If you follow privacy news, you have probably heard that Skiff, an end-to-end encrypted productivity suite, announced that it has been acquired by Notion. We could not resist chiming in since Skiff was compared with CryptPad in the past.
  • TheAgeOfSuperboredom@lemmy.ca
    48·
    10 months ago

    I’ve never heard of Skiff, but it’s sad to see more software gobbled up by VCs. Though it sounds like the back end was never OSS to begin with?

    I used to be so excited about a future where people were software literate where we would be building open systems and make a decent living. Instead, people have been force fed locked down systems in the name of “user experience”, all so that a few people can make an absolute killing while the rest of us feed off the scraps (even if the scraps of the software industry are still pretty good). It just makes me sad.

    I am extremely appreciative of folks who do make honest open source software though! Many of them do make a decent living too. It’s hard not to lose hope when reading stuff like this, but then I remember that I’m typing this comment using Firefox on KDE Plasma running on a Linux kernel, right next to an Emacs session. Sticking to good open source software is a wonderful thing!

    • darkmatternoodlecow@programming.dev
      14·
      10 months ago

      Knowing this has no value for you, but it made me smile that I read your comment on a screen split between Neovim on one side and Firefox on the other, on KDE on Tumbleweed.

      • glasgitarrewelt@feddit.de
        6·
        10 months ago

        Reading your comment on GrapheneOS with the open source Client Jerboa, attained from F-Droid. And all thanks to Lemmy (AGPL)!

    • subtext@lemmy.world
      4·
      10 months ago

      I’m very thankful for the privilege I have in life that lets me contribute financially to OSS. Lemmy was my first (unless you count Bitwarden), and it really got me appreciative for all the people who contribute to all the software I use on a daily basis

  • umami_wasabi
    38·
    10 months ago

    Any company funded by VC with a privacy tag is a red flag.

    • jkrtn
      33·
      10 months ago

      Any company funded by a VC at all seems to go to shit.

  • cosmicrookie@lemmy.world
    281·
    10 months ago

    🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆

    We also would like for this moment to encourage everyone to reflect on the ownership structure of the tools that they rely on, and perhaps to favour building some genuine commons rather than products that can simply vanish because of conflicting interests

  • Captain Beyond@linkage.ds8.zone
    182·
    10 months ago

    No one in this community cares about open source. It’s been overrun by privacy redditors, some of whom seem to have a personal mission to campaign against the free software movement. There’s a constant deluge of “it’s not foss but it’s private/not google” apologia in almost every thread here.

    I suspect the community being unmoderated is part of the problem.

      • Captain Beyond@linkage.ds8.zone
        1·
        10 months ago

        This is an unfortunate misunderstanding that I try to do my best to fight back against - but the people I’m talking about in this community are well aware they’re in a free software community and disregard that fact because they personally don’t care about software freedom. Which is their right, of course - but it’s disrespectful for them to come into our spaces and push that.

        Some of them are prominent members of privacy communities who come into here with a personal vendetta against imagined “FOSS zealots” so they become “anti-FOSS zealots” in our own spaces. Unfortunately I’ve seen this behavior from self-described privacy enthusiasts so often that I’ve started to automatically distrust said people.

    • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
      6·
      10 months ago

      I feel like the reason a company like skiff became more popular than something like cryptopad, which has been around for a while comes down to execution and UX/UI. I’m pissed about skiff, but I did use it. I’ve never used Cryptpad because frankly it looks and feels not that great. I hope they put some effort into the UX/UI.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
    81·
    10 months ago

    @cryptpad@fosstodon.org glad to see your blog is being distributed across the Fediverse.

    Open source I truly believe is the future. It’s the luck of the draw to rely on private companies to truly focus on a product’s mission or just to use “privacy”, “open source” as mere buzzword stepping stones to profitability.

  • Duduar Deagle
    4·
    10 months ago

    I had the opportunity to try their products, it was a great suite of apps although they had details to work out. It’s a shame 😔.

  • Clandestine@lemmy.zip
    1·
    10 months ago

    Any good ideas for alternatives to Skiff? I only need mail, I have my own domain and cannot self-host for at least the next one-two years.

    And crazy that I learn about this through this post

    • TeaEarlGrayHot@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      10 months ago

      Protonmail–I’ve used them for my custom domain email for the last 4 years and have had very few problems (other than needing to recompile the Protonmail Bridge app so I could use it on an ARM server)–I think I pay around $50/year. I selfhost Nextcloud for everything else (files, calendar, news, etc.)