- > Since the EU has suggested that Facebook cannot charge for an Ad-free tier.
That is not my understanding. They have suggested that you can not offer an Ad-free tier as the way to not have your personal data used for advertising. Fb can offer an ad free tier, but in the tier with ads you need to be able to run off personalization of the ads.
- I don't know the details about VATMOSS but will look into it. I agree that chat control and the initial thing about software security not having a FOSS exemption were problematic. As far as I know, an exemption for FOSS authors was added.
I think it is important to acknowledge that many regulations are not perfect and I would push for more revisions on the details (although changes in the law also have a real cost associated) that don't hit their target.
- I agree that EU laws are far from perfect, but I 100% would rather have the GDPR than not have it.
With AI what I saw in the news mostly made sense and did not hinder development too much. But again I would rather they regulate the use because it will have real negative consequences for many people if they don't
- I agree that in a way it makes sense for a lot of software. But as a consumer who just wants something to use once in a while it does not make any sense. It just feels like you are being milked.
I think there are 2 issues. The first is that if you dont use a piece of software very often it does not make sense to have the subscription because it is super expensive compared to the value you get. The second issue is that you make your workflow depended on something and that gives them so much pricing power and you can't stop paying because it would be a lot of work to move to something else.
Music streaming is a good model for me because I like to listen to lots of different music and if I bought all of it it would be much more expensive. I also don't feel locked in because I backup my playlists and listening history so if spotify dissappeared tomorrow I still have everything and just move to somrthing else. But I don't like netflix because I am not big on tv shows and I just want to watch one show every couple months.
- Actually yes you should give the essentials away.
If you develop a platform that runs software, you should freely distribute necessary the tools to develop software for the platform.
The end user should own their device and that means they should be able to develop software for it free of charge once they have the device.
That does not mean that you can not make libraries that you sell. So I think apple could sell a specialized ML library for their chips, as long as they document the hardware such that someone else willing to do the work could also create such a library
- Tbh my mom doesn't even understand how to install an app from the app store. And she comes running for everything that she is not used to. I am not concerned that she would download anything from outside. But I do get your point that many people are incapable of evaluating what aoftware is trustworthy (and hell you cant always know there is a risk even with open source software that seems trustworthy unless you actually read all the source code, which I very rarely do and only for small programs or small parts of programs). However I do not think it is Apple's responsibility or right to be the guardian here.
This means that if countries get older, they get less working people so this number drops. This makes it difficult to draw conclusions.