Some people hate it, including some independent developers. I wouldn’t mind going without it, if there was a Free Software library management alternative. I want something to track what I have installed (because I’ve “lost” things and reinstalled them before) and something that has a decent uninstall.

I also get some benefit from the store integration, but I can understand developers being annoyed at the 30% “steam tax”. I’d gladly purchase using some other method, if I didn’t have to sacrifice library functions from previous paragraph.

“users will be frustated and leave” exactly the same thing can happen to an instance that adds an instance (or wildcard domain) block. I’d be very surprised if no instance has ever rolled back a block.

Users don’t need to worry about instance blocks on ActivityPub, any more than they have to worry about DNS RBLs for email.

if gmail could just randomly decide to stop receiving emails from outlook addresses and there’s nothing any user can do about it

This is the case right now.

There’s good reasons GMail doesn’t do that, but there’s absolutely nothing technical preventing from doing that, and I can’t think of anything that legally prevents them from doing that.

Using another ActivityPub-based interface is a LOT to ask for many users. They want a simple to pronounce name, they can stick in their browser’s universal bar and be on a sign-up page in less than 3 clicks without making any more choices.

😞

There have been some complaints about Mastodon for years; both specific (“quote tweets”) and vague (get rid of shitty, often bigoted replies for profiles with a lot of followers or with a marginalized identity).

Mastodon largely hasn’t implemented them. Maybe Bluesky has. (I don’t have a BS account.)

It’s an argument against a license that permits relicensing under a more restrictive license. (E.g. BSD)

I read a story of someone that contributed to a BSD project, including fixes over some period of time, but later they ended up having to use a proprietary UNIX for work, that included their code, in a an intermediate, buggy state, but they were legally forbidden from applying their own bug fixes!

At the very least the GPL guarantees that if I am ever downstream of myself, I has fix my own damn mistakes and don’t have to suffer them.

I am still willing to contribute to BSD stuff, but vastly prefer something like the AGPLv3.

It’s been a LONG time since I tried, but ISTR it complaining that it couldn’t move the old_root because it was in use? But, when I’d fuser it, the only think that was using it was my shell (using it as the current directory).

I’ve never gotten pivot_root to work well / as documented. Major props for being able to pull this off. Hopefully you didn’t have much time where a connection-drop would require a reboot. SSH in the new root on an alternate port before the pivot? idk.

Given that some films are getting post-release edits before they appear on streaming or physical media, it might be a good idea just from an archival perspective.

I’m not a good judge of piracy methods for consumption, as I am currently willing to pay their prices or do without.

Depends on the pay differential and other options. I think it’s less useful for positions in my career, but it’s not an absolute no.

Chameleon Linux: Changing Stripes Edition

A Distribution Named SUE

When given the option, read the instructions, and save for future reference. (A URL / bookmark doesn’t count as saving unless you control the hostname (including DNS).)

The other suggestions are probably better, but you can technically self-host Wire (from Wire Gmbh) but I’ve never done it successfully.