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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • France: wants to switch to open source software

    also France: wants to ban social media for young people

    Do they, in all seriousness, not see exactly how fundamentally contradictory those things are? Open source software development depends on it being possible and relatively easy to host websites that allow the general public to participate so that they can collaborate on open source software development on such websites. Banning “social media” (not endorsing that term) for young people means requiring such websites to implement age verification systems, making it much more difficult and expensive to start such websites and make it possible to collaborate on open source software development. I cannot believe that this is so hard to understand for politicians.











  • Android consists of way more free and open source software than iOS. There’s a fork of Android, Replicant, which is endorsed by the FSF. Free and open source software does not have owners. It’s true that most people who use it (including me) still use versions of it that are mostly nonfree software. But Android is a step in the right direction, while iOS is one in the wrong direction.

    It’s possible to use an Android phone and rarely or never see ads at all. Pretty much the only place I regularly see ads on my (stock) Android phone is in the YouTube app, and I could probably live without that too if I wanted.