You mean just like Windows?

We could say that about every single general decision that anyone in the world has ever made. It’s a truism which tells us almost nothing about this situation.

No, it isn’t a double edged sword. Even a mediocre distro would be better than Windows, any distro would be cheaper than Windows, and there’s no reason to choose a bad distro anyway.

It has to be there, because politics is connected with lawmaking, and open source software is dependent on laws.

A lot of people like to say that politics isn’t in their life or that they keep politics out of their life, but the reality is that’s just not true. The rules that govern society affect you, always, either with or without your input, either with or without your acknowledgment.

You’re probably trying to say that we should keep pointless politicking out of open source software, and I agree, but that’s going to come down to personal definitions of pointlessness.

That’s generally false. But even if it’s true, all the boss has to do is argue that medium-term profits will be generated by whatever policy they want to adopt. Since nobody knows the future, they might be right, and they’re legally rock solid.

In other words, the duty to increase value produces unfalsifiable policy claims. So it is meaningless.

The Pirate Bay will always be with us.

The article did mention a fundamental obstacle. It said quite clearly that we would run out of resources before we had enough computing power. I suppose you could counter that by arguing that we could discover magic, or magical technology, or a lot of new resources through space exploration.

Of course things get more efficient. But in the past few decades they’ve gotten efficient in predictable, and mostly predicted, ways. It’s certainly possible that totally unexpected things can happen. I could win the lottery next week. Is that the standard? Are you pushing the stance that says AGI is somewhat less likely than winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning, but by golly it’s more than zero, how dare you suggest that it’s anywhere close to zero?

In recent years I’ve found NextCloud to reasonable. A little delicate initially, but once you have it working, the upgrades are very easy.

Capitalists hate capitalism. Competition is so irritating, because someone might undercut you. (And other people would cheat to win, just like you would, so you can’t ever relax.)

You’re talking about the wrong thing. The Mozilla Foundation is and has been acting a fool in recent years. Firefox, the open source program, is doing mostly OK. Obviously the two are closely connected, but they’re definitely not the same thing, and this matters when discussing policy.

Now now. If Mozilla is breaking the law here, of course someone would report them for it. There’s no need to shoot the messenger when everything was predictable.

I appreciate your apprehension. Fortunately, you don’t need to speculate. Go try it and find out.

Lots of options available. YT is slowly cracking down on them. That’s OK, just keep your medium run media consumption plans flexible.

The point is that the post title was false (or intentionally very misleading, if you insist on creatively parsing it). Accuracy in post titles is important.

I know. And many of the comments are coming from the US, so I’m trying to help American readers see what US law would dictate in a similar situation, because they might have instincts that are inconsistent with US law.

In the US, the 4th Amendment says that’s unconstitutional. Fortunately. Too many dirty pigs out there.

In the US, the cops need RAS to handcuff you. The standard was never and is not “until they know what’s going on”. And RAS depends on the current cop knowledge. Even if they had legal grounds to break into your place, what they see in the next ten seconds is still relevant. For example, if someone said you attacked them with a knife, when the cops see no victim, knife, or blood, their legal authority ceases.

Of course it’s all highly dependent on specific details.

(On traffic stops, often they already have RAS. That’s why they pulled you over. So don’t be fooled by other comments about that topic.)

In the US, property records are public records. Easy to find someone’s address online if you know their full name and the county they own property in.

Go try it!

The legal standard in the U.S. is if there’s exigent circumstances. Detailed 911 calls are typically sufficient to meet that standard. Not always.

Right now, we cannot tell if the officers did anything unlawful. Need the call recording or call logs, plus the body cameras.

(I think the exigent circumstances standard is BS, easily abused, but that is the current law of the land.)

My company will let me purchase software, but it won’t let me donate to FOSS. Budgeting says it’s “unnecessary”. So screwed up. (A tiny amount money on my end, but still, it would be nice to help out a little.)