@Em0nM4stodon And we need at least one not-for-profit of each - I'm starting to think the Wikipedia Foundation model is the way forward.

@Em0nM4stodon Back when there was a ~€200M euromillions jackpot, my friends asked me what I would do if I won. I said "try to launch a new browser, but it might not be enough money". They laughed. I wasn't joking.

@Em0nM4stodon The duopolist reality is the closest law allows to a monopoly, so this is what we get. And duopolies operate similar to monopolies: use scale to crush or gobble up all smaller players.
There should be laws based on “guaranteeing healthy competition”. Not minimal laws on “preventing the worst”…

@Em0nM4stodon who is the "we" here? most of these things are not designed for us. they are there to make money. having more of them would not help that.

"we" need things that are designed for us to use, not to make money.

anything centralised can be bought up and commercialised.

@Em0nM4stodon

Email and messaging have decent E2EE standards with multiple open implementations and self-hosting solutions.

They don’t belong to this particular list.

@Em0nM4stodon key to this is ditching the 'ecosystem thinking'.

It's fine to have different apps for different jobs, you don't need it all "under one roof" or "in one basket".

@Em0nM4stodon What if things just didn't compete with each other and instead work together to achieve a connected goal

Australia is a prime example of how duopolies don't work. They're an illusion of choice. An illusion of competition.

@Em0nM4stodon We need to *buy* diversity, if that's the over-arching system we're working with. That means we also have to tolerate diversity, a.k.a. bugs/adjustments from our people who are doing just that with their communication devices.

I'm not sure if we're too anxious, too driven, or too poor, but no matter the sphere, breadth requires latitude... pretty much by definition.

(I'm going Pine64 (mobile) as soon as some network flexibility, or rather, affordability, lets me do it.)

@Em0nM4stodon Define "accessible". I have access to 3 popular and accessible types of mobile OSes, for example. And the desktop field was expanded this year into a third option that will be firmly established in another half decade.

(Technically there's also two more accessible types of browser here, but nobody would call them popular... 🤣)

For cloud services, there are now three main popular ones here (the two you cite not being available here, for all practical purposes).

@Em0nM4stodon @servo https://servo.org/ just recently released version 0.0.1 so soon™ we could have browsers that are not Firefox or chromium based.

@Em0nM4stodon i disagree, we need less energy hungry hallucination centers

@Em0nM4stodon Full agreement. We need more choice and competition in most areas of technology.

@Em0nM4stodon Rather sounds like the model for US politics, which even back in the 70s Ralph Nader was calling "one political party with two heads."
Similarly with tech: Does it always have to be two proprietary options?
Speaking only for myself ( a cranky ol' codger who's not tech-savvy at all), I would LOVE the option of an open-source phone.

@Em0nM4stodon

I've been feeling this so much lately. When Coke and Pepsi both go high-fructose corn syrup, you're getting HFCS.

When Apple and Google agree that you're getting ads in your phone OS, you're getting ads in your phone OS.

When Apple and Microsoft agree that you're getting AI in your OS, you're getting AI in your OS.

I've spent the last 10 months getting decent at #FreeBSD and porting an homage NeXT-like desktop from Linux to it. Because I want NeXT clarity, dock, file manager, and Objective-C (and, since we must, FSF and GNUStep), no ads, no AI in my business.

(Collaborations apppreciated!)

@Em0nM4stodon Similar to winner-takes-all, first-past-the-post election systems, I think any market system that allows unlimited acquisition will end up with at most two dominant players in every field.

Without regulation outside of market forces, any company with a competitive edge is likely to remove further competition by buying out its competitors, or leveraging its existing portfolio to force competitors out of the game. Given enough time, at most two companies will own everything.

@Em0nM4stodon Why does the average person need a cloud service at all?

@Em0nM4stodon
We need shared standards but diverse implementations.

@Em0nM4stodon Android, IOS are both crap. Windows and mac osx are both crap as is chrome os.

Linux is decent but underutilized. Pity...

I wish human beings weren't so "I WANT THIS NOW"

Otherwise windows would have dropped to like 10% by now with all their evil abuses.

@Em0nM4stodon I suspect that enduring change towards this is likely to rely on people supporting, creating and donating (time and money!) to collectives like #Framasoft. (Thinking of that, perhaps I should envision a career change and start/join one of these in my country of residence...)

@Em0nM4stodon I suspect there are tech-economics at play too. I feel generational in defaulting to writing fresh code first, later looking for a library to use instead.

Similarly with applications - why write or use a new one when a familiar one is mostly okay?

The more complex the program the greater I'd expect that pattern to hold.

In the past there were awareness or platform gulfs between solutions, but the massive network effect of modern information sharing has changed that.

@Em0nM4stodon The US has encourage monopoly for way to long. @pluralistic is frighteningly correct in his assessments!

consolidation leads to enshitification!

@Em0nM4stodon all of those things exist .....