Notices by Pirate Praveen (praveen@social.masto.host)

@ska @data0 @roy_calum @dalias Free Software is in the commons, not private property of anyone. Boycott is not the best option available to us, fork is a better option. We can create a better community and continue maintaining the software removing any bad features. A good example is LibreWolf vs Firefox. #FreeSoftware would be much weaker if boycott was the only option available. So I proposed to fork it under @prav cooperative, there is initial support but will wait for everyone to weigh in.

@dalias the technical claims can be verified independently. Many of those are built on other commonly understood building blocks - not totally out of the blue. The brilliance is the exact combination they chose.

https://simplex.chat/blog/20241014-simplex-network-v6-1-security-review-better-calls-user-experience.html

The people who does auditing has to maintain their reputation. Are you saying this specific company who audited Simplex Chat is unreliable? Now you are going too far, if we can't even trust independent audits.

@dalias there are general defences against such moves like using fdroid which builds from source independently. I don't think they can hide such moves easily and that is a big deterrant in itself for trying something like you suggest. This is part of the advantages Free Software provides - we don't have to blindly trust anyone.

I hope to take those ideas to @prav so we can avoid collecting metadata. But this will take time. A fork or other implementations will also take time.

@dalias I think you are just letting your emotions / hatred cloud your judgement here. I don't disagree with your political opposition to the views of Simplex Chat. I agree with you fully those views should be opposed. But I disagree about the value of Simplex Chat technology. Every other peer to peer option out there lose out on reliability or hard to setup the reliable component. They might eventually mature in time, but right now I don't see another one that can reliably send offline messages

@dalias for example see this answer https://fosstodon.org/@cwtch/114660341630424163

No other app correctly balances server and peer to peer (no metadata on server) yet. More clients could do that in future for sure, but right now Simplex Chat has a unique proposition and I don't want to give up on that value because I disagree with its founder. Being Free Software means we have more options than a simple boycott when a project we care about does things we don't agree with.

@rysiek @cwtch thanks for sharing that. I agree that is bad. But being Free Software, we don't have to accept that. This is not the first time such a thing happened to Free Software. Malicious or privacy invasive features do get into Free Software sometimes. Some examples are Ubuntu once shared search data with Amazon by default. Mozilla made some shitty ToS changes etc. We responded by removing such features in derivatives / forks etc.

@rysiek @cwtch I will also evaluate other options, but I don't think giving up on Simplex Chat protocol is not the only options we have as Simplex Chat is still Free Software. All other peer to peer options I have evaluated so far move far away from traditional server client model and it will take time to mature. But I feel the balance Simplex Chat strikes makes it possible to use it today without all the drawbacks of both traditional server client and peer to peer options.

@dalias I know that would be an easier response. But easy option is not necessary the best option always. It is not really the first time a Free Software has done something shitty. But Free Software do give us more options than a binary take it or leave it. Take the recent example Mozilla coming up with shiity ToS changes. We have LibreWolf and many other forks that does not have these issues. We still can fork or implement Simplex Chat clients without such shitty features.

@rysiek @cwtch I think the thought of identifying and stopping users we don't like is a slippery slope. The same thing could be used by governments to stop dissidents. So I think as a technology unable to distinguish and stop users of any political belief or philosophy is important for privacy of people who need it the most. It'd be a shame if we have to give on such a great technology because of the politics of its founder. I think a fork or adopting the protocol in other products is better.

@rysiek @simplex I'm conflicted here, I like Simplex Chat as a software and what it provides - a unique hybrid approach that takes good elements from both peer to peer and server client models to come up with a usable private messaging system. But I don't want to be part of a community that promotes these politics. I think Simplex Chat as a project should come up with its own political values what standards its community members can expect.

CoMaps (Based on Organic Maps) has a stable release now (coming to fdroid and google play soon).

You can download it from
https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/releases/tag/2025.06.01-6-android

You can read more about the background for this fork at https://openletter.earth/open-letter-to-organic-maps-shareholders-a0bf770c

You can read more about the project at https://comaps.app or follow @CoMaps

#comaps #osm #FreeSoftware #OpenStreetMap #OrganicMaps #OpenSource

@fredy_pferdi You can see the reasons in this oppen letter https://openletter.earth/open-letter-to-organic-maps-shareholders-a0bf770c The community did not receive any respose to this oppen letter so they were forced to create CoMaps.

39 release critical bugs need attention for #debian #trixie

https://udd.debian.org/bugs/?release=trixie_and_sid&merged=ign&rttrixie-will-remove=ign&rttrixie-can-defer=ign&autoremovals=ign&deferred=ign&fnewer=ign&fnewerval=30&rc=1&cpopcon=1&chints=1&ctags=1&cclaimed=1&cdeferred=1&caffected=1&crttags=1&sortby=last_modified&sorto=asc#results

Would you be able to help fix some of them ? #bsp Ideally this number should be zero or at least very close to zero when we release trixie.

#FreeSoftware #OpenSource

@Codeberg @organicmaps Does same sanctions / same conditions from another EU sanction apply to Codeberg? Are you legally required to block contributors from specific regions ?

The story behind finalizing #Prav #Cooperative bye-laws!

The Prav Cooperative, though unregistered, already opens up several doors for us. Besides letting us manage our own funds, the first of these would be allowing us to sign up to an Indian SMS gateway, thereby reducing our message sending fees by 90%! Being formally recognised also means we can hopefully register under our own name on the Google Play Store and other official sources, rather than having to piggyback.

https://prav.app/blog/finalising-our-bye-laws/

@lxo @janvlug I think this approach of a single solution will work for everyone does not help in mass adoption. And unlike GNU/Linux mass adoption is crucial for a messaging platform. If we blindly try the same strategy we use for GNU/Linux, without understanding the network effects and forced usage, we are not going to succeed. The challenges have changed and we can survive only if we adapt. I'm not saying we must use phone numbers, we should interopetate with people who want that.

@lxo @janvlug we have to still solve the reliability issue somehow, and also mass adoption.

How does Jami handle messages if the receipient is not online? This likely involves processing more data by peers.

Like I keep repeating, choice of a messaging platform is not just a personal unlike GNU/Linux or Libre Office, we need our contacts using the same platform as well.

So to provide the same usability, we need server and phone book integration.

@janvlug #Signal is better than #WhatsApp, but still centralized. The entire world depending on a Single organization is not very sustainable. We have Quicksy and Prav both giving the same convenience of Signal without lock-in. #Quicksy and #Prav users can talk to each other and to any other #XMPP app.

To actually practice the freedom to improve a software, we should be able to self host the server part (not necessarily each person has to self host, but that option can offer real choice).

#GNOME Web is truly independent from #Google. Though still dependent on #Apple, they don't have as much power as Google. It is still better than a Google monopoly. And #webkit is developed with proper APIs and meant to be embedded in other applications unlike Google's #blink.

One big feature missing is support for audio / video calls (webrtc). With #BoringSSL switching to Apache 2.0, a big blocker for webrtc support is resolved.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1101132

#mozilla #firefox #epiphany

diasp.in and durare.org #xmpp services are now running the latest version 13.0 of #prosody xmpp server!

Thanks to @buster for doing the upgrade. There was a small unexpected down time as database format had changed and we needed to fix that manually.