[hazaskull]

Counter example. I switched from Linux to Windows because I find its desktop-experience to be superior. In my mind software and hardware is evolving at a rate that makes it impractical to support the notion that I could usefully modify it myself so it mostly comes down to trust. Do I trust Microsoft more to protect my long-term interest than some unknown group of open source maintainers? Looking at being able to access old data and run old programs I feel MS have been doing a great job. Now if they come up with a way for me to make sure that my data is in some standardized format AND protected in such a way that I could reasonably expect nobody (not even MS) to read it (but still be able to offload it elsewhere) I’d be entirely happy.

[rodelrod]

Literally the only significant amount of data I've ever lost in my life, either on a personal or professional context, were: 1. half a decade of emails dropped by Microsoft from my old Hotmail account with no reason or warning; 2. all my highlights on a 3000-page book series lost due to a iOS update breaking compatibility with the app I was using for it.

[luckylion]

> Do I trust Microsoft more to protect my long-term interest than some unknown group of open source maintainers?

Do you? I don't. Microsoft is exclusively profit-oriented, they'll sell all your information in a heartbeat if they believe to have a legal way to do it and that it won't kill them in the next 5 years.

A group of open source maintainers (the more radical the better) will not. They will (usually) not polish the product as well, and they might be difficult to deal with if you found an issue (but you _can_ talk to them, unlike Microsoft).

I definitely trust open source people more, because they do their thing for ideological reasons and based on principles, not to maximize engagement and ad-spend and their yearly bonus.

[inquirerGeneral]

Your concerns are the same that I had up until about 3 years ago when Microsoft and Google changed everything because at least at Google they do not care about your actual data because they can aggregate and anonymize it and a level that nobody else in the entire world can.

This is why it's way more dangerous to give data to even open source apps that are encrypted and secure because if they ever do change your privacy policy and you don't pay attention to it, they could say they start selling your data and you continue to agree to it.

[bigbob2]

That's why I like using a system which gives me control over which updates I want to receive. I'm not forced to take updates on an operating system which can also change the privacy policy on me and has done so in the past.

[salawat]

The Stockholm Syndrome is strong with this one. The fact they pitch their skills at anonymizing and aggregating data doesn't change the fact you can't trust Google to not utilize data exfiltration techniques in the first place. Your argument about open source license changes applies just as much, if not moreso to Google as well.

Have you really thought through that all the way?

[inquirerGeneral]

Good post.

Google has actually went even further in making it transparent where they show every bit of data they have on you. You can delete it all review it all have it auto delete, they don't need any of it