edit: Although phone is much harder. I guess I'll just turn all the 'stuff' like icloud off, use only signal and my banking/etc apps, and get a separate camera.. Anyone found a less painful way to live without an iPhone/Android?
Hopefully GrapheneOS will soon be supported by a non-US phone...
In fact I know of library that rolled back to Windows kiosk mode, from a previous SuSE deployment, because it wasn't what library users were expecting.
America has a monopoly on software essentially.
the issue is not about it being american as it is america being in control of it. you don't get access to windows or mac os source code. You can however take the linux source code, fork it and make it yours. that "dictator for life" in portland can't stop you. nor can anyone else in the us government for that matter.
So in the end, they're still dependent on the decisions made in the US. That doesn't need to be a problem, but I don't think "you can get the source code" really changes that.
I think this is objectively true. The Linux Foundation is also US based. We saw this when Russsian contributors were banned from the kernel to comply with US sanctions.
The big difference of course is that relying on Linux does not have to mean realying on US corporations. At the level of a nation-state, and certainly at the level of a larger political collective like the EU, control can always be taken back if political interests diverge or if risks mount. Linux could be forked and maintained out of Europe, Asia, or elsewhere if needed. And technology could even continue to be pulled from the US version if desired.
Above, I mean the kernel. But the "distro" level offers another level of contorl. A distro maintained outside of the US offers a lot of local control and isolation from the risks of US control. The kernel used in this distro does not have to be fully forked to be audited, to remove anything concerning, or to add in whatever is desired. And the same is true of all other software included in the distro.
While maintaining a distro is a lot of work, it can be done at the scale of an individual or a small team. It can be done with a travial number of resources at the nation state level. In some ways, it is crazy that more countries do not have their own distro even if it does start as much more than a "spin" of some maintstream distro. As political tensions mount, this may become a more normal "national security" step to take. Being ready to pivot and isolate from the US is more important than actually doing it. If all your government and military infrastructure is based on a distro you control, you can then pivot quickly if you need to. And there are customization and standardization benefits of having a regionally focussed distro beyond national security.
I mean I can write a kernel right now with all the computer systems theory implemented, but without the architecture specs, the firmware, etc, this is completely useless.
OpenBSD is based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
NetBSD is a non-profit based out of Deleware, USA
I am not sure exactly what you mean by "US-focused" though. I do not think the US government has much direct influence in practice. Both governance and engineering contributions in BSD are highly distributed internationally.
That said, FreeBSD in particular has quite a lot of corporate contribution. Netflix is a heavy user of and contributor to FreeBSD for example. And the recent $750,000 laptop push in FreeBSD is being driven by Quantum Leap Research out of Virginia.
The fact that the BSD systems have less coporate reliance does not necessarily offer more protection though. There is less corporate "control" simply because the BSD systems are less important economically.
You could fork Linux anytime you like and your fork would than have as little corporate control as NetBSD. And just like NetBSD, not taking US corporate contributions would mean less engineering investmetn overall and potentially having to do more yourself.
I mean, it would probably be easier for the EU or China to fork Linux than it would be for them to migrate to OpenBSD if they wanted independence from US exposure.
The problem is that people don't want to change, because it takes some effort. Why would people use WhatsApp instead of Signal otherwise?
A huge part of this is fonts. Users prefer proprietary fonts, and when you open files using them in the alternatives it tends to look like terrible. You will not convince users that this is on them to fix, and to be honest they're right, it's not their problem.
Just look to the federal United States government using it for communicating military strikes, and including journalists.
