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Why FOSS projects are using proprietary, privacy invasive infrastructure? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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As you can easily notice, today many open source projects are using some services, that are… sus.

For example, Github is the most popular place to store your project code and we all know, who owns it. And not to forget that sketchy AI training on every line of your code. Don't we have alternatives? Oh, yes we have. Gitlab, Codeberg, Notabug, etc. You can even host your own Gitea or Forgejo instance if you want.

Also, Crowdin is very popular in terms of software (and docs) translation. Even Privacy Guides and The New Oil use Crowdin, even though we have FLOSS Weblate, that you can easily self-host or use public instances.

So, my question is: if you are building a FLOSS / privacy related project, why using proprietary and privacy invasive tools?

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Only convenient for those who are on discord. Everyone else is excluded.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Sure, but I’ve actually had people ask me to set up a Discord, and no one has ever asked me to set up anything else.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I wonder if they just pass on the project since the documention is hidden away. I know I've done it a bunch of times

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Support != documentation. I have plenty of public documentation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I gave up long ago to suggest ppl some alternatives. The problem PPL Here have is the discord only thing. With tools like matter bridge you could combine several tools seemlessly, but that is of course way to much trouble for smaller projects.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Having the ability to bridge doesn’t mean you always should… you are now exposing folks to Discord’s data collection + ToS as well as all the inevitable spam that flows into these rooms.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Didn't say you should. I would rather not, but, e.g., the mautrix bridges are the only way I can keep contact to a majority of family nowadays sigh

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I still need to set up something like Slidge myself. The worst are these accounts that require Android or iOS apps to work.