ditchdiscord — julian

Open tech, be afraid.

Wed, 15 Nov 2023 21:24:00 +0000

Open tech, be afraid. Be very afraid. Microsoft owns both Visual Studio Code “VSCode” and MS-GitHub, two intertwined and utterly proprietary product-service ecosystems with a bit of open-source in their core to lure us in. Because they love open source? Yeah, no.

Soon after leaving GitPod whose technology links the two, Geoffrey Hunt last year explained their strategy and what it's doing to our open tech world, in a great and “harrowing” article, “Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture” https://ghuntley.com/fracture/

“The future of software development tooling that is being built is closed as ****, and people seem to be okay with it...”

This is why MS-GitHub is not our friend.

This is why falling for their trick, disguising MS-VSCode as a neat “free” editor, will come back and haunt and hurt us.

Vendor lock-in double-whammy. Using open source as “a financial weapon”.

”... the biggest challenge for Gitpod, GitLab, Datacoves, OpenBB, Foam, et al lies ahead – developing open language tooling for each community where Microsoft has forked the communities over to proprietary language servers...”

If we have a grain of public spirit, if we are motivated at all by the Freedom that's supposed to be afforded by Free-Libre Open-Source Software, we must #GiveUpGithub, we must recognise the trap, we must choose truly open #FreedomTech.

On Open Source and the Sustainability of the Commons, Ploum, 2024
We need to talk about your Github addiction, Ploum, 2023
I Can't Wait for Forge Federation, Wrily, 2023
Your FOSS Project Deserves its Own Domain, Wrily, 2023
FOSS Apps Live in FOSS Forges, Wrily, 2022
FOSS Apps Live in FOSS App Stores!, Wrily, 2022

#awesomeFOSS #selfHosted #GiveUpGithub #DitchDiscord #forgeFed #forgeFederation #Forgejo #Codeberg #useOpenTools

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Discord vs Community Values

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 19:29:06 +0000

I wrote this piece in response to a particular organisation that empowers local people to create tech solutions matching community values, on hearing they chose to use Discord because of its “usability”.

I was dismayed. To me, the choice embodies the opposite of the organisation's values.

“Discord is great for enabling our community,” people tend to say: it's “free”, and it's great to use, once you're inside. I know. Those are some more-or-less correct facts about it, on the surface.

So what's my beef with it? Why am I so upset that I spend hours writing this? Why can't I just see the value in it, see the pragmatic decision, see that using it benefits the community's work, and be happy for us all?

I nearly replied on the spot, a quick denigration of the decision, but I realised it deserves a much more detailed and balanced response. I think about this stuff all the time. I should be able to express my position clearly and helpfully.

My immediate reaction: I'm so fed up with seeing one supposedly public-values project after another locking itself in to yet another walled garden. I'm fed up with one supposedly open-participation community after another assuming I'm willing to subject myself to yet another Big Tech walled garden if I want to engage. There's a reason I ditched Google and the rest: because I care about using open tech, community-values tech. I care about not being forced into using and depending on a third party against my will, especially when that's a company working in opposition to my values.

You, the community organisers, will certainly have thought of this, I soon realised, and I suppose you decided you need to prioritise a higher level kind of community tech: getting people to work together to create something their community owns, even if they don't own the tools for doing so. That's the main goal of your work and I respect and admire your endeavour. Of course you have to focus on that, and make it possible for your contributors to focus on that.

First, I'll unpack why I'm dismayed. Second, how to keep the gate open (by bridging), as a practical and community-valued way forward if one portion of the community is going to be using Discord.

Free and Convenient

It's “free”, they say. Yes, it's free of direct monetary cost, initially. While I was writing this post, Dave Lane was thinking about the same thing and helpfully posted his explanation of Why 'free' proprietary software will always end in tears.

It's great to use, once you're inside. Convenient. Surely that's of supreme importance? Surely there's nothing worse than impediments to getting on with your primary tasks?

Moulded by Our Environment

At the same time as the platform makes certain patterns of engagement familiar and convenient, indeed helping your community to get started and focus on their central mission, yet, inevitably, not owning one's tools does restrict what one can do and say. One's tools and environment subtly frame how one behaves. It's a well known observation that projects and products tend to be built around an architecture that reflects the structure of the company or organisation that produced them. A software product from a rigid top-down management has a top-down design with lots of rigid authorisation enforcements; a product from a loose flat team has components that are customisable, optional, and interoperate flexibly.

What kind of community tech do we expect will be built by a community using tools designed in the mould of surveillance capitalism? What kind of tech platforms and business model thinking will they in turn build in to their solutions and expect their local businesses and neighbours to use?

Their Way or No Way

Discord like many proprietary platforms says you have to use their app. Anything wrong with it for you? Doesn't run on your phone/computer? Doesn't meet your accessibility needs? Tough. Marcel built an alternative client for people to use, and got banned: Cordless closing down.

I feel we would agree we're into building and using tools that meet our needs, that we control. Whether we purchase them or get them for free, we want them to operate not so as to maximise their master's profit and world domination, but rather in ways that serve our interests.

We're All In This Community

Let's turn our attention for a moment to the people who work in all the various areas of community-owned or “open” software systems, whether it be messaging, video, accounting, or tools of any and all kinds. If we're in, say, the higher level occupation of empowering local communities to bend technical systems and tools to serve their needs, then we might refer to them as building the lower level tech, the tools that we will need to use. Those people, those community neighbourhoods, also share the “community tech” values. Their areas are part of the same continuum with ours. It's all about empowering people with the ability to use tools and systems that we control, instead of using systems run by a single owner that controls us. Those people working on the community-owned lower level tools are our distant relatives. We're all cousins.

I'm particularly interested in open educational tech, and just last week was in an OpenEdTech discussion about this, with people who have the experience in providing open tools, training materials and so on. Collectively we had heard of many incidences of a group with some kind of community tech focus choosing a proprietary system, be it for their conference, their documents, or their teaching. Several participants expressed how they were willing to help such communities, and have been for years, to choose a solution that better matches the community's values. They all agreed on how hard it is to make their help known and available to those who would benefit.

These people, if asked, could help suggest a community-owned tool, supply it, operate it, give training, adjust it to our needs. There's a big wide open tech community who care and would love to have the opportunity to help in this way, only they have no sales and marketing department to link them to the potential customer.

If we're in the same community, even as distant cousins, we have to seek them out, keep it in the family.

That's what really gets to me, I now realise. I am one of the many pouring our souls into that wider community, trying hard to make a difference. We keep wondering why more people don't understand the issue and at least start to use the available open tech solutions in order to support our shared cause. We find it endlessly frustrating to see others choosing proprietary instead of “leaning in” and asking for help from our wider community. Each time a distant cousin in this community chooses Big Tech it feels like an own goal, a slap in the face, and a setback to my personal efforts. That's one more community adding to the proprietary thing's success and fame, and one fewer contributing to the solutions that support our cause.

Let's reverse this. Let's take one more community away from the people farmers, and add one to the kind of community we want to see and be.

Excommunication

We describe Big Tech's platforms as “convenient”, but convenient for whom? By delegating the gate-keeper role to the distant Mega Corp, we give Them sole discretion about who among us are allowed to join the communication and when we will be banned from it. Wrong nationality? Tough. Outside their age limits? Tough. Time and again we people (“platform users”) are being cut off from our online communities. As Artemis writes in “Discord Holds the Keys to Your Heart”:

There’s plenty of reasons... someone can get locked out or banned... The problem is that these lockouts tend to happen immediately, with no warning, no good means of recourse, and no way for the affected person to pick up the pieces... you don’t even get a chance to tell people where they should go to talk to you. We are social creatures, and the trauma of that loss cuts deep. This isn’t exclusive to Discord. The same story has played out over and over on basically every centralized social media platform...

Communities Build Bridges

If you end up using Discord anyway, at least consider not forcing all your collaborators to have to sign up to Discord.

Decentralised communication systems give people alternatives: not everyone is subject to the rules or whims of one and the same dictator, instead each individual or subcommunity can live in their own neighbourhood with their own variation of the community's terms and conditions, and can change to a different service provider that suits them better, without losing contact.

Artemis goes on to say of decentralised systems,

Even when amicable communications fail, you can find another shard that will let you make it your home, and you can pick up where you left off with those you care about. You may be cut off from part of the network, but you will never be mercilessly cut off from the whole thing with the flip of a switch...

As someone who tends to a community, one of your best options is to reduce barriers to people who can’t use the platform you’ve chosen. If you’re on Discord, setting up Discord to IRC, Discord to Telegram, or Discord to Matrix bridges is a great start.

Bridge it to Matrix

Keep the gate open. If you have to use Discord, bridge it. And bridge it to Matrix (because).

See for example how Authelia's contact page looks, clearly listing Matrix and Discord as options to access the (same) chat channels.

How? Start with the easier option of using the t2bot.io/discord public bridge, explained in Thib's video tutorial #6.

Bridging doesn't lock-in your users on the matrix side to any bridging “platform”, so you can start with a public bridge if it's convenient and sufficient, and still have the option, if your needs ever outgrow it, to change later to using a custom bridge. In that situation, see the video Matrix Tutorials #11 — Hosting your own (Discord) Bridge.

Community Tech Values Open Protocols!

If you are interested in reading more on this issue, you might look at a detailed comparison of Matrix vs. Discord by Austin Huang who “used to be heavily invested in Discord [but then] became a proponent of ethical platforms, namely Matrix and ActivityPub”.

One could also read read why System Crafters switched from Discord, and why Mozilla chose Matrix for their community, citing “accessibility” and “safety”, along with Universities, the French government, the German healthcare system, and many more.

Choose Community. Choose Open.

See (why not Discord):

Discord Holds the Keys to Your Heart — Artemis, 2022-01-30
Why you shouldn't trust Discord — Cadence, 2020-06-06
Why 'free' proprietary software will always end in tears — Dave Lane, 2023-10-04
“Stop dumping knowledge into a black hole. Use forums. Use the open web. Future nerds will thank you.” — Didier Malenfant, 2024-05-30

See (Matrix and Discord):

Making Your Org Move Communications from Discord to Matrix — Franziska Heintel — at Matrix Community Summit 2023
https://joinmatrix.org/guide/matrix-vs-discord/
t2bot.io/discord public bridge
Matrix Tutorials #6 — Bridging to Slack and Discord shows using the free t2bot.io Matrix-Discord bridge (video)
Matrix Tutorials #11 — Hosting your own (Discord) Bridge using mautrix-discord (video)
OOYE, a Matrix-Discord Bridge you can self-host

See (Discourse and Discord):

#ditchDiscord #matrix #outreach

Your FOSS Project Deserves its Own Domain

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 21:09:28 +0000

Where does your project live? Where do people find it? Who controls how people access your project's resources on the Internet?

https://our-project.org/

Github the Mega-Mall

See also: Open Tech, Be Very Afraid

In practice, what do ninety-something percent of small FOSS projects do? They sign up on Microsoft Github. If we are one of these, then we feel our little project has a home on the Internet, its own address: https://github.com/our-name/our-repo. Oops, but did I say an address of its own? Well, there's the catch. I meant an address of Microsoft's own.

Github is a Gatekeeper. Every link to our project now takes the reader through a virtual gateway owned and ruled by Github's owner, Microsoft. The domain name is the gate, and its owner holds the key. Want to visit the source code? Before we reach our-name/our-repo we must walk through their gate at github.com. We must pass through whatever they put in the gateway. Ads? Nagging to sign up? Then they will let us visit the source code that we feel is “ours”.

Of course they make it appealing: if we're signed up and logged in already, we don't see the nagging, the self-advertisement to log in or sign up. But other visitors do.

Github operates on the model of free-as-in-free-beer, convenient-to-start, you-are-the-product, pay-with-your-data-and-your-attention, we-got-you-cornered, now-we-got-your-users-too.

Beyond source code...

Want to distribute the builds from your project? Github provides easy ways to automate the builds of your software using generous amounts of compute time and storage “for free”, and ways to publish the results.

Want to publish documentation? Easy. Remember, Github provides features that are convenient to start with. Github helps your users read the docs, conveniently hosted at our-project.readthedocs.io/. That's a Github domain name too. Microsoft now controls everybody's access to “our” docs. They can add things — such as adverts — and prevent us doing certain things with our docs. They can redirect readers' attention to their own business. They do this to millions of projects at once, manipulating the users of these millions of projects, all to drive their business goals.

Feeding The Corporate Interest

It's the network effect, as in social media, combined with the ease of use that comes from letting somebody else do the administration. People and small projects feel they are getting value, individually, out of this system, and in an individual and short-term sense indeed they are; but all the while being coerced into feeding the corporate interest, and all the while putting bigger obstacles in the way of other people's freedom to choose a different path.

There is no technical reason why a big company should not offer services that it provides on your own domain, so that you retain the addressability if you should decide to move to a different service provider. Services that we pay for, such as many email providers, offer bring-your-own-domain service. But the big “free” ones? They need to monetise you some other way, and they get a huge lock-in factor by putting your stuff behind the gate of their domain.

What To Do?

Get your own domain name. Host your code, docs, forums there.

You don't have to self-host it: look for a bring-your-own-domain provider for your services.

The federated music server “funkwhale” is a good example. The project's home is https://funkwhale.audio with many of its resources at subdomains like {forum,docs,dev,blog}.funkwhale.audio.

Owning the address of our project is key to owning our project.

“Millions of Free Software developers forgot why it matters to own their tools.” — ForgeFriends

Postscript: Non-DNS Naming Systems

With DNS, access to a domain is controlled some person or company who we can loosely call the “owner”. Technically that is the “registrant”, somebody who registers and pays for the domain name. The registrant (“owner”) of our-project.org has ultimate control over access to all resources under that domain name and all its subdomains.

In the near future, DNS is set to remain the dominant naming system. However, DNS is not perfect. In fact it has serious problems. You may have heard of several other systems for naming things on the Internet. A lot of work is going into these, and I am hopeful that we will see widespread use of one or more alternative naming systems. If you are involved with any of those, you might want to consider how we can apply the principle that people and projects deserve to own their own name space.

More: #awesomeFOSS #selfHosted #GiveUpGithub #DitchDiscord #ownDomain #FreedomTech #useOpenTools

FOSS Apps Live in FOSS Forges

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 21:41:09 +0000

Software is a process, and whoever controls it ultimately decides what the developers can do and how they communicate.

The elephant in the room is Microsoft. Open tech, be afraid. Be very afraid. Microsoft owns both VSCode and MS-GitHub, two intertwined and utterly proprietary product-service ecosystems with a bit of open-source in their core to lure us in.

Have the Freenode sell-out (2021) and the Twitter fiasco (2022) taught us nothing?

FOSS thrives in FOSS ecosystems.

In their “State of the Forge Federation” newsletter, ForgeFriends said it best:

Millions of Free Software developers forgot why it matters to own their tools. They know, better than anyone, how to fix and improve them. But when they choose to collaborate only via the most popular proprietary software forges, they are denied the right to use their skills and cannot work with fellow developers who are banned because they reside in the wrong country. They have been made to believe that the tools they use daily to craft their own software are out of reach. As if their software was a product that could be separated from the other software running the tests, allowing changes to be merged or bugs to be filed. But software is a process, and whoever controls it ultimately decides what the developers can do and how they communicate.

The source code and the development process of so many great Free-as-in-Freedom projects are currently hosted on the proprietary Microsoft Github. This makes me sad. In my strong opinion, to better serve FOSS as a whole they would GiveUpGithub and move to a FOSS software forge provider such as Codeberg.org and/or host a FOSS forge at their own domain.

How to Choose Freedom

provide a forge at one's own domain, using FOSS forge software such as Forgejo or Sourcehut or self-managed Gitlab-CE, either self-managed or rented from a service provider — Best option for freedom, independence, self-agency, large projects
choose a home at a public FOSS forge such as Codeberg or Framagit — Best option for new small projects, quick start, finding an existing community

These fine FOSS people do it right

... either at their own domain, or in a FOSS public forge:

Domain at Codeberg
FediLab at Codeberg
Fediverse Enhancement Proposals (FEP) at Codeberg
ForgeFed at Codeberg
Funkwhale at their own domain
GadgetBridge at Codeberg
Gnome at their own domain
Hubzilla at FramaGit.org
Interpeer Project at Codeberg
KDE at their own domain
KeyOxide at Codeberg
Libravatar at Ubuntu's LaunchPad.net
Mobilizon at FramaGit.org
Murena /e/OS at their own domain
NextPush at Codeberg
Plume at their own domain
Purism at their own domain
Simple-Matrix-Bot-Lib at Codeberg
(streams) at Codeberg
Ubuntu at their own domain
UnifiedPush at Codeberg
Vocata at Codeberg
Wordpress at their own domain
... and thousands more.

Pwned by Big Tech: these fine FOSS people need a nudge

I love these fine people. I value what they are making. I understand these fine people had to choose something and they chose to prioritise the convenience of Microsoft Github, but I feel more and more every year that our world of FOSS overall is stifled by being owned by such megacorps and I want to take a stand in support of prioritising our FOSS values. I would be joyful to see them improve their relationship to the FOSS world by putting their assets in FOSS infrastructure under their own control.

Authelia
Authentik
Calibre-ebook
Circles
Diary by Bill Farmer
Element [matrix] software
Elementary OS: AppCentre apps “must be hosted in a Github repository”
Fediverse Enhancement Proposals (FEP)
Gitea
Healthchecks
Homer by Bastien Wirtz
InfiniTime
Jellyfin
LibreTranslate
Mailspring
Mastodon
Navidrome
Nextcloud
ntfy
OpenAndroidInstaller
Photoprism
PocketCasts
Sandstorm
Syncthing
Traefik
Vaultwarden
WriteFreely federated blogging
YunoHost
... and thousands more.

(I'm linking only to their free/libre/open home pages, not to github.)

I'll repeat and emphasise, I love these fine FOSS projects I have listed here. I value, use, support, and/or contribute to, and recommend them to you for the fine work they are doing in free software world. I would also love to see them adopt FOSS principles when it comes to their choice of code forge.

More: #awesomeFOSS #selfHosted #GiveUpGithub #DitchDiscord #forgeFed #forgeFederation #Forgejo #Codeberg #FreedomTech #useOpenTools

FOSS Apps Live in FOSS App Stores!

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 15:43:34 +0000

Don't lock a FOSS Android app in Google's proprietary store!

Many of us are looking to FOSS solutions in order to keep our digital lives under our own control. We don't accept that any Big Tech company should hold the keys to a vast swathe of our digital life. So on our smart phones we may choose to use a FOSS version of Android. That means one that uses the open source parts of Android but avoids the proprietary Google lock-in parts. These so-called “deGoogled” Android-compatible operating systems include LineageOS, Murena /e/-OS, CalyxOS, GrapheneOS and more. Users of non-Google phones can find various “back door” ways to obtain apps from Google's play-by-our-rules-store, but that's completely the wrong way. FOSS apps should be available through FOSS app stores such as F-Droid.

F-Droid is not only an app store, it's also a protocol or “app store kit” that allows anyone to publish their own F-Droid-compatible app store. (I set up one up just to publish one camera app for myself and friends.) Each app publisher can choose whether to publish their app in the F-Droid store following its rules and conditions, or publish on their own store where they can set their own rules and conditions. Each user can decide which F-Droid-compatible stores they want to use, according to their own assessment of the publisher's reputation.

These fine FOSS people do it right

FUTO Circles a.k.a. Circuli, matrix-based private social media — published in the main F-Droid
... TODO: add lots more examples

These fine FOSS people need a nudge

Pocket Casts — issue “Add to F-Droid” disappointingly closed as “wont fix”.
... TODO: add lots more examples

These Fine People Understand

EU Pilot Project: Public Apps in F-Droid

FOSDEM '23 talk Sat 15:00 Reckoning with new app store changes: Is now our chance? — Recent legal and policy developments around app stores and what they mean for free software
FOSDEM '23 talk Sat 16:00 EU alternative to app stores — Guardian Project tooted: “At #FOSDEM, @marcel_kolaja will present the #EU pilot project to look into open-sourcing the EU's apps and publishing them outside of #BigTech including on @fdroidorg. @eighthave will join, talking about how F-Droid will help pull the EU towards #FreeSoftware. Join us!”

[1] An f-droid repo link is not a web page. To use it, you open your f-droid app's “repositories” settings and add the link there.

More: #degoogled #awesomeFOSS #selfHosted #GiveUpGithub #DitchDiscord #FreedomTech #useOpenTools

ditchdiscord — julian

Open tech, be afraid.

Discord vs Community Values

Free and Convenient

Moulded by Our Environment

Their Way or No Way

We're All In This Community

Excommunication

Communities Build Bridges

Bridge it to Matrix

Community Tech Values Open Protocols!

Your FOSS Project Deserves its Own Domain

Github the Mega-Mall

Beyond source code...

Feeding The Corporate Interest

What To Do?

Postscript: Non-DNS Naming Systems

FOSS Apps Live in FOSS Forges

How to Choose Freedom

These fine FOSS people do it right

Pwned by Big Tech: these fine FOSS people need a nudge

FOSS Apps Live in FOSS App Stores!

These fine FOSS people do it right

These fine FOSS people need a nudge

These Fine People Understand

Read More