I get in on UK now… Japan… gosh, I hope not but I am very afraid that is the underlying truth.

You have a point… a scary point!

Those that claim it is a “Special Operation” say it to deny the word invasion… of course, is nonsense. That is what I was referring to. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

I presume the concern is governments banning apps left and right so a federated repository will be mostly immune from that. But you are right, technologically is not as straight forward.

What surprised me is that F-Droid is avoided by many FOSS enthusiasts (due to signing it themselves so delayed updates and potential tampering). Aurora is great but 100% on Google’s merci and Google frequently cuts its winds. Did not know Aptoide was community based… have to check it out.

Oh… there are! I oppose the invasion 100%, like oppose US trying to invade Cuba with the same claims. Now, I accept as an argument that when you have been invaded three times through Ukraine by western powers and each resulted with millions of deaths… you may have a cause to ask for neutrality from Ukraine. Very unfair for the sovereignty of Ukraine, but I understandable from Moscow. Ukraine should have been more pragmatic. Mexico’s current leader detests the US leadership, but instead of asking from Russian or Chinese assistance, it tries to keep a neutral yet clear stance tone. Acting like Cuba or Ukraine is just asking for trouble. Finland learned that in the 50s too, the best way to deal with a country that stole 1/3 of your country was to be neutral and it flourished in that premise… to now becoming NATO… good luck flourishing from now on!!! Singapore and Switzerland also learned the benefits of genuinely assuring neutrality to the powerful neighbors.

I agree with many of your premises, but not the main one. People are brainwashed for sure that migrants, jews, muslims, etc are the problem, but they do have grievances that the state does not care for them. Blaming Putin on that perception is silly, he wish he was that powerful. US had for decades massively aired propaganda in all corners of the world, financed NGOs, payed journalists and the results were mixed. Putin does not employ not even a 5% of the US budget into those operations. Farage is a good example, he noticed that the British are not happy, that Brussels was getting more powerful and blamed all in Brussels with memes like curved bananas etc (I know trade and knew Brexit was horrible for both side of the Channel) but I don’t blame Putin for Farage or Trump… they both are just opportunistic in a situation those countries fail to deliver. UK and US are both in a worse situation due to these two politicians, but banning them both would have been far worse since the discontent still unaddressed. Blaming in Putin for them both is just ridiculous, he wish he had that power!

I don’t think is that… the EU happily come to “rescue” Uyghurs from Beijing, or Kosovars from Belgrade, or Chechens from Moscow… the pattern I find is always to support Washington DC. For sure, you have much more chances of success by standing with the US (till now at least), but tens and tens of countries… that is not a normal statistical curve! And Corbin’s expulsion doubt US had anything to do with it.

One thing you said lighted my mind though, countries that committed genocide are very into Israel today though… well, no Belgium though… it is complicated I guess, not a normal curve though.

The colonial abuses of 2 centuries ago were not recorded for most to see. Most recently, from blaming Spain for the sinking of the Maine to blame 9/11 on Afghanistan and Iraq the press got away with it, but now sources are so varied it is hard to suppress the reality any longer. True, we are less likely to protest in streets for change (I blame social media), but no one now trust the system and their arguments either. As we won’t protest, we won’t also join any army to fight in a foreign land for any cause. This will eventually corrode the system from within… just wait for a mayor financial crisis.

What puzzles me is not US, the lobbies are very strong and the media gets funded by well know institutions… but why the EU? Why Japan? Why even the UK since financial contribution is capped… how virtually every single one leader is blind or worse? Even calling for an investigation is outrageous for them!!!

Worry less about what Kremlin wants and what million of French now, like millions of Romanians, feel completely disfranchised. I don’t know if Le Pen’s ruling holds any water, (I know Romania’s does not!), but I see corruption cases left and right everywhere but the only candidates that are suspended are the same type… anti-establishment ones with a high degree of making an impact. As I mentioned in other posts, I detest the Le Pens (father and daughter), but not their ability to listen to their voters.

Independently of one thinks of the invasion (yes invasion!) of Russia in Ukraine, any potential “peacekeeping” force should not only behave in an exemplary manner but also avoid any appearance of bias, in order to maintain the highest standards of integrity and reputation. Keir Starmer’s army, let alone Macron’s, sorry to say, I think does not fit that… UN or from non belligerent parties is the only option.

100% agree! The EU has opened a pandora’s box by going after elements like Le Pen and Georgescu. That is not the way! Address people’s concerns, penalize huge corporations negative externalities and wrongdoings as it should… banning voices just exacerbates their grievances. I don’t know about Le Pen, just dislike her incendiary immigrant rhetoric wanted to reduce drastically immigration is a valid stance in my mind, although I disagree with, but being anti-[fill_religion_or_color__here] is not). What I know is that the claims posed by Romania does not hold any water… There is no evidence presented to this day of Russian interference… just claims; with that any current government can also ‘claim’ interference and stop a candidate. Bad, bad times in the EU.

Re to your EDIT: Again, what did you see bad in my comments… wanted European Union no relying much on American corporations, favor impartiality from the FOSS community? What I don’t understand from you so much concerned anti_Trump pro-democracy is that if Trump expels me (I am an European Union citizen in the US), and if I had some prominence he would, you will be the first one clapping. You are no so different from the ones you claim to oppose.

Sure… but in my statement with 9 claims you have not disproved a single one… but wasting plenty of time to all of us with “f*ck offs”. Of course, it can be coincidental, but something gives me that if you are anti-establishment, odds are you can easily get disfranchised or disappeared in one way or another. What evidence Romania gave for the cancellation of the elections and banning the front runners… Russian interference?? How? with bots in social media really… have you seen any study published on that? Any… do check?? The only thing I know is Romanians have been always highly skeptical of their government (that comes from the communist times) but since 3 ears ago are of all the latest EU rhetoric (although they benefit greatly from EU) and doubt Russia is responsible of that. Regarding “concern troll”… I disprove all basically all populist politicians, specially Le Pen, but also believe there is always a bit of truth in populism and burring or worse yet, ridiculing it, it is highly counterintuitive; address what they misunderstand. Brexit and Trump happened because of dismissive and insulting comments like yours addressed to people with concerns.

A a troll is a person who posts deliberately offensive or provocative messages online… what was so offensive or provocative? I am new in social media and even posting with my real name. I thought lemmy would be different from what i see in other media… and one of the first comments I get from an observation is “Fuck off”. Don’t worry, I’ll go back to my shell but if you are a genuine person, think that those type of responses is what make the internet so toxic today.

Go on… I don’t like much all these populists/narcissistic/nationalists but first Poland’s Lech Kaczyński dies in a airplane accident, Slovakia’s Robert Fico gets shot, Romania’s election gets cancelled and then the front runner banned, and then the second banned too (have any evidence been published?!). Duterte gets arrested in Manila and sent to the Hague (Philippines is not a ICC signatory)… I remember McAfee and Epstein suicides but miraculously cameras in prisons failed to work… and today in Spain the records from a spy working for the CIA that spied on Assange gets all deleted… while in Spanish top authorities custody! I am not fan of these eccentric people, but you have to give it to them there is something in our “law and order” system that is “odd” to say the least… and us blindly clapping is worrisome.

I see we are not going nowhere here, but I highly appreciate your effort to make me understand your view. Russia and China, let alone Cuba, Venezuela, Iran etc al want to develop an alternative from Android… how is it going? Only China is pulling it off, and after 5 years already and massive investment… just forking sure…

Just as a remark… “cannot legally become closed source”. Do you really think the US is bound by any legality at this point?! And it is not just Trump… any President could scrap off any legality if it need be and lower courts could just complain all the want… Of the 100+ lawsuit cases Trump already has accumulated in 3 months you won’t see much progress… and recently, even the US Supreme Court already gave Presidents “Broad Immunity for Official Acts” and “Absolute Immunity for Core Powers” so good luck for upholding GPL if an administration wants to force software out of it.

I am still no able to get my message through.

Of course, it is easy to fork, is that when you depend solely on a entity that it is prone to abandon you, you wont have the resources to continue the development. US has overwhelmingly all the developers of Fedora. If Fedora wins over all other linux based distros (and at this time it could be easily do in a near future), developers in other countries will move on into other projects (or move to the US). If the US, once Fedora is so clear dominant and Debian and Arch ceased to exists down the road, the US will find it compelling to close source Fedora and leave the rest of the world with a forked version but unable to develop for the time being since there is no Linux experts around left. This is not far fetched, this is what happens with Android and Firefox. If Firefox closes, the dudes in librewolf will survive for a few months (I’m in Librewolf), that is it; none of them are capable of keeping developing Gecko (the engine of Firefox). Imagine that Google close sources Android, no one in the world (besides Huawei) could keep develop it competitively for at least a decade!

I am afraid we are taking different things here… I look in a long perspective view, you in a inmediate future, where, as you said, no big changes if a dominant FOSS project goes hostile. The lack of expertise, culture makes it really hard in fact. Look at this… SWIFT (an interbanking payment system) , when US, in spite being European, dominates it completely, Russia and China has been for half a decade create and alternative… it is not a mayor technically difficult platform to replicate, but it is proven very hard… relying on it for decades had left every country at its merci and now that most of the world wants an alternative still could not come up with a viable alternative. Remember also when France/EU wanted to create a payment system with Iran… well, never came to fruition. Haven relying in the US for decades left Europe powerless for these innovations. The same could happen with Fedora if we start adopting it in mass.

So true eldavi! The “Russian kernel maintainers” event was a big red flag for me. I know Linux had no choice to expel them due to the law, but the fact that Linus Torvalds did not thank them for the job done (if he kept them till then , Torvalds clearly has see their contributions as beneficial), and Torvalds did not try to reassure the audience that hardly any code is posted unsupervised in a open source… that was the main scandal for me, far more than the ban. I had known that Torvalds was a rude person, many maintainers are and I am ok with that, but that event showed me that not only easily folds to government requests, but that also he believes it is ok to do these things against people you don’t like…

In his own words; “please use whatever mush you call brains. I’m Finnish”. I don’t think he referred to the Finland that thrived the most in its history during the period of maintaining a strong military culture yet NEUTRAL (1948-2023) and away from NATO, but he deeply meant the Finland that sided with Germany in the early 40s in order to stick-it to Moscow. Would he stop at firing developers or would be willing to do more for the cause? I bet many wonder.

I feel that I am being misinterpreted here. Of course FOSS if infinitely preferable to most close source, even if FOSS was created by the devil itself! And I am neutral US army branches using FOSS or not, that is not a problem for us civilians per se; the US army just using FOSS when they have unlimited budget and have home-brewed closed sources available and still choose Linux just proves that FOSS is superior! Now, that Red Hat depends heavily on US government contracts (mostly US armed forces) should be a red flag for any person concerning about ethics (again, I say ethics and a little bit privacy concerns), not technological, at least no in the short term. However, in the long term, it is bad even technologically, since the advantage will be so vastly superior than most would be not be able to compete (or even fork it easily). Huawei, for instance, is the only with the tens of billions $ and human capital enough being able to fork Android, but even still, it is proven difficult for them… now imagine a country like Brazil, Mexico or South Africa, what is the chances they can fork it properly and continue with the same level of development… Zero. That is why, the rest of the world should favor early on Linux distros that are less prone to be compromised, while they still at par with the competition, before they become the only technologically and logistical option in town, both in market share and resources. It is just a principle, of course, I tell my audience that they can use Fedora and I understand it, it is technologically a bit better than Mint, yet not quite not as an ethical choice, nor good for the technology ecosystem in the long run either. Also there is the fact that, favoring the platform that Red Hat, having a chunk of revenues coming from the US army, makes then more dependent of these contracts, and even secretly lobbing for its master. This reminds me of Mozilla… all these years taking hundreds of millions from Google was good for us, Firefox lovers, but co-created a unhealthy relationship that stiffed real competition to Chrome and, worse yet, suffocated any third competition to even try it… and here we are, an unhealthy browser landscape dominated by two trillion dollar corporations and practically impossible to compete against.

BTW, I am not anti-military, nor anti-US (I live in the US and most people and business are good hearten here). I am just anti any military going around and deliberately killing mostly civilians abroad and even cannibalizing on other priorities to do so (The US’ foreign policy also deliberately targets civilians abroad with its policies). Switzerland has a relatively strong army but that is clearly defensive, (not that Swiss people are that nice, being landlocked and surrounded by larger countries makes one pragmatic, but still, that it is the aim.)