Caretaker of Sunhillow/DS8.ZONE. Free (Libre) Software enthusiast and promoter. Pronouns: any
Also /u/CaptainBeyondDS8 on reddit and CaptainBeyond on libera.chat.
AI Disclosure: No “generative AI tools” are used to produce any work attributed to “Captain Beyond of Sunhillow” (here or elsewhere).
It should be noted this is not any sort of actual anti-malware tool. By “lists the trackers” it just means it looks for strings in the compiled bytecode. This is prone to false positives (if the “tracker” classes are stubbed out, e.g. in Fennec F-Droid) and doesn’t actually tell you if or how these libraries are actually used.
The silver lining of “AI” is that it’s a convenient excuse to be anti-user. It’s okay as long as you are “fighting the AI”
I expect to be chugging verification cans in 2027
/e/OS is just LineageOS with a bunch of cloud crap and a proprietary map app.
Their voice to text feature uses a cloud server that uses OpenAI on the backend. This is something that could and should run locally, but the local ones are apparently not good enough and instead of investing into developing them they are going to use a cloudy thing. But hey, I guess OpenAI is not google, so it is kosher.
https://community.e.foundation/t/voice-to-text-feature-using-open-ai/70509
Just use LineageOS
People should start doing so. This “android isn’t real linux” nonsense is actively harmful misinformation at this point
It is also (as far as I can tell) proprietary
Free software is about freedom, not price. It is perfectly ok to sell free software. Even if Voyager cost money to download as long as it gives users the four freedoms it is free software.
As far as I know there are several non-free Lemmy apps as well as a handful of paid apps.
Is mobian still maintained? I had a quick look a couple days ago and their last blog post was 3+ years ago.
October 2025 by my reckoning.
https://blog.mobian.org/posts/2025/10/new-stable-rotating-keys/
Linux, the kernel, is the thing that containers run on top of. The container does not actually contain an instance of Linux, it shares it with the host.
If by Linux you mean “literally everything except Linux” though, then sure. But I prefer to say what I mean and mean what I say
You never needed a VM to run Linux apps on Android. Android can run Linux apps because it is already a Linux operating system. This is like referring to a docker container as “running Linux on Debian” or whatever.
Free software is about freedom, not price. It’s perfectly acceptable to sell it. It being a paid download doesn’t necessarily mean it’s proprietary. He’s not required to actually post the source online for all to access, he can send it only to paying customers. As long as the customer receives it under a free software license it is free software.
However, without mention of a free software license, I am inclined to believe it is proprietary - although it is described as open source on the page, he might mean to say source available.
russian proprietary software
The “Russian” part is not the problem here
GrapheneOS is critical of this initiative here and I think their criticism has merit. This simply moves the gatekeeper from Google to a handful of OEM’s who won’t let you use anything other than their blessed OS’s.
That’s debatable, since what people generally call “Linux” is more GNU than Linux anyway. “Linux” as the Linux fandom considers is it big and professional like GNU, because it is GNU (among other things).
Personally, as a free software enthusiast, I feel entitled to the “four freedoms” with every tool I use, no matter how large or small. I have no problem paying for free software and have done so in the past. For me the four freedoms are the point. A proprietary license is either a dealbreaker or a very large downside.
So, for me:
No. “Source available” in this context is a type of proprietary license. The fact that source code is visible does not make it not proprietary, because it is shared under a license that favors the interest of the rightsholder above those of its users. I talk about this often when contrasting so-called business and ethical licenses with true FOSS licenses. A true FOSS license grants modification and distribution rights and does not impose usage restrictions, a proprietary license imposes usage restrictions. With a FOSS license I don’t need to worry that whatever I’m using the software for somehow infringes the rightsholder’s personal ethics, and it encourages forking and code reuse.
In other words, thinking about it in terms of whether the source code is open or closed or “available” is missing the point entirely for the free software community. The point is what are you are allowed to do with the software and what restrictions are the rightsholder imposing on your usage of the software. Keep in mind most users are not programmers and thus being able to see source code does not impart any direct advantage to them, but allowing the community (which does include programmers) the four freedoms means things like forks and customizations can be spread.
As said above I use free software wherever possible. Thinking about it I guess I generally do expect a small hobbyist tool (as opposed to something that exists to be a product) to be free software, but then again I use platforms that are favored by free software enthusiasts. On Windows I suppose it’s more common to see these as proprietary freeware apps.
For me it does not, I’ve learned to always look for a license to make sure, but I think a lot of people do not understand that GitHub can host proprietary projects too.
You’ll need to elaborate on this more. If you are planning to grow a free software community then using a true free software license is important. Free software and open source licenses are known to not impose usage restrictions that favor the rightsholder’s interests above the user’s, as I have said. On the other hand, if your goal is to create a business around the project, you need to balance your users rights against your business interests. Starting out with a free software license then switching to a proprietary source available license once you have a captive ecosystem will create resentment and guarantee a community based fork of the last true FOSS version.