One thing I should mention is that we are surrounded with proprietary software and companies. Almost all of the major tech and publishing companies are proprietary ones. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, IBM, and Amazon (Big Tech) are constantly working to protect the proprietary software and patents of theirs.

Sadly, the majority of people use almost only proprietary software and these companies are benefiting from them. Now, what we do (supporting the free culture) is against their benefit so they have to advertise against it and target people with false accusations against free software world.

For instance, the Google page about the AGPL details inaccurate (but common) misconceptions about the obligations of the AGPL that don’t follow from the text. Google states that if, for example, Google Maps used PostGIS as its data store, and PostGIS used the AGPL, Google would be required to release the Google Maps code. This is not true.

These companies don’t like free software. This is actually one of the reasons that they use the term Open Source instead of free software.

Now, if they have to pretend to like a free software, they prefer the ones they can control, the ones like MIT that can be used proprietorially. An example is BSD. One of the major developers of BSD is Apple which benefits a lot from the weak BSD licenses.

Copyleft restricts big tech from benefiting and not giving back to community so these companies don’t like it and do everything they can to weaken the copyleft culture so they can survive on benefiting from our community and violating people’s freedom and rights.

Many people believe Apple is a privacy hero. It’s surprising that a lot of people believe Apple really respects their privacy. For years, Apple has advertised about how it respects users and cares about their privacy and many people fell for their lie.

Apple is simply one of the worst companies when it comes to respecting people and users privacy. Apple doesn’t encrypt your data and when it does, it has full control over encrypted data and decrypts whatever it wants, but that’s not even the case.

Apple tracks users, collects personal information, stores sensitive and personal data, gives away every data it wants, targets people with advertisements and even uses human workers to listen to people’s conversations with Siri sound recordings.

Apple is no better than Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc. What Apple does, is the same as what Google does but Apple does it in a fancy way and falsely advertises about its fake privacy practices.

Every Apple device and service is a violation of people’s privacy. Don’t listen to those who are hardcore Apple fans and want to reduce Apple’s privacy violation to service providing. Apple and every other major company can deliver service without tracking and storing people’s data.

Yes, to get maps and routes working, the device needs to track your location but the service provider doesn’t need to store this location data. If Apple respects people’s privacy, then it should stop storing data, or at least, at least store data anonymously without any piece of data that can be used to identify an individual personally.

There are ways to avoid Apple and Google. We can still buy phones that has no Google or other trackers in it or we can simply install custom Android distributions ourselves. Some like Replicant and LineageOS are freedom-respecting and privacy-focused.

Remember, Apple is no better than Google or other companies. Respect yourself and avoid it.

ThinkPad have been GNU+Linux users first choice for years and now Lenovo has released a ThinkPad with a ready-to-run GNU+Linux. And, not just any GNU+Linux, but Red Hat’s community’s, Fedora.

Red Hat Senior Software Engineering Manager Christian Schaller wrote:

This is a big milestone for us and for Lenovo as it’s the first time Fedora ships pre-installed on a laptop from a major vendor and it’s the first time the world’s largest laptop maker ships premium laptops with Linux directly to consumers. Currently, only the X1 Carbon is available, but more models are on the way and more geographies will get added too soon.

First in this new Linux-friendly lineup is the X1 Carbon Gen 8. It will be followed by forthcoming versions of the ThinkPad P1 Gen2 and ThinkPad P53. While ThinkPads are usually meant for business users, Lenovo will be happy to sell the Fedora-powered X1 Carbon to home users as well.

The new X1 Carbon runs Fedora Workstation 32. This cutting-edge Linux distribution uses the Linux Kernel 5.6. It includes WireGuard virtual private network (VPN) support and USB4 support. This Fedora version uses the new GNOME 3.36 for its default desktop.

I personally love Fedora. I’m currently a Trisquel user after I found out about Fedora’s discriminatory act (rule) but Fedora is actually one of the best.

Two famous Mastodon clients, Subway Tooter and Fedilab reported that they’ve got warnings from Google over what their users have posted.

A Mastodon app does not host or promote any of the generated contents. It’s only used to connect to different instances. The responsibility of moderating resides with the server/instance the user is active in. Exactly like how web browsers work. A web browser is not responsible for what websites promote and doesn’t host their content. A web browser only shows those content.

So, unless Google removes Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Edge, and other web browsers because they may show sensitive contents such as racism or adult stuff, Google’s warnings are ridicules and out of line.

Also, I really suggest developers to publish their app on platforms like F-Droid instead of Google Play Store. F-Droid only hosts free software apps and is much safer and better than Google’s platform. The Mastodon client Fedilab is also accessible on F-Droid.

The Register has reported that Google’s Chromium developers team has proposed a way to establish web applications direct network connections.

The Raw Sockets API, which may end up being renamed the Direct Sockets API, represents an attempt to give browser apps networking capabilities that aren’t possible via data transport options like HTTP, WebSockets and WebRTC. It essentially allows the browser to talk directly to devices and other computers via the network.

This can put web at huge security risks and can be used to heavily violate users’ privacy. Nothing can go wrong except for everything related to users’ security and choices over privacy.

I highly encourage you to get away from Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers that follow Google’s path.

My biggest problem with e-books is DRM. Except for shops that give you the document with full ownership, no other e-book is in accordance with the rights of users and violates the ownership of individuals on their own property. I explained about DRM before so I’m not going to talk about it again.

While ago, I wrote about how freedom of thought is more important than free software itself. I also mentioned that people should move forward step by step with patience.

Hasty and thoughtless decisions often have a devastating effect on that work. Specially when it comes to free software, many people get excited about new tools they see. They see logic in our conversations and, unfortunately, they want to make quick changes without addressing the principles.

Free software movement is heavily focused on principles of it. There is no software that can violate or give us freedom by itself. It’s people who violate the essential freedoms and/or make a free software. When a software, for whatever reason, fails to respect and comply with the four essential freedoms, it is called nonfree and proprietary software.

Now, if people understand the concept of software freedom and believe in the philosophy of the movement, we see less of these violations and a better community. Emotional and hurried decisions, most of the times, lead us to regret. I’ve seen many people who decided to stop using proprietary software and privacy-violating services and they regretted it after a while.

Most of the times it’s because they were unable to repeat the experience they had with proprietary programs they used to use. Every time a person decides to join us in the free software movement, I tell that person to be patient. I ask people to first study about the movement and try to understand every principle of software freedom and also free (as in freedom) culture.

Software freedom is more about principles of freedom and people/users’ rights than the software itself.