DropboxAPI was a standalone cloud storage that Dropbox seems to have repurposed, because of course they did.

Yeah, I managed to get it by saving it from Libre as a docx.

This one looks cool. I have essentially settled on Cryptpad, but I like the look of this one too.

Indeed. I agree with everything you said here.

Most of my quandary stems from patants at this point I guess. Copyright reform advocates are plentiful, but patant reform is much more rarely mentioned and IMHO is a bigger issue for progress and development of society. The anticompetitive practice of purchasing patants so you can bury them gets deep under my skin. There are so many things that have been invented, problems that have been solved, potential progress that has had the first steps made, that was squelched because some person/company with more money than civic duty realized that it would negatively affect their revenue stream. And instead of developing the idea and incorporating it to make their own products better, they just hide if in a vault somewhere.

That all said, I cannot describe how happy I was when I heard of some rogue patant whore activists out there coming up with ideas for enshittification and patanting them so corpos cannot use those specific methods to enshittify our world more. I wish I had been able to patant the SaaS architecture when I graduated HS in 2003. Maybe the world would be a much better place.

Your response is well written and entirely misses the mark. Also, there are 100% free alternatives with all most all of the same features as Google Docs that have been suggested here. I am so confused by how far off the mark you are from both my OP and the general content of the responses here.

I am loving the look of cryptpad, but for some reason when I open the .odt file I exported from docs it does not actually bring in any of the info. LibreOffice opens it perfectly and shows the comments and suggestions and everything, so I am not sure what to do to get it working.

The fact it is a hot take here is literally the topic of this post.

Unpopular opinion around here, but I feel that there is a place for IP in the world. Yes, it is a flawed system that is abused by corpos, but it is also a system that can and does protect the work of the little guy. Copyleft has a place, FOSS has a place, and copyright, needs reformed.

DMCA should never have been signed into law the way it was. It limited “free use” way too much and is now being weaponized by police to shirk accountability. Corporations abuse it by buying up technology which would compete with them and burying it. Etc.

My fix:

• Repeal DMCA. Full stop.
• Place a requirement on patant/IP purchases that they have to be a material component of a product brought to market within 5 years of purchase else the ownership of the patant/IP reverts to its original creator with no recompense to the purchaser.
• No transfer of ownership of purchased IP can be made without informing the original creator and giving a reasonable period for them to object. If they object, they must have the right to file the complaint in court to reassert ownership, which may involve reasonable recompense as decided by the court. Also, all clauses in current contracts related to transfer of ownership become void and unenforceable.
• Any purchases made of patants or technical IP must be commensurate with the market cap of the highest level owner in the subsidiary chain. Nestlè does not get to buy the design for a new water filtration under some barely visible water brand to pretend like they cannot afford to pay what it is worth.
• Not specific, but still relevant, to patant/IP situations: Forced arbitration becomes illegal and unenforceable. Everyone has the right to demand their case go before, and be adjudicated by, an impartial and uninvolved judge.

I have had other reforms, but they are not coming to mind currently. I know it is all a very unpopular opinion around here, but I am personally an independent developer and I want my tools and the code I designed to be used for the purposes I have designed them for, and I don’t want someone lifting algorithms I invented and not giving credit or licensing it from me. I am one man who has a family that he struggles to feed, and I recognize that the copyright and patant protections are, ostensibly, there to protect my work as well.

If you do the smoothing steps it can be OK, especially if you sand it in a sealed environment or with a HEPA vacuum handy to suck up all of the particulates. Once it is sanded you can do a short acetone treatment and the surface will be melted smooth. It can take some practice, but you can seal it up pretty well without sacrificing quality. Just be mindful of air quality and filtering at each step so you don’t undermine your goal.

Also, no matter what the microplastic impact on the environment is less than a mouse made in a factory thar doesn’t pay attention to any of its air quality standards.

No, it’s still true. They are being accused of being brown in the USA. Or being a political rival. Remember, the government can accuse anyone of anything, due process sorts out if the accusations have merit… Oh wait.

Captchas are really getting out of hand.

They have turned life into an idle game and are bored now?

I wasn’t simping so much as arguing we have much more relevant set of billionaires to direct ire to.

Even in your example, he is helping get states to invest in medicine for their populace. Is it wholly altruistic, no. Could it end up as a net positive, possibly. I only said he was trying to get his karmic balance sheet to look better, not that he had miraculously become a good person.

Eh, I would have agreed 20 years ago, but of late he seems to be at least trying to right the books before he shuffles off this mortal coil.

Besides, we have new oligarchs to shit on and blame for things and they are infinitely more culpable and shitty than he ever was really.

That is interesting and a bit anarcho, and I will not say I disagree, but I am of two minds given my distinct role on both sides of the line. We have made some of our code public, but there are privacy and security concerns given we are handling people’s personal data and private artwork, so exposing the whole codebase exposes potential security flaws, so keeping parts closed source makes sense. Balancing people’s privacy has to be a consideration as well when dealing with offering services.

Just wanting to make sure I understand your position, only open source code can be ethical?

I get what you are sayin, but it was not an advertisement since I am acting as a citizen, not an employee. I wanted to actually share that I was proud of my bosses for doing things the way they should. If we don’t share the ones that behave right, they will all vanish because it is not as profitable to behave right as it is to abuse customers and employees. I would encourage anyone who works somewhere that acts with honor and respect to share it and offer proof of why it is true. Laude the laudable, ya know? We do a good job of calling out the pieces of shit, but not for offering alternatives.

Edit: why is it wrong to laude a company I work for because they are ethical and doing business how it should be done? If we do not share the good companies as alternatives how will we ensure that they stick around?

I am actually very proud that the company I work for literally does not tick a single box.

www.GridMarkets.com

We are a cloud infrastructure company that caters to animation and visual effects artists. We sponsor people’s passion projects. Everything is a prepay model that does not have any minimums and actually let’s you zero your account. No advertising, no data harvesting (I can say that with confidence as I would be the person doing it if it were happening and I don’t). Genuine altruism and genuine customer centric development. And the culture is not toxic in the slightest. The owners always make sure we are all paid before taking a dime and never take more than they pay the rest of us. It is seriously such a good company.

They also do compute for computational chemistry, prosumer AI platforming (providing access to ComfyUI, A1111, etc, not actually building AIs or stealing anyone’s data), and we can handle just about anything else.

If anyone out there has need for compute power for anything and want to work with a company that actually gives a shit, reach out. Especially if it is in a vertical space we already provide services in.

Because a browser is several orders of magnitudee more complex than a website.

I like to believe that Billy Ignore instructions is Bobby Tables’ kid.