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Jitsi meet is a pretty easy one to convince others to use, since it works in the browser and requires no accounts. For the others, it can be more work. Either

by pxc 3y ago

Jitsi meet is a pretty easy one to convince others to use, since it works in the browser and requires no accounts. For the others, it can be more work. Either way, the reality is that many people install those untrustworthy proprietary apps insecurely today, using vendor-provided DEBs that have a history of huge misbehavior and serious security vulnerabilities.

salawat 3y ago
Won't argue with you there, but I've gotten tired of turning into the old man shouting "If you have not read what you are preparing to deploy at least once, you don't know what it does! You are not engineering! You're doing a ritual!" at the clouds.
- pxc 3y ago
  That resonates deeply with me— even though, of course, I run lots of software I have not read. Trying to understand what's going on in a computer or a network can be overwhelming. I understand the need to simplify, to take for granted, to abstract away— to ritualize, even. But sometimes I do feel frustrated that engineers (whether in application development or infrastructure or networking, whatever) can be frustratingly uncurious about the tools they're using. 'How it works' should never mean 'how to operate it', but a lot of people use those terms interchangeably, even within tech. For me, though, using F/OSS isn't about reading code. It's about feelings and values like trust, respect, control, and peace. When you manage to avoid proprietary software entirely, you can recover those things in your computing life in a way that is totally opposite to the adversarial relationships most people have with the software they run today. It's easy to 'not know what you're missing', especially because you don't really get it from just using a few pieces of F/OSS on a proprietary platform. But the real reason to use F/OSS is to take refuge and let go of that tension of the posture you have to take with software whose authors don't have your interests at heart, that alertness and readiness to swat away nags, to dodge traps, to dig up the checkboxes and registry hacks and configuration files you need to disable an endless onslaught of individually small but nonetheless malicious behaviors. Imo, that makes it worth it to try to convince a few of your friends to explore Jitsi or Matrix or Revolt with you instead of trying to make room for whatever proprietary social media apps are trendy right now, even if you have never read a line of code in your life.

by pxc 3y ago

salawat 3y ago

Won't argue with you there, but I've gotten tired of turning into the old man shouting "If you have not read what you are preparing to deploy at least once, you don't know what it does! You are not engineering! You're doing a ritual!" at the clouds.

pxc 3y ago
That resonates deeply with me— even though, of course, I run lots of software I have not read. Trying to understand what's going on in a computer or a network can be overwhelming. I understand the need to simplify, to take for granted, to abstract away— to ritualize, even. But sometimes I do feel frustrated that engineers (whether in application development or infrastructure or networking, whatever) can be frustratingly uncurious about the tools they're using. 'How it works' should never mean 'how to operate it', but a lot of people use those terms interchangeably, even within tech. For me, though, using F/OSS isn't about reading code. It's about feelings and values like trust, respect, control, and peace. When you manage to avoid proprietary software entirely, you can recover those things in your computing life in a way that is totally opposite to the adversarial relationships most people have with the software they run today. It's easy to 'not know what you're missing', especially because you don't really get it from just using a few pieces of F/OSS on a proprietary platform. But the real reason to use F/OSS is to take refuge and let go of that tension of the posture you have to take with software whose authors don't have your interests at heart, that alertness and readiness to swat away nags, to dodge traps, to dig up the checkboxes and registry hacks and configuration files you need to disable an endless onslaught of individually small but nonetheless malicious behaviors. Imo, that makes it worth it to try to convince a few of your friends to explore Jitsi or Matrix or Revolt with you instead of trying to make room for whatever proprietary social media apps are trendy right now, even if you have never read a line of code in your life.