What is your plan to get Gnome up and running on common tablets and cell phones-- the devices which, as you say, are used by the entire population and not just a privileged minority? (The same devices which-- outside of maybe 3 obscure exceptions which the normal person would never use-- cannot even run exclusively on free software?)
I'll happily take advantage of privacy enhancements to Gnome which trickle into Debian, and I'm glad to read about this initiative. But I'm afraid you haven't quite escaped the whirlpool of free software insular thinking you criticize here. The average person is in desperate need of some semblance of privacy and security on their not-private and insecure devices-- if your work is tied to an environment that won't run there then you are guaranteeing it won't result in "real-world" benefits as you define them.
To avoid being a 100% crank in my reply, I'll end by saying I love the Tor Browser Bundle. I've installed it for friends on free and non-free OSes, I've explained how to use it to read web pages in private, and I've watched people come up with use cases for it which I wouldn't have thought of myself. Unfortunately, it lacks sufficient funding. So does the entire 4-freedom dev environment, and so will your Gnome privacy team. I don't have a solution to that. Neither does anyone else apparently, but that's where our collective frustration and reflection should be focused.
Power management, mobile and firmware developer on Linux. Security developer at Aurora. Ex-biologist. mjg59 on Twitter. Content here should not be interpreted as the opinion of my employer. Also on Mastodon.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-09-28 04:06 am (UTC)I'll happily take advantage of privacy enhancements to Gnome which trickle into Debian, and I'm glad to read about this initiative. But I'm afraid you haven't quite escaped the whirlpool of free software insular thinking you criticize here. The average person is in desperate need of some semblance of privacy and security on their not-private and insecure devices-- if your work is tied to an environment that won't run there then you are guaranteeing it won't result in "real-world" benefits as you define them.
To avoid being a 100% crank in my reply, I'll end by saying I love the Tor Browser Bundle. I've installed it for friends on free and non-free OSes, I've explained how to use it to read web pages in private, and I've watched people come up with use cases for it which I wouldn't have thought of myself. Unfortunately, it lacks sufficient funding. So does the entire 4-freedom dev environment, and so will your Gnome privacy team. I don't have a solution to that. Neither does anyone else apparently, but that's where our collective frustration and reflection should be focused.