I've been a FOSS dev for 25 years and I remember when everyone else I worked with were avid linux/freeBSD users because 'we didn't trust the big end of town'.. over the years I've watched the vast majority of devs move to apple devices for all sorts of 'just works', 'shinier' reasons that just boil down to 'convenience is more important than privacy'.
Perhaps this is just the benefit of longevity but from my POV it was engineer early adoption and advocacy that made Apple, Google Search etc what they are, and it will be engineer early adoption and advocacy that dethrones these problematic companies from controlling the ecosystem..
Back 20 years ago, before the community filled with $_$ dollars-struck startup founders, software was built by people who wanted to use it.. rather than sell it. There are still some people doing this now, Look at Matrix network for instance.
What will it take for a grass-roots software industry to start building privacy-first apps and systems that don't suck, based on decentralised, distributed principles? We have the skills to build highly polished alternatives to these things, but it takes a determination to step away from convenience for a period of time for the sake of privacy.
How bad does it have to get before the dev community realise this? or are we in a frog boiling slowly scenario and it's hopeless?
Perhaps this is just the benefit of longevity but from my POV it was engineer early adoption and advocacy that made Apple, Google Search etc what they are, and it will be engineer early adoption and advocacy that dethrones these problematic companies from controlling the ecosystem..
Back 20 years ago, before the community filled with $_$ dollars-struck startup founders, software was built by people who wanted to use it.. rather than sell it. There are still some people doing this now, Look at Matrix network for instance.
What will it take for a grass-roots software industry to start building privacy-first apps and systems that don't suck, based on decentralised, distributed principles? We have the skills to build highly polished alternatives to these things, but it takes a determination to step away from convenience for a period of time for the sake of privacy.
How bad does it have to get before the dev community realise this? or are we in a frog boiling slowly scenario and it's hopeless?