Well, I think it would interesting to list more studies and problems for further discussion regarding being believable. What about flatpak as a concrete actual example? The idea itself sounds nice but a further look onto the website Flathub shows exactly the opposite. Proprietary applications like Spotify, Steam and Skype are available besides free, libre projects. Where should this readlly help? And what about the idea of Rob McQueen (Board member of GNOME) as he noted the following:

Sounds not good at all regarding free soft- and hardware? Remember: We are talking really here not about the pragmatic "Open-Source". But as we are already talking about Gnome: What about the so-called supporting organizations? Well, lovely Google is to be found there and don't get me wrong: I'm not starting here another "Google is the evil and enemy at the gates!"-argumentation. It is more about the literally wrong direction and I'm not the one deciding this because it is all about the wording itself: "Free as in freedom" includes also responsibility and the will looking after mistakes and discussing about them. The mass seems to cryout for easy integration, no difference between free and proprietary software and all at once in a really wild mixup. How do we think this is ending? My assumption: It'll break Linux from the ground and making it unusable when talking about freedom and privacy, the right to study and learn at anytime and the right to fork and modify everywhere and everything.

How do I come to this assumption? Even today projects like systemd are done by developers paid from companies and they have much more time as others doing this in their free time. So those developers paid for have much more time building up a full bloated context and that's a major reason having systemd including more parts - no, this won't stop as the team came up with homed. When talking about the KISS-principle I have to say even now when talking a gobal Linux-community: We are really far away from that, people. Galaxies between the concrete imagination of Keep it simple and straightforward (you can choose also other wordings) as people for doing development and documentation have different amount of time and this is the big breaking-point. In the end companies and commercial interests have even an easy going with all of this and the false image for "Linux" being safe, secure and simple rising up more and more.

Don't misunderstand me: GNU/Linux (as using now the GNU within) can be really simple, fast and safe. But not with all the other things back in. Not with all this false promises as more and more centralization is ongoing right now as I write those words here. Are there alternatives for Flathub? No, not really. And what about the FSF for example having a concrete argument against those complex things like systemd of doing a fork for flatpak? As long as it is "free as in freedom" there is no problem, so "we" can take it? Erm, okay? And what about being independent? Raising a freedom of choice? That's all part of being believable, coming not with false promises of being "easy to handle" and stopping that pragmatism, which even overcomes the clearest principle. The reasoning? Because people even argument that they have a freedom to choose using proprietray applications. Yes, they can do so, but this is not about tolerance as this won't stop there and more dependencies from those big, bloated projects (systemd) will come up while distributions like Hyperbola and others have more work to remove this or freeze the current version used - including therefore backporting security fixes in one way or another. This cannot be good, this is against being believable and shred the trust into pieces when security issues won't fix one day because the dependencies stands in the way. So we should question ourselves about having the newset , pragmatic choice while in the long run there can emerge real chances. Even the phrase "X is an alternative to Y" is questionable  as people always tend to think in comparisons. GNU is not about that from my point of view and we will ruin it doing just in comparisons!

Yeah, me too. But we have already many building sites when talking about free, libre software. This pragmatic mentality coming up with "open-source" caused mischief until today as we already need principles not bound to persons and more for a globalized understatement at all. That's really big words I'm using here, I know. But better to get on and start with it, being believable!

Actually, having a copyleft license makes it marginally better.  But yeah, it still is a terrible bit of software.

Personally I think the FSF needs to realize even free software licenses can be used for restricting freedom. Case in point, systemd, dbus, networkmanager, pulseaudio, etc...

A long story in short: Using proprietary services like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram or Pinterest does only the opposite of distributing freedom and privacy

In fact many participants and projects make usage of those services, some even use them as the only way for further news. This doesn't help spreading freedom and tells just all users and developers the opposite: Making use of those services is in some way "okay". Far more worse Twitter has just some standing and I don't get it: Why using this echochamber full with transported hatred and shortened facts or even worse lies? Calling this "social media" is a very bad joke and just for reaching the majority the risks are far more higher than any profit could be as people starting to believe they don't have to change anything. And transporting some kind of news back into those anti-social media is the same: Nothing is going to change, if we as community (meaning "free software" in general) stay this kind of pragmatic! Those corporate websites and services just make use of all data they can get and the community itself is getting fractured more than ever. Twitter is being helpful? Stop joking. And services like Diaspora or Mastodon are not better, just because they use a copyleft license. They are even far more worse as some participants and demagogues use them for proclaiming their "freedom of speech". Well, better call this "refusal for criticism" as every freedom of speech just has to stop when others are insulted, harassed and their rights and dignity should be removed.

Don't get it and I will never get this: Stop this and start being believable, meaning also being inclusive and not exclusive! Everything else is a waste of time in best cases and could become a big problem about time as facts are reduced to just 280 signs and "open-source" will become the same as "free software". Full of trouble with those simplifications and I have not even mentioned the devastating effects for democracies when fascists take over - way too much of those mentalities are in there.

A democracy built on top of clear principles, based on respect and inclusion for every peaceful living and being, discussing clear problems with the will to solve them and not making some smear campaign out of them, open for criticism and against capitalism in general as it is the base for many problems. Don't giving up and keep argumenting as we should never handing out our individual freedom and privacy to some companies. As humans have recognized the scheme of simulating "trust" (and then doing something else) those companies are within failure, as the illusion of some "free markets" is the same - the toxic waste of capitalism as "free software" is a complete opposite model. Whatever smear campaign and argument is possible, will be used and done!

But it's just for having more "outreach", the excuse for making an account using  proprietary services and I have heard this so many times. And Twitter announced even yesterday building some small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media and a mass of people cheer up. Exactly why? There are already defined protocols and ideas available: ActivityPub? Diaspora? Zod? Many more.

That's the problem with capitalism and neoliberalism: Only an "authority" is accepted instead of facts and of course a company like Twitter is exactly this. I've mentioned before that the handling of anti-social networks is not good: The reasoning? Because also Diaspora, Mastodon and others also repeat paradigms known from the proprietary services: You like a comment or posting, you share a posting and where is the discussion? Where is the talk, the social interaction? Clicking on some icons to execute further actions is no interaction and not even near being social. In fact it is the opposite: People just hunting for affirmation instead of reflection, getting into closed filterbubbles. No difference between proprietary or libre services therefore. Okay, you can participate in a discussion under a posting and I remember early days at Diaspora where this last for weeks with hundreds of comments under a posting. I've left the network after this changed more and more with the paradigms being copied from people and developers, with examples like Facebook and Google+ in mind. Better to have a high number of votings ("likes") instead of a long discussion! There you have the major problem: The ongoing shortening of information, of discussion and reduction of facts and complexity.

Nevertheless the basic idea of having decentralized systems is "good", using them for (real) "social interaction" also and not new. But it was ignored long enough and the "blockchain" is again some buzzword. Same with the announcement of Twitter. Was not believable before and is the same bad joke. But I think enough participants will rise up in the near future proclaiming again that Twitter is opening and where we would have been "without all those companies and their support" - another smear argument for accepting donations from companies first and afterwards perhaps even more. But hey, you may ask: What could possibly go wrong? Being pragmatic and giving up is better than thinking, eh? The known false arguments and the resulting events are in chronological ordering: First the companies bound people with the illusion of "social interactions", second they sell data given to them, third they recognize it is better to use libre, free software in some ways instead of inventing otherwise and fourth they simulate interest for the greater good of all. Indeed it is for someone's good, but not for society, not for the community and not for the projects the companies are interested in. It's just more of the same: The interest of those companies like Twitter and they won't release any kind of idea or bunch of source, perhaps just some minor fragments as Microsoft did in the past with .net and Mono. Again people cheering up, but for what exactly? Was the complete source-code of Windows released under a copyleft or permissive license? Was DirectX given to the people of the Wine-project for further implementation? All hardware-vendors have been enforced to release their source-code and there won't be a any further discussion about if Windows and its sources would be released? You see: Playing "bullshit-bingo" is big in these days! Perhaps this was the same always for us human beings and we like to play this political nonsense? The companies try to open up, nothing is far more wrong as description as they are locking in with illusions and the "free software"-community has no further arguments against this while following the "open-source"-claims. And we all are not independent: As diabetic for example I have to follow selected companies creating my insulin and possibilities to check my current blood sugar. If those possibilities are not available any longer I have to look after others, but not because I have done this decision on my own. It is because an "authority" - a company - decided this because it was no longer of financial interest and benefit for them!

The reasoning, quite simple as hard: If they decide not to create insulin and possibilities for diabetics any longer - political motivated, financial interests etc. - I'm going to die very soon. And so is the same for others with chronic health conditions. So is the same with information and technologies, on another surface and with another context as free knowledge and information is crucial for a free, libre and open society and colorful culture for all beings! It is easy to choose the nearest exit and not to think about consequences, but they are already here to be seen for everyone willing.

The problem with snap and flatpak? They may be technical free software, but on the ethical level and view they are just a failure as proprietary applications are distributed throughout them. Making therefore any free, libre distribution mixed up outside the personal HOME-directory!

But that's not the end of the story to be told as flatpak just have got Flathub as trusted source for an installation. There has to be done a hard fork of flatpak and create some kind of free repository only accepting libre, free software and appliances. And there is the breaking point as for now there is no further interest and libre distributions like Hyperbola have enough work to do on their own repositories - not even talking about Trisquel at this point, but it is the same. And the community is not that big we could manage this kind of fork for now. It was just rational to remove flatpak and same with snap as both are just semifree under best conditions.

Hey.

Nice read .
Sadly it is another post in which i am going to write about myself nothing else... But it's hard to find like-minded people... I meet new people, i see most of my family (well not everybody from older generation is online 24/7 although most of em is)...
3 years ago i was extremely bored... I asked my grandma to buy me laptop cuz i want play these computer games!!! So i got it at the end, it was acer laptop... I had played diablo 3, steam games, used to go on youtube all the time... Of course google'd, spotify i just used everything apart from amazon.com <- i don't really understand that platform so i have no idea how to use it...
Of course i had windows 10 installed... The more i used my laptop the more i started to become oriented about windows 10 being bloated (2gb ram usage out of 4???)?? And i want to play games here??
So that was my first reason to get into linux... I used to play diablo 3, i was sure that it should outperform windows greatly when used on gnu/linux...  Of course it doesn't have directx 12, but it is quite old game, from 2012...

There is another bollocks of our times nowadays is basically how people go listen to music on platforms such as youtube (which for me original intention is to be video hosting platform not music), or spotify and other streaming bollocks like amazon prime and tidal... It's either watching some annoying ads to play song that is also crap quality or paying for rental... I have quite good ear, because i been playing drums since i was a kid... So headphones is kind of my thing i can say... In the meantime when i decided i want to stay off corporations because they're rich billionairies thanks to people like myself who are poor and use their services... Why would i want to spend time of my one life to play some game like Diablo 3 made by some multimillionairie company like Blizzard Entertainment while i only have 20 dollars in my pocket???
So i decided it all has to end...
Throughout these 3 years of having acer laptop, i ditched windows 10 for linux, i have deleted every gmail account i have created (about 8), i have deleted my steam account where i had games i paid for... Deleted blizzard account with diablo 3 that i paid 35$ for.... I said to myself: i don't care...
Few days ago i finally removed my reddit account, twitter account...

Since i mostly listen to music using CD's now, since i think this is the best sound quality, not some .flac or streaming services..., i haven't got any reason to go on youtube anymore... I haven't been on it for few years now.... So it's hard time for me when i go see my friends and they go on youtube to listen to music... I see my family being online 24/7 cuz of their smartphones and constantly being connected to stuff like facebook and messenger... It's hard to live in a society where nobody even thinks what it is to have apps like this installed on their devices... Being locked up to some google play, like you can't use it if you don't have gmail account... It's nice that there is stuff like F-droid, lol...
It's even with people my age, everybody is hooked so much into this social media stuff, instagram, facebook, it's hard for me to meet normal people... Well fortunately i have one friend who is not dumb enough to stay away from services like facebook or turn the localization in his tablet off haha ;P. But anythng else is just crap...
It's also crap how i see young girls hooked to their smartphones so much... I can see that girls are more vulnerable to this than guys...

But well the point of this post is that 3 years ago i knew nothing about linuxing, now i have got account on every platform you stated earlier deleted... Majority of people can't exist without these proprietary services these days... I am glad i am out of this and decided to purchase libreboot... The only websites i visit these days are those i get on OpenPandora search engine... I stay away from every major corporation website...
And now you go see your friends and they ask you to play a song from youtube and i am like: Damn.... ;P.

Unforunately all this crap destroys communication... I used to play in a band during my time in England, with english people... Once we all met at my friends house and they r played music from amazon prime and spotify and youtube... Because it was the time after i discovered how much better it is to listen to music straight from CD instead of a file or streaming services so i clearly stated that i oppose what you do and why can't you get yourself some cd player ;/...

Another sad thing is how people are killing each other by driving their cars... But this is another topic...
I am also very paranoid in my brain that writing stuff like this which is basically opposing using products created by multi billionairie corporations gonna get me into trouble... But then i am like an ant on this planet earth, so it seems like nobody cares... But i always feel like saying what i think online is not 100% safe... Of course i am not being socially disturbtive... But then you may say talking face to face is safer... It's hard to talk with somebody who hasn't got his smartphone with facebook installed in his pocket, that might be recording what i am talking to this person... So where is the best place to share my opinions without fear???

It seems like everybody who uses these proprietary services dont even seem to think that they might being watched... And they don't even seem to care... I am very lonely person so i think this... So i probably wouldn't be so lonely if i had facebook like anybody else around me... But i am like i am more okay with being lonely than having an account on social media...

I miss 90s so much there hasnt been such a bad surveillance... People didnt have google acounts, smartphones, intel management engines in their laptops, quick machines but i recall they were much happier times than these days... We are slowly losing right to privacy these days... It's extremely hard for me to find similar people who respect their right for privacy... I know that people don't even know what privacy is....

But well i think the major reason why i decided to stop using what you call 'proprietary software' is because i found it to be very selfish... When i play Diablo 3 or other crap on steam like these e-sport games, nobody really benefits from it... I waste my time while being very poor person to play some game made by rich millionairies/billionairies... So i give my money to these corps, so they can benefit from it and i benefit by having cheap entertainment nothing else... What about other people??
Well so it should be stated that using these proprietary stuff is selfish and nothing else... Right now i don't spend my time playing some diablo 3 or steam game but i write this post on forum and i create some simple wallpapers in gimp for myself and i can share this with other people too...

I have recently read some book called Cybersecurity i borrowed from library... It sucks so much how much money government spends to fight with these hackers who steal millions or billins of dollars every year, why can't everybody on this planet use libre software like on hyperbola so this kind of bollocks ends??????

Nice!! Well the earliest windows i can remember is 98 ;P.

There is something else that spreads like virus in whole internet and in my opinion destroys communication between people and that is google recaptcha solver... You know you're on some forums and to write a post select pictures with traffic lights... Some forums i used to visit a lot in the past got modernized... Plenty that didn't have disappeared... I have no idea why these things happened. That was maybe like 6 months ago... Let's say there were 4 discussion forums that i used to visit... 3 of them have disappeared 6 months ago and the last one hasn't but it's been modernized to today standards... Most of them all look the same now... Powered by some invision community or something...
Notifications, like buttons, and of course google captcha solver!!! I have no idea why such things happened in the similar period of time, 3 forums gone one got modernized and still exists...
But as i am extremely concerned towards google, i stopped posting on it... do i want to sell my soul by completing captcha to write some post or simply refuse to do this and stop using this forum, of course the choice is obvious...

It's similar with few mmorpgs i used to play a lot... You want to create new character or account -> you need to complete google recaptcha... Of course i am not gonna do this it so i am not going to play this game...
I love google and i know that this company is run by bunch of smart people, but in fact got created by two russian guys and somebody told me americans love them haha... I love google so much that 6 years ago i went to the cinema to see some movie about some 2 guys trying to get hired in google hahah... Last year i read a book about this company too!!! I don't remember who author was though....
But unfortunately google is being very cheeky by forcing every average john who goes online and doesnt think about things like being tracked, to use their products... I really would like to become google customer, but revenue they make and number of people who constantly use their services is just too overwhelming for me... Same with people who go on facebook... I am simply too scared to register on it... My life being dependent on some stuff like this is smething i probably wouldn't be able to deal with mentally... I really want to have as much control of my 'digital existence' as possible...

So if i think that way and i oppose using these stuff, now i go online and see many autorities going on social media stuff... Some nature activists promotiong themselves and their ideas by using stuff like instagram/twitter all this kind of stuff.... How can somebody like me treat these people seriously, because they promote using these websites... So many people haven't got any idea that there are certain individuals like myself who believe that listening to music on youtube/streaming services is wrong... I also don't understand the fact why so much masses accept the fact that they use products of corporations that generate billions of dollars every year thanks to them... How does using all these big tech giants services benefit the society?? By giving all data about themselves on plate and nothing in return just so few people can earn more and more billions dollars every year???

So i am quite not sure what's worse in these times, these big tech companies social media, data mining or killing nature and turning planet into grey brick... Now you go online and see these people trying to fight for the planet by using social media stuff... It is fashionable...
But what's worse in my opinion is how parents teach their kids how to use their tablets and make them grow up with youtube and stuff... Is there like future generations won't have idea what snow is, will live in grey brick planet not green or they will be manipulated by these giant tech companies and brainwashed by social media stuff??? Thinking they're doing good while being constantly watched????? Or maybe i am too paranoid??? What's worse planet turning into grey brick or younger generations that have their brain shaped by what american corporations show them and future generations that won't be able to exist without going on youtube/facebook and the way the think is being shaped by some youtubers???
But there is point that i make... I have one life and we're all gonna die... Our time is precious... Do i want to spend my time watching some dumb youtube videos or simply read some book, visit my family or simply go for a walk to the nature?? Or maybe try to learn how to code so maybe one day i will know how to write some libre software that other people can use??? Instead of playing some diablo 3 .
I hope you understand my point

Have a nice day

edit: Oh btw... I love rpg games... unforunatley i have never played these rpg games you used to read or create stories, that's what you said... I know what you mean... Word, speech, paper based rpg games??
currently i am playing some old game might and magic VII for blood and honor... I am really happy that even though Hyperbola is 100% libre, it runs some old windows games fine....

What about DRM within the Linux-kernel? What about all the proprietary firmware-blobs being builtin? Perhaps it is unknown for many users: The official Linux-kernel has just an own repository for proprietary firmware-blobs here. Those blobs (Binary Large Objects) are components, where no further source code is available. The integration of them goes back into 1996 when developers of the Linux-kernel official began to use them.

So even if you think your concurrent installation of a generic distribution is "free as in freedom", it is not. That's the point for Linux-libre being part of free, libre distributions since 2006 first started and the difference of any pragmatic view (meaning "Open-Source") and a full libre usage with social and ethic principles. One further example are graphiccards from AMD (ATI): You won't be able getting them running with all features included when using a libre kernel. The reason is just easy and tragic: The MESA-stack just needs proprietary firmware-blobs for them, as it the same with NVidia and Intel also on newer versions. Being believable means also showing the interests of companies where they can get to: Just leaving the sphere of free software as any inclusion won't end good or with the idealistic touch for companies opening. It's just another lie.

What about DRM mentioned above? When looking throughout implementations within the kernel-sources we find again participants with domains like intel.com and chromium.org as Intel also distribute HDCP. Regarding HDCP: It is official supported through the generic Linux-kernel! The conclusion is therefore: Nobody at the Linux-foundation has got a further problem with those proprietary technologies and DRM in general. And the users are fooling themselves believing this is some kind of "good" or just "pragmatic". Companies won't help in any way and their support is the same: Just for their own interests, nothing more and nothing less! Nothing for a common sense, nothing for people being "free as in freedom" and nothing about being believable.

Everyone is responsible for individual freedom, but there is a much greater context when the majority is ignoring issues with hard- and software for a very long time - same regarding mobile devices with phone-capabilities. Just for fun, just for accommodativeness people are ignoring major problems and also with Linux (without GNU). But the Linux-kernel is just one component of the GNU-ecosystem and should be changed in the future. Hurd? Or perhaps BSD likewise Hyperbola has this on the agenda?

It's not that the people don't know about those major flaws and failures, it's about they're ignoring as it is not important for now. But it will be important if companies go further, using the collected data or the dependencies made in the past - yeah I'm talking about YOU systemd and Red Hat. But for the time being: You could use the Acer-notebook perhaps on another level and change the Wifi-chip in the future? Therefore Hyperbola does run with NVidia, just Nouveau is not always performing well in some scenarios. But depending on the chipset it could be the possibility. It's a pity that Minifree has problems at the moment and I hope Leah can solve them.

For good DOS-games: Like I've said there is so much coming up from the DOS-era. Perhaps Stonekeep is something for you? A very cool roleplaying-game. Or Anvil of Dawn?

Ah and regarding OFF-TOPIC or better to be said "Gaming" I'd like to propose creating another thread named "Gaming on Linux" - of course with some rulesets as DRM should not be included. But using GNU/Linux is a whole bunch of fun, with libre games or also proprietary classics.

Hmm, think it would be interesting for having another discussion in another thread as your annotations are valued but speaking for myself: I don't think in "countries", "nationalities" or "nations". It is not that I have no respect for the people, it's just I have no understatement for the definition of a "nation" as it is in some ways excluding and the concept of "we and the others". I like it more including - mentioned it every time again: I am an idealist!

So you mentioned this and I'm going to define my understatement a little bit more: I am a diabetic and I have enough experiences about being excluded. Also I have enough experiences with being bullied and mobbed back in my childhood, youth and also as an adult you are not safe of being excluded if you don't fit into pictures and some drawers. Therefore "nationality" is just another information for me and nothing more as for me in an utopian point of view there are no borders needed and people living in peace. Perhaps this is some naive view as this seem not to correspond with some kind of human nature or better with some participants in our global society!

But we can go back to picture of systemd: I have no problem with the existance of it, but it's just so I don't want to use it and I don't care about it as it consumes time I want to give in other fields - writing down some philosophical aspects here is one of them. And I have no personal problem with Mr. Poettering as I don't see him as some kind of person people like him to be. He is like everyone else, with the exclusion of doing work for the project systemd. In the end? Nothing better or worse. It's up to more making this a bigger problem as distributions do it with the inclusion of systemd and the exclusion of every other possible INIT-framework. The easier an answer could be, the more I am critical about it.
So speaking about different nationalities: I think they doesn't matter at all as we are all human beings, different views or ideas of course. But same rights and valueable of human rights. That should be the basics for working on libre software! Everything else takes the discussions on sideways and there are prejudices I think have no further room, because they exclude again instead being inclusive. Therefore I like the concept of Hyperbola and their social contract, especially: Play the ball, not the man. And the ball is the ignorance, the shortened answers of our time and after all excluding therefore people, which is just unfair and against everything "free software" and "free culture" stands for.

And last but not least: If you want, you can share your experiences with "gaming" especially here now.