’re not simply a “nice to have” they’re the bare minimum of what we should ask for. If we promote non-free “alternatives” we are saying that these basic freedoms are not an expectation, but are optional and negotiable - we are moving the message away from the four freedoms and towards “evil” proprietary applications, while making exceptions for the “lesser evil” ones.

When I say Obsidian is non-free I am not saying Obsidian is evil or you are not allowed to use it. As non-free apps go Obsidian is probably one of the least-worst, as you and many others point out it is just a markdown editor so there is no vendor lock in or weird proprietary format. I am simply saying, this is a movement focused on “the four freedoms” and Obsidian does not meet those four very basic criteria.

Proprietary software is proprietary no matter how “nice” it is. It should not be advertised in FOSS communities and falsely presenting it as “FOSS adjacent” is harmful to the movement IMO.

There are many places so called “good proprietary apps” can be promoted and discussed.

Plenty of people who (I assume) are smarter than Trump don’t understand that FOSS refers to freedom, not price. It’s not a very good term and I don’t like how widely used it is now.

The one that says that Android is Linux therefore every Android device is a Linux phone (or tablet, etc).

This is often dismissed as a technicality but as every thread on so-called “mobile Linux” demonstrates, so-called “Linux phones” are judged basically on how well they can run Android crapware… just as “desktop Linux” is more or less judged solely on how well it can run Windows apps. Unlike Windows, however, Android is open source(-ish) and already a Linux operating system.

Most people who want to “switch to Linux” don’t actually care about Linux, they just want Windows that doesn’t suck. I imagine most people who want “mobile Linux” similarly want a non-sucky Android… which actually exists, unlike Windows.

If what you want is “Mobile Linux that can run Android apps” go install GrapheneOS or LineageOS or whatever.

This is not so much an “ActivityPub problem” as it is just how things work when you move something from point A to point B. You can’t unsend an email (or physical mail) or untell a secret.

The idea that you can just delete something on a whim is an illusion created by the centralized silo networks, and it’s not even true those cases as it’s generally a soft delete, and archived by other means anyway.

“linux phone”

Don’t make me tap the sign

Linux is the kernel, so the userspace is irrelevant. And I’m not sure what the exact amount of Linux you can change before it is no longer Linux, but it’s Linux enough to run entire desktop environments.

Disagree - making it harder to ship proprietary blob crap “for Linux” is a feature, not a bug.

I just think it’s worth to keep in mind that the most widely used smartphone OS already is a Linux… especially since people who want so called “real Linux phones” end up wanting to run Android crapware on them anyway.

If you want a Linux phone that can run Android apps, they are very plentiful. You can even run so-called Linux applications including entire desktop environments. Android is very much not a “fake Linux.”

(That is not to say I have no interest in non-Android Linuxes, I just don’t think it’s worth switching just so you can claim to run “real Linux”)

Framing this as a problem specific to open source implies that proprietary applications are inherently more trustworthy. Regardless, the reason to use free software is so you can have the four freedoms, not necessarily because it is easier to audit.

Yes, pre-NT Windows actually was DOS. Windows 95 was MS-DOS 7.0.

This is strikingly similar to an account on reddit that has been posting variations of some LLM-generated screed about the supposed problem of trust in open source. I wonder what the end goal of this is.

Android is Linux.

There is always good old Thunderbird.

According to the official fediverse account of Thunderbird, they are not going to adopt the new Firefox EULA.

It’s a cultural thing mainly. Things like rust and npm came out of the “Github generation” of open source developers which trend towards permissive licensing, in part thanks to Github’s own anti-copyleft bias. Github’s founder openly advocated to “open source almost everything” (the “almost” part being “core business value”), arguing that open source serves as a foundation upon which to build proprietary products. In this world, participating in open source is merely a way to gain PR and volunteer labor for the proprietary product.

I’m not automatically opposed to permissive licensing (nor is FSF/GNU, in fact!) but in making it the norm we put proprietary software companies in control of what ultimately becomes available in the commons.

It’s not free and open source.

I am not exactly defending this particular scheme but the source code is available under a free software license. It’s only the binaries that are under a proprietary EULA.

No part of a free software license requires that binaries be made available (gratis or otherwise) or that users be allowed to submit bug reports or feature requests. It is also not against the free software movement philosophy to sell free software.