So it’s actually a secret third option! That’s pretty rad.

Is that because it’s that simple, or just that the boilerplate is pre-written in the standard library (or whatever it’s called in rust)?

I wonder if Fedora would have a toolchain for networked credential management, with its connection to RedHat and everything

Perhaps they are bad examples, but my point was more that I think those ecosystems thrive in spite of the company that owns the upstream at this point more than because of it. They did tremendously useful work getting the projects off the ground but it ostensibly seems like they get in the way more often than not; that said, I haven’t done any open source work on either of the two. I’d be interested to hear your take, I could be pretty far off the mark.

Honestly my main examples I’d point to right now are situations like manifest V3 and Android nitpicks like the recent Bluetooth 2-tap change; don’t get me wrong, they are easy to fork and have thriving ecosystems in terms of volunteer dedication, but those forks still primarily targeted towards technical users (with some exceptions) and companies selling devices like the Freedom Phone (and other, actually neat, useful, properly privacy focused devices which is awesome!). By far, however, most users are on the upstream branch due to “default choice” psychology and have to deal with the bullshit that’s increasingly integrated into the proprietary elements that Google seems to be making harder and harder to separate from the open source ones. I suppose that’s why education and getting the word out are all the more important though.

Could be the sensationalist end of the tech news cycle getting me spun up on an overall inaccurate view of things.

There is also the point I have to raise that security update support is always a very valuable asset that can be worth dealing with some downsides to get ahold of. I’m hoping a lot of those can be pulled into open source projects on more of a piecemeal basis where applicable?

I’d be happy to be proven wrong about my rudimentary assessment. I have enough things to be doomer about and honestly it would be nice to have one or two fewer!

Chromium is still open source, as is Android to some extent. I get that the two companies (Google and Proton) are in completely different size classes, but something being open source doesn’t necessarily mean it stays healthy. Sure people can fork it, but the issue tends to lie in continuous maintenance by volunteers against continuous maintenance by a large company that’s constantly adding in anti-features along with desired ones.

I’m not necessarily saying Proton will go down that route, but trying to become big and bundled as a value proposition opens the door for that behavior once they get enough people locked into the ecosystem.

A “privacy” company acquiring and centralizing various projects to be under its umbrella seems kind of worrisome to me even if it’s done with pure intentions.