This year we made good progress. You know, Linux gaming becoming better, Reddit fucking up, Metaverse failing etc. But on the other hand Big Tech has or are planning to make some moves. Such as, Google’s Web Enviroment Integrity API (EDIT: they backed off), UK’s encryption bill, etc.
So what do you think of the future? I’m currently optimistic. I think the best recent event was Reddit fucking up. Obviously one of the biggest information sources going down that path isn’t something to celebrate. But it was bound to happen. I believe decentralized social networks becoming more popular is what Aaron Swartz would have wanted if he saw how Reddit was being managed.
On a Operating system/free software level we’re doing fine. Not great (still no true open source phone OS, Firefox has like 3% market share, lots of closed/unfixable hardware) but you can work and have fun using OSS and it’s not going anywhere. On a global economy level we’re as fucked as always. Big tech isn’t going anywhere and 99% of people will choose convenience over ethics every single time. We’re a minority here and always will be.
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As I explained in other post, AOSP may be open sourced but it still depends on android services owned by google. I have degoogled android and some apps don’t work and other apps require device registration. And of course most apps are still only in play store. We’re not that far for properly open platform and hopefully EU will get as there but we’re not there just yet.
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That’s exactly what I’m doing. One degoogled phone to carry with me and googled one for android auto and stuff. But that’s exactly the issue, you don’t have to do it with Linux.
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By ethics I don’t mean using signal over spying WhatsApp. I mean local shop instead of employee exploiting amazon or mastodon over right wing extremist supporting Twitter. People do understand what amazon and twitter do but not using them is just to much effort for them. Even if it’s not that much effort at all…
Aren’t custom ROM’s open source? It would be nice if you could buy a phone from big brands with it preinstalled already. That would make it so much more accesible.
Even custom ROMs depend heavily on googles services. If you disable all of it you’re loosing some basic features, some apps won’t work and you have problems installing new apps. There are solutions but in the end you’re relaying in googles closes source services.
I know that many people still rely on Google’s services, but speaking from my own experience, it’s not hard to ditch them entirely.
I installed LineageOS 2 months ago, and was only missing my banking app, which I installed using the Aurora store and it works without any issues. For everything else I found alternatives which are, admittedly not as good/users friendly as Google’s. But I wouldn’t say there’s no true FOSS phone OS.