F-Droid has received funds from US Congress (via OTF), just like Signal
-
I swear this community is as bad as a flat earth one when the government gets brought up. why change the title from the original to imply that congress (other than deciding the federal budget) had anything to do with it? That is at best irresponsible and misleading and at worst actively malicious. Yes government entities do sketchy things, but that does not mean something can't be trusted because a government entity interacted with it.
-
why change the title
As I mentioned, I felt it was more transparent to say where the money comes from and let people draw their own conclusions. Of course there will always be dissenting opinions no matter which title is used, I think that just comes with the territory. I'm sorry that you disagree with my choice. I encourage you to make similar posts wherever you'd like with your own desired title.
Thank you for your perspective.
-
The only "territory" that deliberately manipulating a title comes with is that of misinformation. For what other reason would another application be wedged in? Why are other grants left out? It's all very plain.
-
I think real intelligence by definition requires empathy and humility, which is typically the opposite of such dogmatism in my opinion.
"As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding." -Sloman and Fernbach
-
where the money comes from
Well you failed because it comes from the taxpayer.
-
OTF receives the majority of its funding from the U.S. government via the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Funding is appropriated for OTF through the annual Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs appropriations and provided to OTF via a grant agreement from USAGM.
For FY 2023, Congress allocated $90.5 million for programs to promote Internet freedom globally, representing a $13 million increase from FY 2022. Of the funds allocated for Internet freedom, $40 million was designated for OTF. Per the appropriations, all Congressional funding provided to OTF is used to support “programs to promote Internet freedom globally.” In addition to helping to further OTF’s mission, this funding increase is also further recognition of the increasing need for the tools and technologies OTF supports.
In addition to funding from USAGM, OTF also accepts funding from other mission-aligned donors for discrete Funds, Labs, or Fellowships. For example, OTF’s FOSS Sustainability Fund is supported in part by funding from Schmidt Futures’ Plaintext Group, Okta for Good, and the Github Foundation.
-
Huz-fucking-zah. Independence from corporations like Google in the technologies we depend on to live our lives is important, and F-Droid provides an unmatched service in support of that goal.
-
Well said. And I think there's more. In the Anglosphere and the USA in particular, government and state are often conflated, but they really are two different things. The former is the cockpit, the latter is the airplane.
Things are different in European cultures. In Latin languages, for example, the government is understood to be the body of politicians in control right now, whereas the state is a sort of expression of the people's will and therefore has much wider legitimacy. Two very different things. I believe it's similar in German.
I sometimes wonder if this semantic quirk has exacerbated the general skepticism of English-speakers towards collective action.
-
Strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding
My feelings about capitalism are largely fueled by how well I understand it. When I understood it less, I didn't mind it as much
I don't like this quote
-
Why change the title??
-
I think you will find that almost all grants either come from a corporation or a government. Crazy isn't it? A very small amount comes from non-profits and often those nonprofits are majority funded by governments and corporations.
-
I understand that "Regierung" (government) = executive branch
"Parlament" (parliament, in the US congress+senate) = legislative branch"Staat" (state) is an imprecise word as it can mean different things
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staat
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_(polity) (see Definition) -
I mean, Fdroid has problems but funding from government is the absolute least of them.
-
Do they also have a warrant canary?
-
Yeah, if strong emotions were such a liability then we probably wouldn't have them anymore. Emotions aren't vestigial or useless or contrary to rational discourse, they're an integral part of what it means to be sentient and sapient, and they can be incredibly useful when doing things that are decidedly "rational." I can tell that some code I wrote is shit because it "feels wrong" a hell of a lot faster than I can by logically reasoning it out.
I'm hoping that quote is simply lacking context. The alternative is that the people behind the quote are just fucking insufferable.
-
Depends what the funding is for. If it’s payment for compliance with CALEA (which has become a major revenue stream for big tech), then it’s compensation for building backdoors.
-
I don't consider those to be useful anymore because a court can compel them to keep the canary up in secret, and I'm pretty sure that's already happened more than once before.
-
That's never happened in history
-
How would you know?
You probably wouldn't have heard about it simply because it's illegal to publicize a secret subpoena/warrant. Such orders are given as National Security Letters with a permanent gag order, going so far as to preventing the recipient from even seeking counsel; it's a massive abuse of power and due process in the US to get companies to lie and do whatever they want.
-
I don't think I could restate this any better. So many people hear about "logical brain" and "emotional brain" and just start trying to eliminate any emotion from logic.
Brother the entire reason we invented homes was because we didn't fuckin like the alternative. But if we used logic way back in cave man time, it would have been more individually efficient to burn those logs for warmth. It took emotions to get us to the next step and then realise that it was more systemically efficient to burn logs inside of a little cabin and only then could we start applying logic to housing.
Emotions are so important
