"Sorry, we can't be friends anymore, you use bad software." Look, I guess I kind of get what you're saying, but unless you're Stallman this kind of lifestyle just isn't viable. Real people just want to use the thing that's easy to set up, good enough for their uses, and most importantly already popular. Network effects are a real showstopper for those of us who'd like to move to FOSS alternatives, and when the options are to either use the popular thing and communicate with our friends, or insist on the FOSS thing and isolate ourselves, it takes more zealotry than most of us can muster to commit to the latter.
> Real people just want to use the thing that's easy to set up, good enough for their uses, and most importantly already popular.
In reality this is not one app, but Skype AND Facebook Messenger AND Discord AND Zoom AND Teams AND Whatsapp AND ...
I am really glad that the EU is now requiring messenger bridging by regulation, so people don't have to install an ever-increasing number of spyware apps, just to be able to talk to their families, friends and colleagues.
I really like how people striving for freedom in software are always ready—and eager—to take away the freedoms of companies they don’t like. “I want to be able to do whatever I wish for with software I use, but I don’t want people who make software to be able to do anything with their own products”, huh?
Like slaves were ready to take away the freedom to own slaves from slave-owners.
In today's world it is not a real choice to avoid BigCorp platforms if you want to work and communicate with the rest of society, so society should have a right to at least set some boundaries, otherwise we are allowing BigCorps to set the boundaries for society instead.
What I like most about these new rules is that they are specifically limited to big companies, so smaller companies are not hit by too-hard-to-comply-with-for-smaller-companies regulation, but customers are protected from BigCorp overreach.
"i want to do whatever I want" as a customer. most of the people who hold this opinion are a. only talking about things which have a very high network effect. no one says they want legislation to force adobe to make photoshop open source, or even work well with gimp or anything. this is only for communication software. b. mega corpos with billions of users take a more prominent position, and as uncle ben said, with great power comes great responsibility. we just want the responsibility. imo it should be like this: you are allowed to excercise your right (write software as you want to) all you want unless it interferes with someone else's right (to use whatever software they want to use). while facebook doesn't force me to use WhatsApp, the network effect associated with it does.
My school makes me use Microsoft Teams. In order to communicate with my classmates, I have to use Facebook Messenger. The new law will hopefully resolve that. Are you expecting me to drop out of school instead just so I don't have to use proprietary software?
i have been holding out on installing whatsapp for as long it was an active service. i use a "business" number to get work contacts to send me stuff but never my personal phones.
i am anxiously waiting for the EU dma to be enforced so that finally i can use my matrix to connect to whatsapp/snap/fb/insta users who want to connect to me, right now they cant and its a bummer but i've stubbornly stuck to this.
I think you'll be disappointed in your specific situating. The regulation doesn't seem to force the communicators to be both open protocol and open federation. Unless I misunderstand it, Apple, Google and FB having a private federation between each other would satisfy it too.
I didn't have friends before Discord existed, so I never had a reason to use it. Network effects don't mean shit when you lean into capitalist atomization.
