tallship<span class="h-card"><a class="u-url mention" href="https://activism.openworlds.info/@dsfgs" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>dsfgs</span></a></span> <span class="h-card"><a class="u-url mention" href="https://gleasonator.com/users/tallship" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>tallship</span></a></span> <br><br>Sorry about that Dick, I missed this originally and had I seen it would have gotten back to you sooner.<br><br>Okay here's my take on it.<br><br>1.) I don't use the term Floss, unless I'm talking about girls in bikini's at the beach, or the waxed string that we use to clean between our teeth ;)<br><br>To me, using the term **Floss**, with respect to Free and Open Source software is akin to saying things like, **Mount Fujiyama**, i.e., it is redundant; which as I understand it means "Mount Mount Fuji - because **Fujiyama* means, "Mount Fuji". <br><br>I also prefer not to mix and comingle languages when it's avoidable, even considering that the English language has borrowed and adopted so much from the French language.<br><br>As an aside, one of my al time favorites was pointed out by one of my TAs about 30 years ago when I attended UCSD's Revelle College. She explained that in French there is no word for "why", nor does there need to be, and in fact, there's no reason for English speaking people to have needed to use that word either, because "Porquoi?" literally means that, as it does when transliterated into the English, "For What?". Now I could be totally wrong but it makes sense. Why create extra words just because you can use them lol.<br><br>But I digress ;)<br><br>So yah, FLOSS is, to me, like saying, Free Free Open Source Software, or there's a couple of French translations that amused me when I wrote what I thought and then compared it to what LibreTranslate and Google Translate had to offer. LibreTranslate actually did a better job IMO, which offered: "software libre de código abierto"<br><br>Here's a couple offered up by Google Translate lolz:<br><br>"logiciel libre open source gratuit" (FLOSS)<br><br>"logiciel libre open source" (LOSS)<br><br>"libre logiciels open source" (FOSS)<br><br>And last but not least, this is what LibreTranslate had for FLOSS:<br><br>"libre libre open source"<br><br>I don't know if thta helps, but it's certainly a personal philosophical choice on what having or omitting the "L" character in the acronym means to each respective person.<br><br>Moving along...<br><br>Now that I've finished beating around the bush, so to speak, let's get right down to it. You said (and I paraphrase):<br><br>"How does one enforce <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/foss" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#FOSS</a> over <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/pwa" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#PWA</a> and <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/webassembly" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#WebAssembly</a> though?"<br><br>I don't see the problem here. As a former Copyright Administrator for Virgin Music (in a previous life, and in a land far far away called Hollywood), I think that the Berne convention is quite clear with respect to Copyright, and although I would not consider myself a fanatic, I do describe myself as a FOSS advocate and zealot.<br><br>So, what is there to enforce? We have, at our disposal, the power of a cease and desist letter that we *Pay* an attorney to draft and affect delivery by certified mail, and we have the courts - those are the same remedies that exist for any claim of copyright infringement...<br><br>And there's also the DMCA takedown. That recently made headlines when it was abused in the case of Youtube-dl:<br><br><a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/github-reinstates-youtube-dl-after-riaas-abuse-dmca" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/github-reinstates-youtube-dl-after-riaas-abuse-dmca</a><br><br>So Easy Peasy, right? I think that if there's any changes that need to be made (and I'm not saying that there aren't), they need to be made by treaty and through legislative processes. <br><br>I would caution, however, that the latter is a really fucked up spin of the roulette wheel, with more undesirable, even disastrous potential outcomes than the tossing of dice.<br><br>The GPL and the AGPL and the CC licenses are pretty awesome things, and I'll come back to that in a minute. For now let's just come right out and see if we can't glean what you're really talking about.<br><br>Back when I was teaching the <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/mcse" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#MCSE</a> program for Microsoft (Yes, at one time in my career I did kneel down and kiss the <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/borg" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#Borg</a> ring of "Bill Gatus of Borg" - I had a baby daughter to feed and FOSS alone wasn't meeing my financial expectations at the time).<br><br>Although I refused to teach Voc-Rehab classes (multiply whatever Microsoft sets as the length of the course by three times), I still ended up with a wide swath of people from all walks of life in my courses. Some of them Luddites, some of them neophytes, some of them former <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/novell" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#Novell</a> paper <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/cne" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#CNE</a>'s with a chip on their shoulders who thought they could impress either me or themselves by sharpshooting - y'know, asking loaded questions?<br><br>So here's what I think. I think you obfuscated your intent and offered me up a loaded question. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but if I'm right, one good turn deserves another so I've taken a bit of license here with the tl;dr for your edification.<br><br>I think, that what you're really asking is, what about another kind of obfuscation? The kind of, um... RMS had a word I think he invented for it, but what he was really talking about was purposefully obfuscated Javascript that is virtually unintelligble for the express purpose of circumventing the ***SPIRIT*** of "FOSS", then compiled or <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/jit" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#JIT</a> compiled for <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/webassembly" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#WebAssembly</a> - it doesn't have to be for <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/pwa" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#PWA</a>'s btw, but the underlying reason why a company would do this, he purports, is to most likely inject tracking and malware and privacy breaking stuffs into applications that we install on our phones.<br><br>Is that what you're really asking me? If so, here's my answer.<br><br>Go back above and read the part about the Berne convention and DMCA shit again. Legislation will only fuck us in the ass if you ask me, so the remedy, from my perspective, would be for the <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/fsf" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#FSF</a> to release a new license or update existing licenses with clauses to describe just what exactly "Source Code" is.<br><br><a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/ianal" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#IANAL</a>, but I do think that such a clause placed in FOSS licenses would suffice. I'm not sure what you could do about things that include Steganography in things like photos and videos released under a Creative Commons license, but I'm sure there could be similar concerns there as well.<br><br>Is that what you were really asking me?<br><br>Last item. I don't actually have a 'stance' on F-Droid. I think they engage in bigotry just like everyone in the world who says they're not a racist - because everyone is a racist. That doesn't mean people hate each other or think less of each other. it's just a fact. We all feel somewhat differently about people who can be differentiated from us by culture or appearance.<br><br>Aside from some of their more hypocritical and exclusionary, prejudicial, or divisive decisions in the past, F-Droid is the best FOSS <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/repo" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#repo</a> we have for <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/android" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#Android</a> applications. They work from <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/source" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#source</a>, so it's not the same as even d/l'ing <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/apk" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#APK</a> files from the authoritative website that a particular Android app may serve - as <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/mewe" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#MeWe</a> is not asking folks to do now that Google made them turn their app in the <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/playstore" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#playstore</a> into <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/crippleware" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#crippleware</a>. <br><br>But you cannot be assured that a corporate entity hasn't gone and done the Obfuscation thing when designing their PWAs offered up. heck, <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/aes" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#AES</a> or <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/md5" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#MD5</a> hashes aren't going to telll you anything that you want to know if they've done such a thing when you check an APK for file integrity.<br><br>Google actually makes this worse, coz it's creating a phenomenon whereby businesses aren't even going to bother with the playstore at all and many already aren't - they're opting to incorporate <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/pwas" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#PWAs</a> as part of the offering to install on your phone simply by virtue of having visited their website with your phones browser.<br><br>What F-Droid can do, is enact policy decisions as to what they feel are descriptive examples of FOSS, and deny acceptance into their repos based upon those codified, but still arbitrary definitions.<br><br>This will, of course, just raise more complaints about some draconian policies they incorporate, but anyone is free to create another Android FOSS repo, and there are indeed others.<br><br>In the meantime, I'll reiterate that F-Droid is the best we've got so far, and would refer you to peruse the actual code the Git repos where the FOSS project resides for any app that you are considering installing, making the determination for yourself as to whether it is safe, or meets your personal standards for what is acceptable to use on your own devices.<br><br>So yes, if you're asking, I do advocate the use of F-Droid instead of the Playstore *almost* anytime they include apps that are also in the playstore. Exceptions would be some apps that, for instance, F-Droid prohibited being distributed with say, Authentication schemes that they don't approve of, etc.<br><br>Okay then! And NO, I'm not spell checking this, but I typed it out on a real keyboard so it shouldn't be too bad lolz.<br><br>I hope that helps, and that I've address the core aspects of the question you posed.<br><br>Kindest regards,<br><br>:sailboat:<br><br>.<br><br><a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/fdroid" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#fdroid</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.cloud/tag/gdroid" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#gdroid</a><br><a href="https://pleroma.cloud/media/a4c40d208c341e0ec88c37ac11b93b215a8883d051439675970db9ca14c9bbe6.jpg?name=censorship_is_bad.jpg" class="" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">censorship_is_bad.jpg</a>