I think it’s important to have boundaries. If we keep our operating systems fully free, it will be harder for anyone to pressure us to add proprietary components to them. But if our OSes already contain non-free components, it’s not that hard to add more. We not only want freedom, we also want to keep it.
It also needs to be clear for the people in our community that our main goal is freedom and getting rid of proprietary software. Convenience is less important.
I didn’t say that I’m never going to install any firmware updates. I just don’t want to put it in my system if it’s proprietary.
The world won’t change itself. If people did nothing 40 years ago, there wouldn’t be a Free Software movement.
It sounds like you are not using a fully free distro anyway. Most of the popular distros contain proprietary firmware, so what’s the problem?
I am forced to keep proprietary firmware in my OS to use the hardware and that’s what you are advocating for. You want everyone to be forced to do that. But I don’t want anything proprietary in my system. I see no reason why I should have a proprietary firmware package installed for my GPU to work. The firmware could be just on the device itself and if someone wants to change it, then they can install the package in their OS. But maybe there could also be some other way.
The problem is that people don’t care about freedom, security or privacy. If they cared, they would only choose software that gives them those things. They would use Free Software. Even when it’s not always convenient.
So the issue here is not capitalism, but non-free proprietary software, because it makes it easy to abuse users. Unfortunately most people haven’t even heard of Free Software. They don’t realise that they deserve certain rights when using computers. I think if more people were familiar with the Free Software movement, they would think differently and they would demand freedom. Not all Lemmy users have heard of Free Software, but many of us understand that freedom is important. So we use it, even though it’s not convenient and the UI sucks.
We are capable of competing with corporations and often making better software that them, but that’s not enough. If people don’t understand the issues we are trying to solve, they will just use whatever new shiny app that comes out next. That’s why some Twitter users migrated to Bluesky and Threads. They don’t understand that after a while they will be abused the same way as before.
Even if we make Matrix way better, Discord users will still use Discord, because to them everything is fine and there is no reason to switch. Learning to use something new is always inconvenient. I doubt that all Windows users are unable to switch to GNU/Linux. They just don’t think it’s worth the effort, because to them there is nothing wrong. Being spied on and restricted is ok as long as all their proprietary games work.
You don’t know what the proprietary update contains. It can be a security fix, but also a backdoor. People can decide on their own if they want to update, but I see no reason why I must be forced to have proprietary stuff in my system. I want a fully libre distro. I can’t switch to one, because I would have to give up on using AMD GPUs, because people like you say that this is fine.
That’s not certain and them getting absolute power also isn’t.
So to me it sounds a bit like the arguments that they like to use. Like:
if we accept immigrants, they will slowly replace us and destroy the country
Technically maybe that could happen, but there are many other things that could also happen and that you are failing to consider.
But nobody is saying that there shouldn’t be a way to update firmware. Firmware just shouldn’t a be part of the OS, unless it’s free. Adding proprietary components to our systems will only make it harder for us to keep our freedom.
I will be crushed when this happens along with millions of others, like you, who thought this could never happen again.
Be careful of the slippery slope fallacy.
Everyone is overwhelmed when learning to program or even learning a new framework. This is normal. We just do our best to ignore that feeling and keep going. You will often fail and sometimes spend hours wondering why something doesn’t work. But eventually it will become easier and you will be able to make cool things. Python and JavaScript are good languages for beginners (but choose one).
If you would like to contribute to Libre Software, there are other ways you can do it too. You can join some chat rooms for a specific project and help people when they have issues. You can help to document things or help translate stuff.
The FSF’s stance is just based on our current capabilities. Most people still use proprietary operating systems. We are capable of developing free alternatives of non-free programs, even very complicated ones. But it’s not realistic to think that we can currently replace all firmware for any device if we don’t know how it works. The amount of products that have the RYF certificate is already very small. Even Librem 5 didn’t manage to get it. When it becomes easier, I’m sure they will change the requirements or add more levels.
I’m pretty sure Libreboot contains proprietary firmware now and GNU is planning to develop an actually libre fork. So it’s silly for the developer to criticize the FSF for not being radical enough. It makes me think that the person doesn’t really believe in what they are saying.
But then the author says they want us to have proprietary firmware packages in our systems. So they want our OSes to be less libre… They even compare not including proprietary firmware to burning books… I stopped reading after that.
Yeah I don’t understand what email has to do with crypto wallets at all.
He will just do the same thing as last time. He is too lazy to look something up online so he will just give up and say it’s not ready yet.
Also couldn’t he have just downloaded steam from its website?
Remember that time when he uninstalled his desktop environment? :D
But we need to convince people to care about freedom too. There will always be some excuse to not use the freedom respecting alternative. Look at Reddit users. They could all join us here and change something, but they don’t care. Same with Twitter, Windows, etc. It’s always difficult, it’s always annoying. But if we spread the message and help people with their issues, we can convince at least some of them.
Software takes time to improve. Matrix is a complicated project and unlike Discord it’s also federated. It’s possible that some things will always be harder with Matrix. But even if it improves a lot (which will probably take years), people might find other excuses to not use it. For example Discord might still be more popular.
I know Matrix takes effort to use. You have to understand what a homeserver is, how fediverse works, etc. I had to go through even more effort to set up my own server. It was difficult and took a lot of time of reading the documentation and tutorials. Some of the problems I had were ridiculous. Then to get people to use my server, I had to guide them step by step on how to create an account, because you can’t just send them an invite link.
But we can’t just give up on our freedom and privacy. We are aware of Matrix’s issues and they won’t be fixed in a month or even a year. In the future Discord will have even more users and it will be even harder to escape it. So there is no reason to wait, we have to fight this battle now. This is the right thing to do.
Ah, interesting. I didn’t realise that it was slow.
I bought The Orange Box, so I had the same problem. All physical copies of games are like this now and Valve is the reason. That killed the used games market on PC. You used to be able to sell your game after you got bored of it, but not anymore.
GOG’s client is proprietary just like Steam and Epic, which is bad, but the difference is that their client is optional. You can get offline installers of games directly from the website, because games there are DRM-free. So that makes GOG better than those platforms. There is also a Free Software alternative client developed by the community - Heroic Games Launcher. It works with Epic Games Store as well.
Another store is itch.io, which sells DRM-free games and their optional client is Free Software. But this store only has indie games.
I don’t understand what fantasies you are talking about. We just want people to have freedom when using computers. Freedom that they deserve and that nobody should be able to take away from them. As a side effect we also get privacy and security and a society that works together to achieve common goals in a way that benefits us all. Those problems affect everyone who uses a computer.
The Free Software movement is 40 years old and it has already changed the world. It benefits everyone, not just technical people. Are you gonna tell me that all users of Firefox, Libre Office, Gimp, Matrix or Signal are only technical people? You are talking to me right now using Free Software and I’m responding to you on my fully Free Software operating system.
Free Software is not a licensing method. Software has to use licenses, because that’s how copyright works. It doesn’t give users any rights by default. Software should be free (as in freedom - we are not talking about price) by default, but it isn’t, so we have to use licenses. The Free Software that we use today was created under capitalism, so I don’t see how capitalism prevents us from making useful software and working together on improving it. There are also many developers and companies that sell Free Software (they make commercial programs).