LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 3, 2020 19:56 UTC (Fri) by erwaelde (subscriber, #34976)
Parent article: LWN's 2020 vision

"the free-software community has to think more deeply about what it is creating"

I fully agree. And it is encouraging to see that I'm not alone, thanks!

Very often I feel discouraged and I have to admit that I have largely quit to explain to the nice people around me, how this horrible world of spying on everyone works. Alas, a young colleague of mine explained to me just today, that she is still using a paper calendar, because she can't get accustomed to put everything into the phone. So there is hope!

If you get a hold on John Brunner's novel "The Shockwave Rider" published in 1975 or so, I highly recommend to read it. Our world is surprisingly close to the one described in this book. And there is hope in that story as well :-)

analog: vinyl records are on the rise, photographic cameras are cheap, photographic film is still available, a typewriter is a marvelous invention ... go, get wild!

Cheers, Erich

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 4, 2020 5:46 UTC (Sat) by alison (subscriber, #63752) [Link] (3 responses)

>If you get a hold on John Brunner's novel "The Shockwave Rider" published in
>1975 or so, I highly recommend to read it. Our world is surprisingly close to
>the one described in this book.

I thought David Brin's _The Transparent Society_ was ridiculously paranoid when I first heard of it, but have had cause to change my mind.

>analog: vinyl records are on the rise, photographic cameras are cheap,
>photographic film is still available, a typewriter is a marvelous invention

The refrigerator etc. work fine without Bluetooth or WiFi. Continue to use the new one and just turn that crap off. On my Android phone I simply block or disable just about all the spy devices and uninstall or disable the Google crapware.

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 4, 2020 5:59 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

> On my Android phone I simply block or disable just about all the spy devices and uninstall or disable the Google crapware.

The funny thing is that in the Android ecosystem, the "Google crapware" is probably the most trustworthy and privacy-respecting of the lot -- not to mention light-years better than the actual phone carriers.

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 4, 2020 6:15 UTC (Sat) by alison (subscriber, #63752) [Link] (1 responses)

> the "Google crapware" is probably the most trustworthy and
> privacy-respecting of the lot -- not to mention light-years better than the
> actual phone carriers.

An unlocked phone not financed by the phone carrier can have very little crapware. Saying that Google's applications are better than (for example) Samsung's is hardly high praise. Many Google applications can be replaced by F-Droid equivalents, but we have beaten this topic to death before.

No one responded by Jon's comments about Project GNU leadership. Nothing would help FOSS as much as younger, inspiring leadership at Project GNU and Free Software Foundation. This comment is not intended to disparage John Sullivan or other dedicated staff, but simply to note that someone as prominent as Stallman but better in touch with the present and more positive in tone could really help revive the movement.

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 4, 2020 14:14 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> An unlocked phone not financed by the phone carrier can have very little crapware.

I'm not referring to the apps themselves (though they are generally quite awful) but the backend services the apps talk to. Google doesn't sell your data, or data about you. The phone carriers on the other hand, happily intercept and track everything you do, and sell that information to whomever waves a few dollars their way.

As for app makers -- most of them are frontends for some sort of service, and providing services cost money. If the user isn't paying, then they're not the customer, but the product. F-Droid doesn't free you from the need for backend services, and most users are incapable of self-hosting their own.

> No one responded by Jon's comments about Project GNU leadership. Nothing would help FOSS as much as younger, inspiring leadership at Project GNU and Free Software Foundation.

I disagree. The world, with all of its privacy- and rights-violating joy, is built on top of F/OSS. F/OSS "won" the software battle, but the war is pretty much lost. One can't compete against services by providing software. Even the "services" battle has already largely been lost, as the real fight is over who gets to control/aggregate/mine your data, and these days the showdowns are between $BigCorp and $Government -- not because the government cares about the welfare of little guy, but because the government wants that datamining power for itself.

This ceased to be a struggle over software rights a long time ago.