binomialxenon

I think (end-user computing) corporations have just become selfish. Even pre-iPhone, phones such as Windows Mobile, Palm Pilot, Symbian, and J2ME all allowed sideloading and didn't mine the users' data (as far as I know). On the desktop, Windows and OS X were both profitable and successful without locking out third-party software or mining all the user's data.

Money can still be made through app stores (exclusivity is not needed - I'm sure the Play Store is still hugely profitable despite sideloading), from hardware sales, from subscription services, from licensing software to OEMs, and more.

What we're seeing is that companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft are not content to make a lot of money while still keeping some respect for the user. They realize that even more money can be made screwing over the user. This really causes harm to society, as a lot of people realize they're being screwed but feel like they have no choice or agency in the matter. In my opinion, this is a good example of why capitalism and the free market are not ultimate goods in themselves but are rather a means to an end, and can certainly be used for evil purposes.

Hmm, that might be one of the changes made in Oreo. Weird, I don't think it's a very good change either.

This is a pretty shady restriction by Apple. I can see why they wouldn't want IAPs in games to be moved out-of-channel, but making it a violation for subscription services to send you to their website is pretty bad.

I don't think this is how it works, at least not from my past experience with Lineage. A browser isn't an app installer, as when you download an APK from it, the APK is staged through the phone's integrated file manager (aka "Downloads" app), and is treated as having no real source.

As far as I know, real "app installers" are purpose-built programs such as Amazon Appstore and F-Droid.

> ...they cannot update their phones, because they have locked firmware and walled-garden OS, largely put in place to make them buy new phones.

This is one of the biggest problems with the mobile landscape, with Apple, Google, and OEMs culpable to various degrees. It's deeply unethical, selfish, and wasteful.

I really think we should ask more of technology rather than to just accept Locked-Thing vs Spy-Thing. It's practically an imposed dichotomy, and people deserve better.

I think it would take far longer than a year for a critical mass of OS X software to become ARM-compatible, but it could be viable in the long run.

I'd like for ARM laptops to become more popular though, as a Debian user nearly all the software I use is already there.

I had a Zenfone 2 for a while too, performance and battery life were both pretty good. Thing was super unreliable though, not sure for what reason.

All gratis VPNs, for sure. I'd figure that paid VPNs would probably vary on that count.

It's obviously in exchange for data, but I'm skeptical of how anonymised it is, given that FB has made a business of tracking everyone on the web as much as possible.

I'd rather see alternate avenues of distribution for mobile applications, but this might not ever happen on iOS.

This seems like a pretty good idea. I'd be curious to see how many apps are sold for prices over $20 USD, as my impression was that the vast majority of paid apps were competing at lower price points.

Really takes away from the credibility of the article too, that they don't know the form of the license/clause they are talking about.

Any license that includes the ""Commons Clause"" is by definition proprietary, it precludes incorporating the code into anything commercial and even prohibiting anyone from providing paid support for it (which seems even more extreme).

It's a set of anti-commercial license terms and is definitely proprietary by Free Software and Open Source definitions.

I've also seen that many people FOSS users mainly because it's typically free of charge. It really should become more normalized to 'pay' for Free Software and give money regularly to projects the user supports and finds useful.

Apple does not support these rights, of course. They'd be happy if you were only leasing the use of an iDevice from them.

Valve has competitors in the PC games storefront market. On iOS, there is (for all practical reasons) no other storefront. People would be stuck on the App Store even if they were to charge something ridiculous like 50%, because there's no where else to go.

The ridiculously tall screen was certainly ahead of its time.

I agree, it's terribly misleading and could cause a real lack of licensing clarity.

It would be terrible PR to call this the "Anti- Commons Clause", but it would indeed be accurate.

I don't think it's about censorship so much as it's thinking ahead and realizing how huge of a threat this clause could be towards free software. The author is (IMO, rightly) concerned about this and wants to limit how much damage is caused by it.

I share your concern, if the "Commons Clause" (misleading name, IMO) became widespread enough, it could be somewhat of a virus that people may add to their Github projects, possibly causing a lack of clarity what license terms it's really under. It's even worse than a distinct new license in my opinion, as software might be advertised as "being under the Apache license" when it really has additional non-libre terms on it.

Yeah, that was my impression too. Giving the song more credit than it deserves, but I suppose that's Death of the Author.

What do you mean by "allow"? If the boot isn't restricted to signed OS X and Windows, you are "allowed". I've installed it easily on several older (2007-2010) Macs.

The reason they don't support it is likely because there's not the demand among their customer base, as most people who want a GNU/Linux OS on a laptop go for Thinkpad or Dell due to better compatibility and other reasons.

?

Laptops are portable. If you want something portable, it's gotta be a laptop.

I don't think the call and SMS log is what needs to be hidden, as those are so easily accessible that it would be foolish to use them for anything very sensitive. It would be to protect more sensitive things such as email accounts, encrypted messaging, photos, documents, etc.

I'm sure it was a highly traumatic experience for her, but she survived it and can live a mostly normal life now. I can't see how you can say that it'd be better for her to die.

On a typical OEM Android device, there's likely more non-free software than free. Due to Android's permissive license, any OEM can change any part of the OS for each device and not publish the source code. On a Lineage or AOSP install, the only significant non-free part are hardware drivers and some library components such as RAR. While this isn't ideal, I doubt Google is spying through them. Using a Android phone without Google (using F-Droid, and OpenStreetMaps) is definitely doable but I don't think most non-geeks would even consider it. I used one for about a year and a half, until I went no-smartphone.

I think Eelo is trying to make a "user-friendly" distro, but it just looks like a coat of paint on top of Lineage+microG, I don't think there's much new to it.

I used iTunes from about 2007 through 2014 and it was trash throughout that period. I doubt it's gotten any better.

Definitely EncFS (which Ubuntu used to use for /home encryption), most probably anything besides ext4.