I have no opinion and am just seeking clarification as an admin who occasionally gets complaints that I’m unsure how to address.
Thanks!
cc: @[email protected] (the most active [email protected] mod)
Edit to add an example edge case: DuckDuckGo is proprietary, but is anyone going to argue against its promotion? Isn’t Proton Mail similarly only FOSS on the client side?
Proprietary software = software thats not open source
yes its still followed
yes its still relevant
if the software is closed source then you dont know if it respects your privacy or not, and 99% of the time it doesnt
And even if it does, the policy can change in the future and nobody will be able to fork and save it
See: Unraid
Ddg wouldn’t be all proprietary then? https://github.com/duckduckgo/
almost every proprietary thing, including windows and macos, has some open source components.
Yes, if your talking about non free JavaScript
How about we also avoid “source available” software as well
Can you define “source available”? I’m not sure if I understand the term.
Source code is a available but the license is unclear or doesn’t allow for the user to run, study, modify and distribute the source code.
yes, it still is enforced.
And sometimes the mods are really overzealous enforcing it. Or at least they were on Reddit.
example: i said that i liked the Layout of Outlook and my Comment got removed because that was endorcement of closed-source Software to them. on a Post where i asked which Programs i could use to replace Outlook
so: yes and yes.
P.S: I’m still grateful to them for moderating this community for me. No bad feelings, love you guy <3
fwiw, besides the “Proton’s Free plan now offers up to […] after completing certain tasks.” post earlier, i also just deleted some adverinfonewstainment tutanota spam blogpost ("Chat Control May Finally Be Dead: European Court Rules That Weakening Encryption Is Illegal") from this community.
tutanota is just like protonmail except there is more evidence indicating that they are primarily a honeypot for privacy-seeking rubes (as opposed to protonmail where it is maybe only obvious to people knowledgeable about the history of the privacy industry).
People should be skeptical of anyone selling a service involving cryptography software which has nearly no conceivable purpose except for to protect against the entity delivering the software. Especially if they re-deliver the software to you every time you use it, via a practically-impossible-to-audit channel, and require you to identify yourself before re-receiving it (as almost any browser-based e2ee software which doesn’t require installing any software does, due to the current web architecture).
If you think this kind of perfect-for-targeted-exploitation architecture isn’t regularly used for targeted exploitation… well, you’re mistaken. In the web context specifically, it has been happening since the 90s.
imo this community should not tolerate advertising (or other posts who’s purpose is to encourage using/purchasing) this type of deceptively-marketed service.
In his testimony, Mr. Ortis said that Tutanota was in fact a “storefront” for police and intelligence agencies. Rather than offering secure email, he testified, it allowed investigators to harvest users’ communications, which were then distributed through the intelligence alliance of mainly English speaking allies known as Five Eyes.
Wow. Okay then.
Software freedom is about what you, the user, run on your own hardware. Different concerns apply to server software. The client side is what matters as that’s what you run on your hardware, but if the server side is free as well then you are not tied to the service provider and can use a different service provider or run your own instance.
With server software, the main concern is “Service as a Software Substitute” - doing your computing on “cloud” (someone else’s computer). See Who does that server really serve?.
