If you’ve been around, you might’ve noticed that our relationships with programs have changed.
Older programs were all about what you need: you can do this, that, whatever you want, just let me know. You were in control, you were giving orders, and programs obeyed.
But recently (a decade, more or less), this relationship has subtly changed. Newer programs (which are called apps now, yes, I know) started to want things from you.
The most obnoxious case of needy apps I witnessed was when I disabled Google Play Services on a OnePlus phone. Every default app (including Phone and SMS!) would spam notifications saying something like “Google Play not found, functionality is limited” every minute or two, while the real impact was minimal.
I think it’s more like “our interests are impacted!!!”
Idk man, Linux seems not like this at all. But windows and the rest of corpo-software-hell, yeah.
The www is the same for everyone no matter which OS you use sadly. The need for accounts doesnt go away completely on linux but at least not for anything OS related. Syncthing was a great example mentioned here. P2P, serverless, accountless, resource efficient, private, secure. Peak software design.
Yeah, FOSS doesn’t have the incentive and have different ideological roots
Newer programs (…) started to want things from you.
Do you remember “Blade Runner”? People wanted to know from robots what they are: human or robot.
Today robots are demanding this from people.
The one area I would sorta disagree is on updates, although only inasmuch as they’re needed for security fixes on things connected to the internet. But if it’s not connected? No, no updates needed unless I encounter a bug or they add a new feature I really want.
