Tell HN: There are now FOSS/H alternatives to major BigTech products
It's been a difficult two decades for those of us who expect technology to respect our freedom and privacy. We have been so marginalized by the mobile revolution, that we'd nearly given up looking for options.
While commiserating recently, we realized that several important missing pieces of the puzzle have neatly dropped into place under our noses!
What are they? Oh, the Fairphone6 w/eOS, Furilabs FLX1s, Starlite tablet, new Framework laptops, OpenWRT One, and a number of others. Software options are plentiful as well, maybe even a bit too plentiful.
Of course, these products are not perfect. Right now you're probably counting their flaws, or about to post better alternatives. But we feel there's a better way to look at the situation. The long-term view is that these open, freedom, and privacy-respecting options are now good enough for the vast majority of folks, and they'll only get better (if further invested in).
(Not to mention, how about the daily tug-of-wars with Windows or dumbing-down of MacOS? Are those products perfect? No, and arguably getting worse as the screws are turned.)
TL;DR—A full suite of respectful, ethical products is available. The catch? One needs to wrangle dozens of products from almost as many companies. That's not gonna work; it's too complicated, even for geeks. Our first idea to tackle the issue is this:
- Build a united storefront, on something like shopify (easy).
- Get numerous vendors to let us sell, integrate, and support their products (probably hard). Anyone out there know how to build such relationships?
If we can help these products sell, they'll be further invested in, and we'll move forward even faster. Full details are at "The Ethical Computing Initiative," at https://aol.codeberg.page/eci/
- Product Status Page at: https://aol.codeberg.page/eci/status.html > it's too complicated, even for geeks I could see it being too complicated for normal people, but for geeks? It's certainly not to complicated for me and my geek friends -- that's what we've been doing for years. Hmm, well personally I prefer doing business with only a few companies. After a dozen or so I start to lose track. Not to mention my data is now spread out at many rinky-dink outfits instead of a single trustworthy place with an Apple-like product line. Maybe suboptimal is a better word. I thought we were talking about FOSS here, though. I don't "do business" with companies to use FOSS. Whether or not I interact with the devs, and whether or not I give them any data, is independent of my using the software. That disconnect is one of the huge advantages to FOSS. We’re talking primarily about FOSH, the hardware counterpart. Guess the post is not clear enough. How do you feel about the rest of the text, and/or site? I’ve appreciated your comments in the past. Thanks. Ahh, I misunderstood then. You used the acronym FOSS/H, which I interpreted as including both software and hardware. I like the concept of an "The Ethical Computing Initiative" and am supportive of people adopting that mindset. I think the idea of a unified storefront could be useful for certain audiences. It's not really my cup of tea, but I'm not who you need to be addressing anyway (it would just be preaching to the choir). Would love to hear any ideas on how to improve the message. So far it has not resonated and we don’t have any feedback as to why. This particular post seems to have stumbled over the acronym FOSS/H, only chosen because I thought FOSH would not be recognized. I’ll avoid acronyms next time.