It’s not just a tech issue. Funding tech dev is great, but there is a political problem.

We need to vote for politicians who get the need for competition and will fight vendor lockin. Who will ensure things that are needed to do stuff isn’t done only for the duopoly.

We need to support groups fighting bad politicians and getting into media to inform normal people. Who make legal fights. EFF, OpenRghtGroup, etc.

They did since it was online. It’s closed and online, the OS “owner” are the only true admin. If it’s closed and online, your “commands” are just “suggestions” compared to theirs.

To be clear, Microsoft ♥️ Money. Azure would be dead in the water if they didn’t support Linux. Web development is Linux development, so their platform would be dead for web development if they didn’t do WSL. They do only the Linux they have to.

Which phone works completely on postmarketos? Looks like only librem5, which are expensive, especially for the spec.

It’s pretty rubbish. I was under pressure from a few angles to compromise more with Google. GrapheneOS is were I am. But I want to be on a prober Linux. But it’s just not possible without competition law being enforced. It’s political problem not technical.

HSBC business. There is no fob. You have to get a code from their app to login online. That app refused to run on LineageOS with MicroG, regardless of the boxing and lying to it I tried. It does work under GrapheneOS with boxed Google services.

The fight was always going against these monopolies.

In the UK with have OpenRightGroup to some extent the Greens. In the US EFF, FSF, SFC. In the EU ESFe, Pirate Party, Greens.

There are many groups fighting the political cause. They have had victories over the years, but winning the odd battle doesn’t win a war. They all need support.

Until now, a lot of open source has tried to be nonpolitical, but that may be changing:

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/SFKNTZ-welcome_to_fosdem_2026/

There need to be enforced of competition law here. Companies aren’t going to voluntarily support a platform with few users. Users aren’t going to move to a platform without critical apps.

We live in a dystopia were you have to have the banks app to do online banking even on your desktop. You can’t charge your car without an app. You can’t navigate your car without a map app that has traffic information. Etc etc. I want FOSS alternatives to all these, but there isn’t and Google could take even having a FOSS platform at all.

This something we need regulators to fix. It is a politically problem, not a technical one.

America screwing up trust should wake up Europe to dealing with American tech monopolies. Now it’s not something just nerds and economists complain about, it is a geopolitical problem.

Privacy isn’t really in their interest. They feed off our data.

Doesn’t matter if it’s at the beginning or end of the pipeline. It’s feeding the demand.

I have a second hand Pixel for GrapheneOS to compromise without being compromised. Was degoogled with Lineage for many years, but it was becoming too much of a problem. I’m not happy owning literally a Google phone. Felt I had no choice.

Really, regulators are needed to sort this out. Consumer choice doesn’t work with dualopy.