For as long as the user has access to the hardware, there will always be those who analyze, defeat, or create alternatives to the existing status quo of software. The FOSS movement was created from the collaborative efforts of hobbyists, and through shared interest in the same goal (avoiding the restrictions of existing software), it will further grow and develop.
A closed loop system like North Korea could feasibly be a way to defeat such a system, but the vast majority of the world is too decentralized for that to happen. Used hardware that can be modded is already saturating the markets, as seen by people keeping existing systems rather than mass adoption of new ones.
For those who are not interested in learning and developing understanding and skills to escape the realities of survailence capitalism, we cannot help them. If we can convince others who are willing to adapt, then control can be maintained for the users as a whole (see our decentralized social network, ActivityPub)
The barrier is not hardware. The barrier is not laws. The barrier is ignorance, and only through informing and educating others can a brighter future be paved.
Edit: also, homebrew and custom hardware will always exist, irrespective of mass market trends.
The FOSS movement was created from the collaborative efforts of hobbyists, and through shared interest in the same goal (avoiding the restrictions of existing software), it will further grow and develop.
Agree with this 100%, the problem is that nowadays half of the FOSS isn’t made by hobbyists, but by big corporations, most Google and M$, which invalid great part of the FOSS philosophy. In great part of OpenSource services which request an account, you see an Pop-up, offering to log in with Google or even Facebook.
Currently it’s sadly mandatory to check three times FOSS before using it, FOSS was nice until this datahogs discovered it as cheap source for their products, not more reliable as any proprietary soft from small startups, even less. Not a good sign for an free internet.
As per the license, such products can be forked and inspected regardless - adoption by such corporations is helpful if not necessary to both snowball the initial stages of development into a product palatable to the mass market, alongside bringing as many eyes as possible to fulfill Linus’ Law.
The FOSS licensing system, at it’s core, allows you to pick ANY fork, and the root source cannot be contaminated, only upstream forks can be with corporate enshittification. All the user needs to do is hear word of mouth about a fork that takes away the problems that you mentioned - Ungoogled Chromium, GrapheneOS, Librewolf, etc… are examples of software one can use without “checking the source three times over”, even if they are partially built with labor contributed by proprietary means.
Yes, but Chromium is a good example, it’s 100% FOSS, but not recommend to use it before “checking three times” to strip out all the Google tracking APIs and other profiling crap (ungoogling it), but this need a big effort by the browser companies, which have to do it on every new release, so their versions are always behind the one from Chrome or others which use Chromium as is.
I don’t see an advantage that big corporations develope OpenSource incorporating their crap, when later devs have more work with forking it than with independent releases.
Librewolf is Gecko and Brave has a big team and a lot of money, sponsored by Facebook and some crypto companies., even so the Brave chromium version is behind of the current from Chrome. There is an blogpost from one of the Vivaldi devs, explaining the work to make and maintain a Chromium fork
For as long as the user has access to the hardware, there will always be those who analyze, defeat, or create alternatives to the existing status quo of software. The FOSS movement was created from the collaborative efforts of hobbyists, and through shared interest in the same goal (avoiding the restrictions of existing software), it will further grow and develop.
A closed loop system like North Korea could feasibly be a way to defeat such a system, but the vast majority of the world is too decentralized for that to happen. Used hardware that can be modded is already saturating the markets, as seen by people keeping existing systems rather than mass adoption of new ones.
For those who are not interested in learning and developing understanding and skills to escape the realities of survailence capitalism, we cannot help them. If we can convince others who are willing to adapt, then control can be maintained for the users as a whole (see our decentralized social network, ActivityPub)
The barrier is not hardware. The barrier is not laws. The barrier is ignorance, and only through informing and educating others can a brighter future be paved.
Edit: also, homebrew and custom hardware will always exist, irrespective of mass market trends.
Agree with this 100%, the problem is that nowadays half of the FOSS isn’t made by hobbyists, but by big corporations, most Google and M$, which invalid great part of the FOSS philosophy. In great part of OpenSource services which request an account, you see an Pop-up, offering to log in with Google or even Facebook. Currently it’s sadly mandatory to check three times FOSS before using it, FOSS was nice until this datahogs discovered it as cheap source for their products, not more reliable as any proprietary soft from small startups, even less. Not a good sign for an free internet.
As per the license, such products can be forked and inspected regardless - adoption by such corporations is helpful if not necessary to both snowball the initial stages of development into a product palatable to the mass market, alongside bringing as many eyes as possible to fulfill Linus’ Law.
The FOSS licensing system, at it’s core, allows you to pick ANY fork, and the root source cannot be contaminated, only upstream forks can be with corporate enshittification. All the user needs to do is hear word of mouth about a fork that takes away the problems that you mentioned - Ungoogled Chromium, GrapheneOS, Librewolf, etc… are examples of software one can use without “checking the source three times over”, even if they are partially built with labor contributed by proprietary means.
Yes, but Chromium is a good example, it’s 100% FOSS, but not recommend to use it before “checking three times” to strip out all the Google tracking APIs and other profiling crap (ungoogling it), but this need a big effort by the browser companies, which have to do it on every new release, so their versions are always behind the one from Chrome or others which use Chromium as is. I don’t see an advantage that big corporations develope OpenSource incorporating their crap, when later devs have more work with forking it than with independent releases.
If that were true, then how do Brave and Librewolf even exist? Clearly it was less work to strip the garbage than to start from scratch.
Librewolf is Gecko and Brave has a big team and a lot of money, sponsored by Facebook and some crypto companies., even so the Brave chromium version is behind of the current from Chrome. There is an blogpost from one of the Vivaldi devs, explaining the work to make and maintain a Chromium fork
https://yngve.vivaldi.net/sooo-you-say-you-want-to-maintain-a-chromium-fork/