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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: November 3rd, 2021

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  • Actually, FLOSS is more precise, given the “L” coming from “libre” in castilian (spanish now a days) referring explicitly to freedom. But it so happen open source != free/libre software, therefore open source usually disregard the philosophic aspect of freedom, which might turn against the users interest, which is what GNU guys were trying to prevent all along, because focusing in the practical aspects, without any concern on the principals behind, actually do have implications on the software itself and its usage.







  • FLOSS used to include the ability to build software. Perhaps that’s not important anymore but now a days some developers don’t attend problems with their build recipes because they only consider what they release through binaries, whether on flatpak or whatever other binary repository they like. At least I dislike that, it’s ok to me some or most users would prefer to grab a bloated binary rather than building anything, but that doesn’t mean forgetting about those actually wanting to build from source, or wanting to use shared libraries and software from their distros, actually that’s a requirement for free/libre software repositories. Not sure if the tendency is to move the gnu+linux users into app stores like the ones on windows, now ubuntu snaps, android play store and the like. Sure there’s more security with sandboxing, but nothing one can’t get with firejail, and if wanting MAC as well then firejail + apparmor for example.

    At any rate, just my little rant. And if you’re wondering, I use AUR on Artix, and I really hope I won’t have a need for a flatpak stuff.




  • Librewolf is a privacy oriented fork of Firefox, it grabs some setting from arkenfox. Betterbird is not a privacy oriented fork of Thunderbird as far as I remember. When I tried it the only thing I was attracted to was its tray support, but as I use non DE compositors, so far wayfire, labwc and sway (tabbed layout), and as there’s currently a Firefox bug, I didn’t see any reason to keep trying it, and now on sway with tabbed layout I see no reason for a tray any ways…



  • Have you tried enabling webgl, which by default is disable on Librewolf? You can do that by overwriting the corresponding setting, as it can be done for any Librewolf setting, in particular the webgl override needed is:

    defaultPref("webgl.disabled", false);
    

    If you do, Librewolf recommend using the extension “CanvasBlocker” given the fingerprinting allowed by webgl. There’s a settings doc BTW…




  • I don’t agree with what is written in that blog BTW, 1st I like that there’s a repo that at least tries as best as it can to protect the free software aspect of the apps, which many disregard but are pretty important to me, that’s one of the main values from f-droid for me. Proprietary binary components can include many invasive “features” one is not aware of. As requirement the source code and building from it is required. If you build from source, removing proprietary dependencies for example you’ll get a different binary, and that requires a new signature on the final package. F-droid has improved a lot on reproducible builds. And I’ve read in several places magnifying the issue of apks from official f-droid being moths later compared to original developer release, my own experience is different, and when I’ve written, I immediately get a reaction from someone which doesn’t agree with me (I never reply back). I’ve read about the single entity signature, but that alone should not be an issue, otherwise we would be distrusting packages from debian, arch, and so on, which use a set of signatures to sign all of their packages, particularly when the build and signing process is automated, in some distros most packages come signed by the same bot. The issue about using a VM with a LTS distro about to expire or already expired is a valid one, but can you blame them when migrating breaks their flows and they don’t have enough hands, and that got overcome any ways. Now a days things are working fine AFAIK. That the clients support multiple repos violate an android policy, oh well, I don’t care much about android policies, and google for that matter, which collects a ton of data from users and people forgets about what that means, but what a bad practice not to follow those policies.

    I believe some people really dislike free software, which is not the same as open source, one really need to value the four basic freedoms it procures, and if one doesn’t give a dumb for whatever reason then one doesn’t really appreciate free software, perhaps all one wants is not paid software, which is not the same. Free has two meanings and people often gets confused, and f-droid is about free software. It’s true they can’t guarantee every single bit of their content, but they trying through their policies and a few scripts has value to me, and taking a look at what free software meaning and the basic freedoms it looks to preserve is important to be understood before complaining about an organization trying to offer free software. It would be more appropriate if the terminology changes to use the spanish “libre” word instead, but it is what it is, that why sometimes FOSS is instead referred as FLOS (free/libre or free and libre). And true, as a result developers who want to provide apks through f-droid and also through non free software app stores or repos (whatever makes more sense) need to have in place something to account for the differences, and that’s not optimal, but there’s a good reason for it, but some developers just don’t want to do it and even less not depending on android proprietary stuff or other proprietary stuff for that matter, which is their prerogative any ways.

    A little rant of mine, not we all have to agree over the same arguments I guess.





  • Well, to me xmpp is the way to go, but I guess it’s not a matter of opinion, but rather understanding the motivation.

    Why is your dad looking for telegram? What caused your dad to look into it? Perhaps digging into those, one can make a case with alternative more private options. For sure one can always argue in general the already mentioned alternatives, and the ones to come are better privacy wide, but it boils down to why is him looking to use telegram. If it’s about having friends or co-workers, or a high school set of friends there, I would think there’s no way to change his mind, :( But more technology arguments like stickers, better voice/video conferences, whatever, then that’s more something that can be argued I would think, the same way if he’s just looking for something more private of course.