I have no opinion and am just seeking clarification as an admin who occasionally gets complaints that I’m unsure how to address.

Thanks!

cc: @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml (the most active !privacy@lemmy.ml mod)

Edit to add an example edge case: DuckDuckGo is proprietary, but is anyone going to argue against its promotion? Isn’t Proton Mail similarly only FOSS on the client side?

  • Captain Beyond@linkage.ds8.zone
    4·
    4 months ago

    Software freedom is about what you, the user, run on your own hardware. Different concerns apply to server software. The client side is what matters as that’s what you run on your hardware, but if the server side is free as well then you are not tied to the service provider and can use a different service provider or run your own instance.

    With server software, the main concern is “Service as a Software Substitute” - doing your computing on “cloud” (someone else’s computer). See Who does that server really serve?.