A look at /e/OS on the FairPhone 3 – a FOSS OS for phones [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: A look at /e/OS on the FairPhone 3 – a FOSS OS for phones [video]

#51

Post by addicted » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

chrisMyzel wrote: post #50

I love to see any project that aims to end smartphone duopoly craziness - but seriously, he's trying to end the dependency of a central google account by replacing it with an /e account as the first step? This does not make any sense and is so contradictory to the idea that I did not look any further into the project (some while ago).

As long as the API is well defined, and the /e/ account can be easily replaced by a 3rd party, it’s probably the only way to a successful replacement.

It’s also ok to not define the API immediately, but to wait a few years to understand what the API should actually look like and then publicly define it for v2.0 once you have enough feedback about what you did wrong.

Re: A look at /e/OS on the FairPhone 3 – a FOSS OS for phones [video]

#52

Post by turbinerneiter » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

mlang23 wrote: post #6

turbinerneiter wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish that FOSS could serve this, but as you said, it took Google, a billion dollar company, a long time to get it right. /e/OS has about 40 team members mentioned on their website, including regular contributors - so its not 40 full-time employees. I think the best chance to get something going in this field is to try to get public funding for a research project around something like universal accessibility or some…

If FOSS can not cater to people with special needs per definition, as you seem to imply, I will have to stop advocating it altogether. If advocating for FOSS means supporting a movement that is not willing to bridge the gap and fight against digital divide, we need to stop doing so. Technology is the best chance for people with disabilities to catch up in our society. If we take that aware from them, we are not doing…

I never said any of these things.

Why do you act like I want to take technology away from anyone?

Go ask Microsoft, Google and Apple how much money they spend on accessibility and then compare that to the income of /e/OS.

How would you fix that resource problem if not by trying to get better funding?

Re: A look at /e/OS on the FairPhone 3 – a FOSS OS for phones [video]

#53

Post by mlang23 » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 10:32 AM UTC

volgar1x wrote: post #12

mlang23 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If FOSS can not cater to people with special needs per definition, as you seem to imply, I will have to stop advocating it altogether. If advocating for FOSS means supporting a movement that is not willing to bridge the gap and fight against digital divide, we need to stop doing so. Technology is the best chance for people with disabilities to catch up in our society. If we take that aware from them, we are not doing…

This is more a problem of man-time/funding than willingness.

Sure. All the free software we use today has been written on some sort of secret contract, everyone has been paid for their work. Unfortunately, tehre is no money to fund accessibility. So we cant do anything about it. But we still advocate free software since it is morally sooo much superior to all these evil commercial software companies. If the solutions we advocate inherently prevent people with disabilities from joining in mondane tasks in our society, that is really a bummer for these people.

Please explain. Why was Steve Jobs able to explain to Apple that in the case of Accessibility, ROI has to be ignored, because it is a social responsibility to build a platform that works for everyone. Why, to the contrary, is the free software movement trying to argue that this is absolutely impossible because of lack of funding?

Re: A look at /e/OS on the FairPhone 3 – a FOSS OS for phones [video]

#54

Post by mlang23 » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 10:46 AM UTC

simonh wrote: post #46

valvar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FOSS is not a company with a big budget and a CEO. It's a philosophy and a community built around the radical idea that user freedoms matter. If you want something particular to exist, then perhaps you should start building it or donating to those who are. No matter how nice or important it is, someone needs to build it and development requires more than just wishing — it requires money and time.

It's this user blaming by the FLOSS community that really sticks in my craw. On the one had proprietary software is immoral, on the other FLOSS software not living up to the needs of users is, er, the user's fault for not being programmers or personally sponsoring their own development effort.

+1

Thanks for this comment. I hear this a lot from people who actually know about F/LOSS but were not able (or interested) to switch from proprietary solutions because their needs are simply not handled in an appropriate way by F/LOSS.

In the past, when I was still more enthusiastic about free software, I heard their words but they somehow didn't really sink in. These days when all I hear if funding and the lack thereof, I start to get what they were saying, and I am actually pretty concerned about this. The worst outcome we could have is that free software advocacy actually works and these inaccessible solutions dominate the market. This would mean that free software actively pushs disabled people out of our society. Thinking about this, I stand to my massively downvoted comment. This would be a horrible outcome. So as long as there is no solution to the "why should I think about these fucks" or "nobody is paying me to care for disabled people" it would be a bad thing to further advocate free software.

Re: A look at /e/OS on the FairPhone 3 – a FOSS OS for phones [video]

#55

Post by simonh » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

mlang23 wrote: post #54

simonh wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's this user blaming by the FLOSS community that really sticks in my craw. On the one had proprietary software is immoral, on the other FLOSS software not living up to the needs of users is, er, the user's fault for not being programmers or personally sponsoring their own development effort.

+1 Thanks for this comment. I hear this a lot from people who actually know about F/LOSS but were not able (or interested) to switch from proprietary solutions because their needs are simply not handled in an appropriate way by F/LOSS. In the past, when I was still more enthusiastic about free software, I heard their words but they somehow didn't really sink in. These days when all I hear if funding and the lack ther…

Quite, it's not that I'm against open source for FLOSS, there are a lot of hard working selfless people doing great work. It's the self righteous lecturing side of it that does so much damage to the movement and disrespects people.