BananaTrifleViolin

All browser companies monetise you to some extent. Even Firefox does this a bit (Paid deals make Google is the default search, and Amazon search is also paid to be included as a link for example).

However the big difference is the private companies like Vivaldi, Brave etc monetise your data more and less transparently, plus the entire Chromium ecosystem is basically under Google’s control. Manifest 3 will not be restricted to Chrome, it is being built into the Chromium project and will end up in Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Brave etc. Chromium is a trojan horse project, used to push Google’s priorities and objectives across the web, not end users.

The only viable alternative is Firefox based browsers. I use Firefox itself (aware of it’s compromises and using a whole host of extensions), but there are also forks and projects that strip even Firefox’s compromises back - LibreWolf in particular. For all the flaws of the Mozilla foundation, it is transparent on what it does to keep the project going, and the independence of the project compared to chromium is hugely important. Note Firefox is also going to support Manifest V3 (so that extensions can continue to be cross-browser) BUT it is also keeping support for the key APIs that Google is removing (i.e. the ability for extensions to use the block webRequest API which is foundational to current Ad and privacy protection extensions).

Vivaldi is no different to other Chromium based broswers; it uses the exact same Google controlled code base, plus it is doing everything it can to monetise you. You are the product; all these companies are stealing and financially exploiting your data and we’re all just handing it to them on a platter for free and thanking them for fucking us over.

I deleted my account.

Yeah the GUI is horrible with Gimp but it is very powerful software. I’m used to it’s idiosyncrasities but it really needs a GUI refresh. It’s powerful software held back from it’s full potential.

Mozilla needs funding. By taking money from Google and DuckDuckGo specifically for search it allows Firefox to remain independent and the software it produces is underpins lots of other even more independent privacy respecting software.

The eco system around Firefox needs Firefox to survive. Unless a better funding source comes along Firefox would be in jeopardy. Having. Said that Thunderbird has been successfully turned around due to a well run community pursuing donations and volunteers.

It would also be good if countries stumped up some of the funding Mozilla and other crucial open source projects like Linux need, to maintain a strong software ecosystem. Similar to how many European countries fund national broadcasters to maintain media diversity.

They made a mistake in removing SMS support - that was a good way to become useful to people with the current paradigm and encourage them over to the new. Sometimes Signals decisions are self destructive.

I still have signal but I use it much less since it stopped SMS support; I just open it less and so when starting conversations default to WhatsApp. For a while signal was growing amongst my friends and colleagues but it appears to have stalled.

Google are now doing the same pushing their RCS in the default SMS app in Android.

Part of it comes down to trust. I just don’t trust Brave Inc long term - it may well be a private browser now but I don’t trust that in to the future. I don’t trust a company that Peter Thiel invests in. I don’t trust a company that has already been shady and caught redirecting traffic secretly for referrer codes. But I also don’t trust Google or Microsoft either.

I trust Firefox and Mozilla. I don’t like that they are dependent on Google revenue but I trust that they’re open and transparent about what they do, and not motivated or compromised by a desire to maximise profits for their venture capitalist investors.

If you go to the Florisboard git hub their is an easy route to install it via Google play, if you can’t use fdroid or side load apps for any reason. It basically involves signing up to “beta test” the app which you then get in Google Play as normal.

This may be an important route on some parts of the world.

That’s a terrible name as it’s used for other software and totally disconnected from the project it’s continuing.

I’d have gone with the name Atomiser.

I know this is a very random comment!

No; it depends on the individual package whether it is open source of nor. Ubuntu uses a lot of Open Source software (including the Linux Kernal) and packages but is not entirely open source. It derives it’s own package base from Debian, and then adds it’s own flavour to things as well as commerical tools it pushes.

Linux Mint is an Ubuntu derivative; its sounds like the Indian Government would be doing the same thing. Basically like Mint, they would use Ubuntu and it’s packages as the basis of their system and rely on most of it to be updated & maintained by Ubuntiu’s teams upstream, but then build their own repositories that contain other software or their own perferred modified versions of things originally taken from Ubuntu. They can build a version of Linux that they control including what software is installed, and when it is updated.

They would not have to make their distribution freely available, but if they modified any open source packages they would have to make those available as open source packages (depending on the license of the open source software). However that can be very difficult to inforce, and if it’s done in a closed military system you’d never even know a modified version of the software exists if they chose not to share it.

Although Ubuntu contains a lot of “open source” software, it doesn’t mean the Indian Governments version would necessairly be open source. But the big benefit to India would be potential complete control of any part of the software chain, and no reliance on big tech companies like Microsoft for the OS and core software like Office. That saves a lot of money and is also potentially more secure (in a national security sense), depending on how much people trust the US government not to interfere in american Tech companies. There has been talk of forcing backdoors into US software in the past which would make any big nation nervous about being reliant on their software.