Freedom is Lonely
I am a member!
Rant:
Living the free software life is lonely.
I went to a local meetup for a local interest community of mine. They wanted me to join their group chat on a proprietary messaging system.
I went to a virtual meetup, and of course, they were not on email or IRC. They were on a proprietary messaging system.
If you're not interacting with the free software community itself, you will run into nonfree dependencies for interacting with groups, even if they are in person, where traditionally, you wouldn't need a messaging system to talk to them: You'd just show up!
Go to school? Use proprietary software, they say. Go to church? Same thing. Go to another community function? They'll probably want you to use a nonfree program to interact with them when you're away... And let's not forget the independent merchants who don't handle cash and want you to use a proprietary app to pay them.
This is getting really hard.
"Can Anyone Live in Full Software Freedom Today?"
Four parts:
https://faif.us/cast/2019/jan/13/0x60/
https://faif.us/cast/2019/feb/19/0x61/
https://faif.us/cast/2019/mar/12/0x62/
https://faif.us/cast/2019/mar/20/0x63/
> And let's not forget the independent merchants who don't handle cash and want you to use a proprietary app to pay them
To be honest, I don't think I've ever seen this in the US.
I am a translator!
In France (where I live), merchants are required by law to accept payments in cash up to a certain amount (not sure exactly, perhaps 1000 euros). However, merchants have no obligation to have change available. Also, they have no obligation to accept coins or banknotes not in good condition.
In farmers' markets, it is common for merchants to only accept cash (and in that case they normally have change).
In my experience, you can buy almost anything by card in France, from a coffee on a vending machine at the train station to stamps.
That said, the only time cash proved useless is when I decided to buy a night coach ticket. At the time the service was called "Ouibus" and there was no ticket office nor vending machines, so you had to pay online by card or go hitchhiking to the next galaxy in full freedom.
In the US in my experience, you can buy almost anything by cash or card. Occasionally there are places that are cash-only or don't accept cash, but I've never been to a place that required a proprietary payment app. Farmer's markets and small businesses often prefer cash, as the credit/debit card networks have high interchange fees which hurts the merchant.
Oh, also trains and buses in the US often allow buying a ticket on the train with cash. This is certainly the case for the commuter trains in the Chicago and Boston metro areas, though they might charge an extra fee if there was a ticket vending machine at the station where you boarded.
A lot of poor people in the US are "debanked" meaning that they are essentially barred from having a bank account (this is why you see a lot of "check cashing" places in poor areas, where you take a physical check to get it cashed for a fee), so in many cases getting rid of the option to pay with cash would be a non-starter.
I am a member!
How can I participate in community events without proprietary messaging apps?
Your question is global, but the answer is local. How are you learning about these events? If someone's telling you about them, ask them for the hard details: When? Where? How? If they say, "We meet the third Thursday of every month at 6 PM at the library," you have a set date, time, and location and don't need the app.
Community happens locally, so whatever the solution, it's found offline.
You could host a Jitsi Meet instance and become the service provider to said community.
I am currently considering doing that for a small group of long time friends scattered around the world.
I am a translator!
One community I am part of unfortunately has been heavily using Google services for email and document storage and when I could have my own nextcloud instance installed using freedombox (on Debian, freedombox is designed taking into account Debian mechanisms that are not used or were modified on Ubuntu, so it is not usable on Trisquel), they were too much used to Google services and preferred staying there.
However, I was the one setting up a Jitsi instance for our meetings and they have adopted it. Now, Jitsi is the solution that I suggest to any group I join as soon as I can, using my own instance.
Then, I am lucky to be in contact with a group of people who still use email a lot, so this is the main non-immediate communication tool for us, and I have been using it a lot. Also, after it had been more than a year that in my email signature I had information to use Quicksy to contact me and no one used it, I finally received an xmpp message from one of my email contacts who had registered on Quicksy. That is a limited success but still interesting.
For another group, I also did setup a mailing list, which they seem to like.
I am a member!
I advertise XMPP (Snikket) in my signature as well!
My problem with Jitsi is not its functionality, but the fact that they are already established on another platform. Getting people to move is nearly impossible.
I am a translator!
Yes, it is difficult to get people to change, but there can be opportunities.
It happened once that I was asked to join a meeting on zoom. For some reason, the person who organized the meeting had difficulties to join that meeting then I immediately sent a link to my Jitsi instance as a replacement and it worked. So it is good to always be ready with something that works easily.
I think Jitsi is good for small meetings but not large ones (such as many of the Zoom meetings I've had to join over the years). I've heard BigBlueButton works well for those.
I am a translator!
Usually, the meetings I attend have at most 6 or 7 people and in those cases it worked very well. I also heard that BigBlueButton is more suitable for a larger audience but it is not as simple as Jitsi to install and run.
Is it correct that xmpp supports zero knowledge audio and video? If so which xmpp clients would that be? Gajim?
As bad as the world is getting proprietary wise,
I HAVE NEVER had to use an app to pay for anything.
EVER...
And I live in the proprietary country of the world...
USA.
So... I don't know what to say.
I do think my country needs to adopt a more european approach to privacy, security and digital sovereignty as well as actual left wing policies.
USA... is too right wing right now.
IT needs to be pushed way back to where it was before Reagan.
I do not think the EU has the current privacy approach you think they have. We should probably read more about their new regulations. This thread just got me interested in what is going on over there.
https://euperspectives.eu/2026/07/eu-countries-approve-temporary-chat-control-1-0/
It's a pro-privacy measure: the privacy of CSAM victims is effectively weighted more heavily than the privacy of average users. That's the way it should be. If people don't want their chats scanned, they should not use chat plaforms, and most users ARE free to stop using them; the vast majority are not press members, activists, or dissidents with critical needs for private internet communication.
The free software movement should be encouraging people to stop using these kinds of platforms anyhow.