Yeah and this still wouldn’t cover something like xz-utils because I would only be aware of end user projects and not the libraries behind them. I’d have to draw up entire dependency graphs.

I was going to say that Cloudflare uses nginx but I found that’s no longer true.

I feel like this is overlooked far too often. I rarely see anyone use data structures outside of (array) list and hash table and any attempt to use something descriptive of the problem is often shot down because of “familiarity,” which is sort of self-fulfilling.

I get away with flagging lists which should be sets, though.

Where did you get 100 from? I’m just asking if it’s a real limit or a guess at “some manageable number” under one million.

It can be worth experimenting and tuning this value. You might even find that less than 100 works better.

Nice to know, I was pretty sure my experience was purely anecdotal.

I can anecdotally say that the more right-leaning people I know are the most anti-FOSS but I’m not sure that applies generally.

Even that comes with a caveat: the people I know disagree with it philosophically, i.e. they can’t see how it can work for the maintainer and won’t donate, yet are as happy as anyone to use something for free.

Just to throw out another one, there’s also Cloudflare Pages.

I agree. When I learned programming over a decade ago, I didn’t follow a course and I’m not sure courses were particularly widespread. Looking back, what I made was terrible quality but it got better with time. At first I’d even copy entire sections of code into place unsure of what it really does and eventually I would make it work. It sounds like OP is much further along than that. Just make something, it’s the best part!

I’ve noticed advocates for exclusively for libre software and actively discourage simple open source software for not going far enough, also want censorship of not allowing any proprietary software to be mentioned, and don’t allow any critiques of the software they use because it’s libre software so there are no faults or bad designs.

I mean, proprietary software isn’t popular with people who strongly advocate for free and open source software. At the same time, lots of companies criticize FOSS. Shall we talk about that too? Either way, they have no obligation to cater to you.

I thoroughly enjoy the code purity of what is labelled as libre software, for license I only like the ISC license for freedom. My attitude is if someone changes my code and doesn’t give back, it does not harm me or injury me in any way.

It may or may not harm you, it depends. It will probably harm the user. Namely; some software is inherently monopolistic. For example, operating systems are monopolistic because targeting more than one is hard for many applications and so we target the few most popular. If you create an OS with a permissive license and it becomes popular, whoever manages to create the most popular fork of it has the power to close the source, drop compatibility and form a monopoly because application developers want to target the most popular fork and users want to run those applications so will use the most popular fork. Whether the owner of the fork did most of the work on the OS or not, they get to reap the rewards of the monopoly. How is that fair or beneficial to anyone in this situation except the owner of the monopolistic fork? How are people supposed to reliably share a standard with each other if the draw bridge can be raised any time major popularity is achieved? The problem here is, only proprietary forks have the ability to do this. You have to actively deny or limit proprietary forks to stop this situation. It depends on the application but the choice of license can have huge implications.

I also believe libre software can be used for the surveillance of other people, libre software does not be default mean privacy.

Yes there are examples of this and we fork those projects to not include tracking for those who care enough about it. Can you do that with proprietary software?

On the principal of freedom, I do support the right to develop proprietary software. The fact that it exists does not harm anyone who chooses not to use proprietary software.

How does the existence of FOSS infringe on your right to create proprietary software? If you mean that people at the FSF disagree with you, that’s just a disagreement. Maybe their personal view is extreme and against your personal liberties but that’s not the same as software freedom.

It seems the die hard libre software crowd, not open source people but the ones who want to live in an only GPLv3+ world can start to live in ther own world, their own bubble, and become disconnected losing perspective that which software other people use is not something that should affect your day in any way.

As is their right. I mean, it only gets difficult if someone exclusively uses FOSS and you only accept contact via iMessage. Though, if you disagree that much, maybe you shouldn’t be in contact.

Maybe you’ve just found the folks at the FSF have some extreme views? Please consider, what would it say if Richard Stallman waltzed into a presentation holding an iPad? They kind of have to take the most extreme view, they’d be pretty shoddy advocates otherwise.

Audacity was probably, unknowingly, the first GPL program I directly used as a kid (as in, not a library or software on a server.) We had it on school computers and made silly voice recordings.

It was either that or Tux paint where we made silly drawings :)

Yeah. When a Chromebook can satisfy the needs of a lot of users, I feel some distros were ready even a decade ago.

The installation step is a huge hurdle. I don’t know anyone, except techies, who has done it and even some techies haven’t. You can make it pretty (and some installers are both pretty and dead simple) but getting it on a thumb drive and booting from external media are just not user-friendly steps.

I love Briar for the Bluetooth chat functionality, I use it to chat with friends when we haven’t paid for allocated seats on flights.

I never thought of that, that’s a really good point. I disliked anyway it because it was for one random currency where it’s easy to just send a wallet address over Signal for whichever cryptocurrency you like.

The list in the first one is so hilariously ridiculous that I have to remind myself how grave the accusations are.

• the use of applications such as Signal, WhatsApp, Wire, Silence or ProtonMail to encrypt communications;
• the use of tools to protect your privacy on the Internet such as a VPN, Tor or Tails;
• protecting ourselves against the exploitation of our personal data by GAFAM via services such as /e/OS, LineageOS, F-Droid;
• encryption of digital media;
• organization and participation in digital hygiene training sessions;
• the mere possession of technical documentation.

I have ticked almost all of these boxes at some point as a privacy conscious software developer. I wonder what I’m plotting?

The reality is, sometimes it’s not even about the state. I’m well aware that they are such an adversary that, if I were specifically targeted for something I would want to hide, I’m in for a really bad time.

Sometimes, it’s about the data advertisers collect and use to sell me more crap. Sometimes, it’s about disagreeing with dragnet surveillance. Sometimes, it’s about refusing to have these very valuable services be associated only with criminal intent.

Journalists, victims of abuse, whistleblowers and every day people just trying to have private lives have a use for some or all of these tools.

Also, WhatsApp and ProtonMail have access to metadata about who you are contacting as well as subject lines and, in the case of WhatsApp, images. They might avoid some ad targeting but both are pretty stupid tools to use if you’re trying to hide something from the government. They both only scratch the surface of what we really need to avoid dragnet surveillance and yet are still better than many alternatives.