F-Droid in essence says use free and open source software, particularly on Android. Am I wrong this is a subset of a general encouragement to use free and open source software as much as possible?
Proposal: Every app in F-Droid developed on Github, or on other non-free centralized “services”, should be tagged with non-free network services, or another anti-feature tag. These apps promote non-free network services - To file bugs or do any sort of development interaction, users must also use those non-free network services. The links appear in F-Droid app without any identification or warning, until tapped. IMO this is a bad thing.
Disclaimer: I feel I don’t understand the real reasons, tenets, or philosophy underpinnings of F-Droid. Or I understand the theory, but not the practical application and drawing of lines. Sometimes I want to try to advocate for using F-Droid to friends, associates or contacts, but there are huge stumbling blocks when trying to give a consistent story. Why should they use free and open source software on their devices, when developers use non-free software and services on theirs? People don’t like being told “do as I say, not as I do.”
I am aware the original developer of F-Droid previously developed proprietary games software for Windows, IIUC. Did they change philosophy, or what really led to promoting free and open source software, for Android?
I’m a designer and not really someone who’s good with code. Github provides (if you like it or not) the most user friendly tools (for beginners). So, that’s a really important part, not only for me, but also the contributors who need to use git for the first time (a lot of them are beginners too).
I’m not interested in self-hosting or other tools that make it so much more work for me to maintain, I just want an easy experience so I can stay focused on the app. :^)
For about 361 apps on gitlab. Edit: Assuming using “Gitlab FOSS”. Gitlab Enterprise is Proprietary, per wikipedia.
Usability sucks, but that is a different issue, as you linked above.
Many other apps are on non free systems, and should be tagged, starting with about 2986 on Microsoft github.
justsomeguy: the front end for Savannah has had one active developer for five years. If you can get people to help him with optimizing the user interface (including gitweb/cgit and other dependencies with their own upstreams) and translating it and its manuals, that would be nice for the project.
Moved here from there: IMO, something should be done to encourage moving away from non-free, proprietary web dis-services for development. I am convinced there are so many apps on proprietary Github/lab, it would almost be pointless to tag them all. But, some way of distinguishing, for easy filtering, would be a good thing. Positive/Pro-tagging those apps on F/LOSS development services is something to consider.
F-Droid app particularly, because they should set the example, but remain on proprietary gitlab and depend on so many apps on proprietary github/lab… deserves the non-free net dependency tag, under current tagging.
I am a pragmatist, so in these circumstances I am in favor of working with what we currently have as we strive towards perfection. I think tagging things that are suboptimal is a good start, because it indicates to people that the status quo is not desirable.
I say this as a developer who has made the decision to make whatever sacrifices necessary to host all the critical infrastructure that my project depends upon (code repository, website, issue tracker, forum, email server, etc.). I do use a few communication resources that I don’t host myself (Fosstodon account, F-Droid’s forum), but none of them are central to my projects, and if they all went away the projects would continue to function without them. So, I have some sense of how much effort is required to only use open source tooling and to insist on self-hosting on top of that. And I get why many developers do not do so.
Self-hosting is probably a step beyond what is ideal for all projects, but I think it isn’t unreasonable for open source projects to strive towards a situation where all the SaaS they depend on is free software.
I understand and empathize. As someone with idealist tendencies, I feel sometimes “the only winning move is not to play the game.” (War Games) If we can’t make android apps without sacrificing principles, maybe it is better to work on something else like apps for Linux phones, or ways to make android apps without sacrificing principles.
Regarding Android itself, Google is moving it in the wrong direction (it is becoming less free with each release). I have spent a bit of time pondering over when it will cross the line that it becomes unusable as my daily driver. We haven’t reached that point yet, but I think it will happen at some time down the road.
TL;DR
I am pretty much against flagging usage of github as an anti-feature. Most of all because it is not a feature in the first place.
a bit longer:
Excuse me for lecturing but there is something that might not be fully understood by everybody:
In git every commit has a hash (which is used as its identifier. So it’s not optional)
The contents of the source code files (actually the change set) are a part of how that hash is computed
Nobody can “sneak in” code without changing the hash (and changing the hash wouldn’t go undetected since developers would get crazy merge/pull conflicts all the time)
So let’s stop for a second an appreciate that due to how git is designed it will never have an effect on the actual code whether, at some point in its lifetime, it was hosted on proprietary git servers. Good job Mr Torvalds.
In other words: You will never find any undesired behavior in an app and later the analysis will say “Oh! This is because they hosted the code on github.”
If we can agree on that, the question arises why we would want to flag github as an anti-feature? Basically that would mean to tell users out there “There is something that will never in any way effect you or your loved ones but we kinda don’t like it so here’s an anti-feature flag”.
IMHO that is “spreading FUD” in the best case.
But I honestly think what’s even more harmful is that it waters down what anti-feature-flags (in my understanding) are actually about: informing users of actual threats and undesired behaviors in the app that they don’t have the time or knowledge to analyze themselves.
UX guys have a name (can’t recall it. I am a backend dev…) for useless warning messages that only teach you to ignore and “click away” ALL warning messages. I feel that a “hosted on github” anti-feature will have the same effect.
So.
If somebody feels uncomfortable with the way some open source developers spend their free time on their FOSS projects that is ok (although I, for one and in this case, couldn’t care less). If somebody wants to fight Microsoft that is fine too.
But an anti-feature flag is not the right place and “barking up the wrong tree”. You could e.g. write to the developers directly.
[irony:on]
If that anti-feature flag should ever be put in effect I also strongly suggest being consequent and making developers fill out a questionnaire whether their app was developed with a FOSS editor, in a free OS, running on open-source hardware.
[irony:off]
Well no. One could not. At least not if one does not want to compare apples and oranges.
You are mentioning software that in itself is “tainted”. You could write WhatsApp only with the purest of FOSS tools and it would still be problematic.
But with github we are talking about how software is made and in this case it has zero effect on the endresult.
Yet you want to add an “end-user facing” flag? Makes no sense to me.
That’s as if books in the store had labels like “was written in a non-ergonomic workplace”. The concern is valid. But the audience is totally wrong.
You want to change how software is made? Address the developers. Not the users.
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