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  • carrylex@lemmy.worldEnglish
    423·
    11 days ago

    Once again the “Everything that’s not FOSS will turn to shit at one point or another” theorem proves true.

    • ransomwarelettuce@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18·
      12 days ago

      And if a FOSS project turns into shit a fork will come up.

      One perfect example was simple apps acquisition. New owners turned it a ad ridden mess, fossify apps fork came to the rescue.

        • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nlEnglish
          1·
          10 days ago

          Mariadb got bought by a private equity strip miner company late 2024, so it will probably be mined for every enshittification possible before thrown on the garbage heap like every company private equity has acquired before it.

          (It always takes a few years of inefficient planning before private equity starts rolling out enshittification)

    • 1984@lemmy.todayEnglish
      132·
      11 days ago

      Yeah but foss has its own problems. Mainly financing. People are expected to work for free on most open source projects, and some do because they enjoy it. I do that myself too. Its fun.

      But foss doesnt create products that require a lot of funding to get off the ground.

      • REDACTED@infosec.pubEnglish
        7·
        11 days ago

        There is something to be said about continuous community effort. Projects tend to continue even with original developers absent, sometimes for a very long time.

        One of my favourite games is STALKER, and boy does it hold a story and history behind the community. The eurojank game that was modded into an AAA looking survival game that was even published to GOG (STALKER GAMMA). Such project could’ve probably costed millions for a studio. Coincidentally, watched this video today, which briefly tells the history too: https://youtu.be/5C80TWlTC1o

  • frongt@lemmy.zipEnglish
    30·
    12 days ago

    They got a new owner years ago. No one should still be using it. Lawnchair has been great for me.

  • Cyberflunk@lemmy.worldEnglish
    30·
    11 days ago

    Nova Launcher was acquired by analytics firm Branch Metrics in 2022 . Barry initially stayed on to continue development, but the situation deteriorated. After being the sole developer for the past year, Barry announced he had left Branch and was no longer involved with Nova Launcher . The Broken Promises: Branch’s then-CEO and founder Alex Austin made public commitments to the community about open-sourcing the code if Barry ever left . However, Barry was ultimately asked to stop working on Nova Launcher and the open sourcing effort he had been preparing . The Irony: Nova Launcher is now owned by Swedish company Instabridge and already contains code for Facebook Ads and Google AdMob trackers, with ads being integrated into the app . This is exactly the kind of enshitification that the community feared when an analytics company acquired it in the first place. In Barry’s actual statement, he was more restrained—just expressing that he was grateful for the community’s support while confirming he’d left. But the community response on Reddit and elsewhere absolutely used the word “enshitification” to describe what happened to their beloved launcher.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

    Pure fucking bullshit.

  • Cocodapuf@lemmy.worldEnglish
    225·
    11 days ago

    Nova launcher works great for me, I haven’t let it update in years. Looks like that isn’t going to change.

    I’ve been burned so many times that I’ve finally learned my lesson. When I find that I like an app, that it does everything I want, the first thing I do is turn auto updates off. It can stay frozen in time forever, just working normally.

      • Balldowern@lemmy.worldEnglish
        186·
        11 days ago

        No one is going to waste a zero day on a random guy using Nova launcher. Zero days are used against governments & other militaries.

        • ouRKaoS@lemmy.todayEnglish
          0·
          11 days ago

          But if you’re not installing updates to patch out a zero day, the vulnerability is still there.

          • mad_djinn@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            10 days ago

            when are you nerds going to learn that software is religion , developers are prophets, and users are following the words of God?

      • Cocodapuf@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        11 days ago

        Yeah sure, the os gets regular updates, banking apps get updates.

        But when it comes to digital devices, convenience and security are in a constant tug of war, ultimately we have to make a choice. And when I make that choice I remember that this isn’t a company phone, there’s no customer data at risk, no important info to be breached. And still the number of times I’ve been hacked: 0

        • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
          3·
          11 days ago

          Apps can have vulnerabilities too. What happens when something you install can make changes to your launcher because one of it’s libraries has a known hole? Launchers get a decent level of unchecked power.

    • zecg@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      12 days ago

      Up until today I was happy with turning off updates (as a precaution) and restricting Nova’s internet access (all phone network access is proxied through Rethink+), but this made me switch to Lawnchair and leave a 1-star review for both the free version and the paid upgrade token.

        • zecg@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          11 days ago

          It’s excellent, you can filter network access per app, or per IP, or isolate an app and allow it to access only certain addresses / ranges and the interface is really intuitive and user-friendly.

  • yyprum@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    6·
    11 days ago

    I’ve been using lawnchair (which is a great substitute) ever since the news of the buyout from an ad company was announced, but that was a long time ago… Not sure why this is coming up now.

    Anyway, a few days back I found out a new launcher and I want to spread the love for it. It requires more effort to configure it at first but I’m really liking its UX and the simplicity of the screen. It is called dragon launcher and I am having a nice time making small incremental changes to personalize it more and more and has been working great for me: https://f-droid.org/packages/org.elnix.dragonlauncher

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      11 days ago

      I also went from Nova Launcher to Lawnchair and it’s been great. I’ll check out Dragon some time but I’m glad I found a suitable replacement for Nova.

  • Ebby@lemmy.ssba.comEnglish
    4·
    12 days ago

    Ahh sonofabitch! It’s already updated for me and there is no changelog. Turned off auto update.

    Edit: and uninstalled. Lawnchair FTW.

    • bonenode@piefed.socialEnglish
      2·
      12 days ago

      You should really not have automatic updates on. Aside from the fact that you also should have moved away from Nova years ago when Branch first acquired them.