@rimu

So, these are 3000 PieFed sites launched that include organizations promoting terrorist propaganda from organizations like Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, ISIL, and politicized news outlets like Al Jazeera, Breitbart, Fox, and NPR?

I'm almost certain I read that wrong lolz.

Personally, and to avoid the kinds of reactionary outbursts that resulted in the Tusky Fediverse client being briefly removed from the Google PlayStore with it's ratings plummeting from 5's to 2's for hard-coding itself as "Crippleware" while falsely promoting itself as "Free Open Source Software" (and spawning a legion of Chinese forks with the blacklists removed in the PlayStore), I have to question any decision of blaming the software for political weaponization when the software itself has nothing to do with how and in what way any particular individual chooses to say something through it.

That would be like blaming Toyota for the death of a child on a bicycle instead of the drunk miscreant who ran the child over while driving that vehicle.

Conversely, the choice of developers to decide who should be suitable, even permissable, to deploy such software might imply that such software is not in fact free, but rather, an extension of proprietary influences - something that the Fediverse itself is antithetical to - we already have too much corporate injection of content control by the perpetrators with ownership and special interests in the deprecated, proprietary and monolithic silo space in the likes of Faceplant, Twatter, InstaSPAM, Amazon (Twitch) and others; we cannot afford to be that "pot calling the kettle black".

The Fediverse is Supposed to be comprised of software that is free - free as in free from the vagaries of those who would whimsically choose what its users are permitted to see and engage out of the box...

The whole reason for the embodiment of its existence, the Fediverse is the antithesis of that industrial politic.

It's one thing for developers to recommend and urge adopters to observe, the things they endear and reject that which they abhor, yet quite another to overtly restrict the freedoms that users seek to ingest in terms of information of any kind.

It's one thing for administrators that have adopted a policy of moderation to enforce for, and impose upon, their respective user base (who similarly are free to choose having accounts elsewhere), and yet quite another for the software itself to be released as #crippleware, circumventing those choices surrounding the suitability that each particular operator and participant has in their collective and individual rights with respect to the the freedoms which they they are endowed with to decide for themselves what they're actually allowed to consume.

That despicable iron curtain ultimately vaporized, under Gorbachev's tenure, meeting with its final demise on Christmas Day 1991, when the Soviet Union abruptly ceased to exist; on Christmas Day 1989, with the demise of Nikolae and Elena Ceaușescu; when the people of East and West Germany together brought down Erich Honecker's physical wall of partition on 09 November, 1989; and when Lech Wałęsa became President for Solidarność in 1990.

Freedom means just that. Without abridgement or occlusion. That is the spirit and philosophy of FOSS and the oxygen flowing through the arteries of the Fediverse.

Why exactly are we even still handing these #AAA #publishers money for their #crippleware anyway? Just give me the game I paid for and don't annoy me with your anti-features all the time. (In fact I as the player should get paid for having to deal with your bullshit at this point)

I did this "online connectivity" thing back then with "The Settlers 7" from #Ubisoft and I'm not doing it again. It's just annoying and sucks. Nobody deserves to get paid for that "experience".

@linear @hailey In particular because developers in the Free World must oppose barriers placed in front of consumers who seek to also become developers.

(this is a post about game console and smartphone platform security paradigms)

#lockdown #crippleware #DamagedGoods

@danie10 @snikket_im

I personally feel that this is the optimal delivery and update methodology for future software distribution.

I've written about this at length in several articles, and more and more service daemons and client software are taking advantage of this form of direct from the developers method of delivery - not just Android apps.

#FairEmail is one such app that even states in the docs that this is the preferred method, although they do support a total of four methods:

- Google PlayStore - crippleware due to google funding source restrictions. In all cases, this is by far the worst distribution point for software, if not with respect for the product that the developers want to deliver, but also with regards for the privacy of the users who are tracked, mined, and themselves repackaged as a quantifiable inventory item.
- F-Droid custom Dev's repo - 2nd best option, because this is built with the developer's keys when the developer decides to push the product, and contain all feature sets that the developer chooses to include.
- F-Droid repo - 3rd best option, since it is signed with F-Droid's keys and typically lags by some measure of time with respect to release dates, considering that F-Droid staff pushes these out on a best effort basis, according to the time they have available to do so.
- Direct from the developers Git repo - This is the best method. They push a release and the next time you open the app you're notified of an update.

This is part of the magic of Slackware's philosophy too - Patrick and team don't church it up like most distro's do (Debian and AlmaLinux quite often, quite heavily wrt customizations, use Apache or Nginx HTTP servers as examples). Slackware tries to package up software as close to how the upstream intends it to be.

In earlier articles I've published on the topic, I've focused at times on a solution to a theme proffered by #Moxie_Marlinspike, who denigrates the open source model somewhat, for being at a great disadvantage when compared to that of proprietary solutions that can update and evolve protocols, APIs, etc., on a whim, because they're centrally managed and controlled by a single dictatorial source. Microsoft is one such classic example. You simply have NO CHOICE as to when you must allow your software to be EOLed, evolve, or update itself.

Using this model, however, where a central repo, or a distributed, CDN type of repo mirroring is deployed at the origin by the development team itself, FOSS has no problem upgrading even things like protocols as they evolve. Of course, it is ultimately up to the operators of the software to allow updates and the prerogative of the developers to establish the level of nags that users of the software will experience until they permit the updates to occur, but that's beyond the scope of the basis of advocating for this type of delivery model.

Okay I think I'm bordering on hijacking this thread, so I'll make a comment about these types of shennigans by Google, and how one one hand it's certainly a huge frustration, if not an impediment to being found and adopted by users, but moreover, a predatory practice by one of the most egregious violators of personal choice in the free market of consumerism and commerce.

It may hurt being pulled like that, but IMO, I don't think there's anything preventing the good folks behind #Snikket from pushing out the kind of crippleware that google wants them to, while at the same time pushing banner splashes in the app that explain just how fricken' useless it is under the terms necessary to distribute it via that medium, and encouraging users to install it instead by following the instructions at the #git_repo for a fully featured, #e2ee secure messaging platform.

IOW, there's always a silver lining - wear this dejection as a badge of honor and as the evidence to support the fact that you're on the right track!

#tallship #FOSS #privacy #crippleware

⛵

.

@betandr
> It's really bad that people have bought digital content which they then won't have access to any more and also won't get any money back

It's not just bad, it's theft, or fraud, or at the very least, misleading advertising. I hope affected players with money to lawyer up, organise a class action to hold Sony accountable for this.

But this was a predictable result of the #DRM models of game distribution that the big publishers have imposed on players and console makers.

#CrippleWare