We have protest distro's like Artix and Devuan (and all its derivatives like antiX, and derivatives on THAT like MX Linux), as well as distro's that let you choose between evil and not evil like Gentoo and Peppermint OS, and distro's that don't use SoystemD in the first place like Void, Alpine, Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux (RIP), postmarketOS, and a couple more.
In the past the same controversy came up with Apache taking over the entire webserver/reverse proxy space with bloated code, then we got nginx, LighTTPD, and so on.
Another controversy was Gnome 3, which then gave birth to MATE, Cinnamon, LXQt, and more.
Yet another controversy with Audacity, which led to forks like Sneedacity.
Or Oracle taking over everything Sun has made like Java (no alternative for a very long time, but now there's Kotlin, and C# as a similar language to Java), MySQL (MariaDB), OpenOffice (Libre Office), and so on.
And on and on it goes.
So it's not like WinDOS where once Microshaft fucks up, you have no other choice than to just deal with it.
What we free OS masterrace users have that those proprietary OS peasants don't have is choice, and the ability to spin up superior alternatives and move on as soon as some massive project fucks up.
"Free" software is dead in general. It's in an endless cycle of corporations taking over and ruining everything and idiots making excuses for it, and there is not enough will and enough competence to go around, to actually make replacements for it, that will of course just get taken over by corporations again.
The amount of resistance to it is tiny. The "free software" people just make excuses for it. The FSF and the GNU project are perfectly fine with telemetry and spyware as long as it's GPL. They are perfectly fine with corporations taking all of their shit as long as it has the "right" loycense, and they don't mind dependencies that give corporations more control.
In this sense, FSF cultists are basically the soycialist equivalent to WinDOS users:
I've been keylogged? I don't care.
The glowniggers are spying on me? I have nothing to hide.
I'm bringing other people around me in danger by using WinDOS? Nah, happens.
Even more telemetry and spyware added through WinDOS downdates? Oh well, so be it.
Wait, the menu button got moved from the left to the center!? THAT'S WHERE I DRAW THE LINE!!
There is an entire generation of programmers who don't give a shit about doing anything in their spare time, either because their wagecuck job told them they couldn't (and they fell for the "write this under your real name for resume shit" meme), or because they are that soulless that they have nothing else besides wagecucking it.
@PhenomX6 @TerminalAutism @ryo Are there really that many jobs that don't let you program your own stuff in your free time? I know IBM does it, but I can't imagine any employer having a problem with me developing games as a hobby as long as it doesn't interfere with my job or the games have offensive content.
Never reveal your real name and face with your hobbies, just stick to a nickname and an anime waifu avatar instead.
@ryo @TerminalAutism Unless it's something that your boss doesn't care about. I highly doubt they would care if you make games in your free-time for one. As @PhenomX6 pointed out, it seems to be only a problem if it involves conflict of interests like emulators.
A lot of programming jobs require that you have a few hobby programs on a GitHub account as a portfolio, so you do need at least SOME projects under your real name.
I once even made an invoice system just for friends and family in PHP while at the same time working on a NodeJS version at my back then full time job, and even cross-borrowed ideas and code (obviously translated between the 2 languages) between the 2, and the employees and employer even knew about that, no problem at all.
As for Git stuff, I had to show my Git repo as proof that I know what I'm doing when I was a wagie, and I still have to as a freelancer now, but never publicly revealed my real name.
Simply told them that it's me, and nobody asked any extra questions.
@ryo @PhenomX6 @TerminalAutism The current job I'm training for doesn't seem to care about hobby projects. They don't require a Git portfolio, but I need to train on my own on algorithms and databases before I can actually work. (I need to act like I have 5 years of experience)
Though I rather not let them know about my gamedev stuff just because of the social stigma around it more than anything. It's also the reason why I didn't choose to become a gamedev as a career.
@PhenomX6 @TerminalAutism @ryo I think the nerd coder age died because they were making a living off of shareware which is hardly ever used anymore.
> the age of the nerd coder is over
That's why if the state or the business doesn't allow you to do what you want, you just go underground.
Which I think is among the real reasons why anonymity and privacy is under attack so much.
Given that you never told your company that you're known as Xianc78 online that is.