Which sites/programs do you boycott?

[xenos]

I think that's exactly the point that embryo was making. Like it or not, you use all sorts of corporate products. The only way not to would be to not use the Internet. In these days of internetworked, distributed computing which machine the software is actually running on is a very minor detail.

All those who claim they are boycotting Microsoft (Apple, IBM, Oracle - substitute the evil demon of your choice) aren't really doing so. To have the courage of their convictions they would have to do a lot of due dilligence and would have to miss out on a lot of what the world has to offer.

The point is that I do boycott them buy not buying or using by myself their products. It is my personal freedom, what software I use on my computers, and not using, e.g., Microsoft products on them is a boycott. Of course I use the internet, and of course there are people on the internet who use Microsoft products on their servers, which they have bought, and which is of course their personal freedom as well. But what other people do with their personal freedom has nothing to do with my boycott of not buying or using any such software myself.

[iansjack]

I think you confuse the concept of "boycott" with simple freedom of choice. We all exercise freedom of choice but few have the dedication to truly boycott a particular corporation or country.

[Combuster]

A boycott is defined as abstaining for political or social reasons, this in contrast to pragmatic reasons. Having a browser plugin that blocks tracking is most likely ideological in nature and thus a boycott of the system, rather than having any obvious practical value such as an advertisement blocker.

Neither is a boycott recursive by definition, as you seem to suggest.

[xenos]

I think you confuse the concept of "boycott" with simple freedom of choice. We all exercise freedom of choice but few have the dedication to truly boycott a particular corporation or country.

Of course anyone can act only within the limits of their freedom of choice. I can only choose what I do. But nothing I would do, using a website or not using it, would have an influence on what software they are using. Of course I could avoid certain websites, but that would in no way keep them from whatever software they are using, if they want to, and so it would be completely pointless for me not to use those websites.

As Combuster said, boycott does not need to be recursive. There is no need to boycott others just because they do not join my own boycott.

[Antti]

They don't even read my mails correctly. I told them I don't want to use their services anymore and asked them to disable my account, and they suggest that I register a new one and a new hostname. I do not want another account or hostname, I just want to stop using their services.

In general, it is important whether it is easy to cancel a service or not. If I were unhappy with some service and wanted to stop using it, I would definitely stop using it if it were hard to cancel it. After I had somehow managed to get rid of it, of course. If it is easy to cancel the service and they politely accept the request, there is a little chance that I will reconsider using it in the future.

[embryo2]

How do you come to any conclusions about which products I'm using and which not?

From your words about Microsoft, Apple, Google. It seems as obvious for me just because those names represent the most known corporations in the world. And of course, other corporations do absolutely the same things.

Of course, there are also other websites using advertising scripts from Google and other websites. That's why I have blocked access to those advertising websites in my web proxy (so, for example, *.google-analytics.com is blocked).

As it was mentioned above such blocking is useless because the list of the Google's domain names is long and is changed too often. I already added 20-30 names to the block list and some advertising is still visible. But fortunately my intention was to hide all flashing and moving banners and some still text blocks are not getting me weary.

if I want to access my website, I even end up on some stupid advertisement website.

May be you've forgot to pay for your domain name registrar to continue to maintain your domains after the registration term was ended? If the domain is free then anybody can buy it and even if it is not used the new owner can bind it to some advertising service to get some money while the domain is not in use. And it is another example how pervasive advertising can get you everywhere despite of all your efforts.

And about domain ownership. You can start the procedure of a domain transfer to another registrar. Usually it is a service that registrars offer to you, so you need to find a new registrar and to read about it's rules of the domain transfer. But of course, you should be the owner of the domain.

[xenos]

From your words about Microsoft, Apple, Google. It seems as obvious for me just because those names represent the most known corporations in the world. And of course, other corporations do absolutely the same things.

I just said which ones I don't use, I haven't said anything about other corporations or whether I use their products or not.

As it was mentioned above such blocking is useless because the list of the Google's domain names is long and is changed too often. I already added 20-30 names to the block list and some advertising is still visible. But fortunately my intention was to hide all flashing and moving banners and some still text blocks are not getting me weary.

That was of course only an example. That's why I use a filter list subscription, and new domains to be blocked get added to the list once they pop up.

May be you've forgot to pay for your domain name registrar to continue to maintain your domains after the registration term was ended? If the domain is free then anybody can buy it and even if it is not used the new owner can bind it to some advertising service to get some money while the domain is not in use. And it is another example how pervasive advertising can get you everywhere despite of all your efforts.

Nope, my domain was registered with them all the time.

And about domain ownership. You can start the procedure of a domain transfer to another registrar. Usually it is a service that registrars offer to you, so you need to find a new registrar and to read about it's rules of the domain transfer. But of course, you should be the owner of the domain.

That's indeed one possibility.

[AndrewAPrice]

All those who claim they are boycotting Microsoft (Apple, IBM, Oracle - substitute the evil demon of your choice) aren't really doing so. To have the courage of their convictions they would have to do a lot of due dilligence and would have to miss out on a lot of what the world has to offer.

That's why this topic is so silly.

It's kind of silly to boycott a company because they choose to sell proprietary software and pay their high-skilled employees very well. Do you boycott restaurants that sell meals prepared by proprietary recipes and pay their chefs very well?

Perhaps..

• You're concerned about the industry (or economy as a whole) polarizing into a few megacorporations and would rather support small independent businesses.
• You think a product or service is not worth the money, and you prefer a cheaper or free alternative.
• The company supports a practice you find unethical (outsourcing labour to a cheaper country, under-compensating their employees, polluting the environment, experimenting on animals, etc.)
• You only support companies that release the details of how their products work and are made (software that comes with source code, televisions and cars that come with exact schematics, restaurants that come with recipes.)

The latter sounds the silliest of them all.

[Muazzam]

It's kind of silly to boycott a company because they choose to sell proprietary software and pay their high-skilled employees very well. Do you boycott restaurants that sell meals prepared by proprietary recipes and pay their chefs very well?

Perhaps..

• You're concerned about the industry (or economy as a whole) polarizing into a few megacorporations and would rather support small independent businesses.
• You think a product or service is not worth the money, and you prefer a cheaper or free alternative.
• The company supports a practice you find unethical (outsourcing labour to a cheaper country, under-compensating their employees, polluting the environment, experimenting on animals, etc.)
• You only support companies that release the details of how their products work and are made (software that comes with source code, televisions and cars that come with exact schematics, restaurants that come with recipes.)

The latter sounds the silliest of them all.

I agree. That's what, I wanted to say in my last post.

[Antti]

Why are we taking this to the extreme? I accept that the word "boycott" may be a little bit too strict by definition. However, it is silly to say that "boycotting" some companies is totally pointless if you are not doing it thoroughly. Not taking it to the extreme is just a health way to boycott. Doing so does not make it pointless in any way.

Let me just stick out and "boycott" the following:

• GNU and Linux
• POSIX

Why? They are the biggest competitors of alternative OSs. So they are much more relevant when it comes to this field. I am a fan of small software companies and I would like to see some real alternative OSs from them. Hopefully you all realize than I am not taking my "boycott" to the extreme.

[iansjack]

It's kind of silly to boycott a company because they choose to sell proprietary software and pay their high-skilled employees very well. Do you boycott restaurants that sell meals prepared by proprietary recipes and pay their chefs very well?

Perhaps..

• You're concerned about the industry (or economy as a whole) polarizing into a few megacorporations and would rather support small independent businesses.
• You think a product or service is not worth the money, and you prefer a cheaper or free alternative.
• The company supports a practice you find unethical (outsourcing labour to a cheaper country, under-compensating their employees, polluting the environment, experimenting on animals, etc.)
• You only support companies that release the details of how their products work and are made (software that comes with source code, televisions and cars that come with exact schematics, restaurants that come with recipes.)

That sums it up nicely. And, certainly in the first three cases, it seems hypocritical to "boycott" an entity but support services that rely upon that entity. That is a rather hollow appeasement of moral concerns.

For example, during the boycott of South African goods, many years ago, people boycotted - for example - Barclays Bank because of their South African investments as well as directly refusing to buy South African goods. That is the only stance that makes sense to me if you have moral concerns.

[xenos]

If I wanted to know the recipe, understand it, be sure what the chef did before eating my meal, then I would indeed prefer "open source restaurants". For restaurants this is usually not the case, as I simply trust them that they won't poison me.

However, for security critical software such as operating systems, communication software etc. I prefer to know its inner working mechanisms. Even if I don't have the time to understand the complete source code myself, I prefer if it is open to the public, and there is a community around it who has an eye on it. The point is that I simply don't trust certain companies and their closed source software. Of course, one can also figure out what this software is doing, but it's considerable more difficult. And of course open source doesn't mean absolute security. It is simply a matter of convenience in checking the inner working mechanisms of some software.

This mistrust in the software or data handling policies may also be due to geopolitical reasons. I am originally from Germany, and one very important thing for Germans is their privacy (which might be related to a lack of privacy in Eastern Germany during the GDR time). Things like the NSA activities revealed by Snowden have caused many Germans to mistrust American companies, from which the NSA might get information almost with zero effort. Also here in Estonia, which was ruled by the Soviet Union for quite some time, similar feelings exist, probably also due to the vicinity to Russia.

In short, the preference of open source over closed source simply comes from the mistrust towards those companies, and the desire to see what's going on under the hood.

[Brendan]

Hi,

In short, the preference of open source over closed source simply comes from the mistrust towards those companies, and the desire to see what's going on under the hood.

Except, it's far easier for NSA to add their stuff to open source projects. Essentially; "closed source" means you have to trust the creators and nobody else; and "open source" means you have to trust the creators (which can include "volunteers" working for the NSA) plus everyone that came in contact with the source and tools and binaries anywhere between the creators and you.


Cheers,

Brendan

[xenos]

Of course, if you consider infiltration by the NSA or any other similar organization, you must also consider the possibility that they infiltrate a large corporation such as Microsoft and get some kind of malware / spyware into their software. And since closed source software is reviewed by a smaller amount of people, it's more likely to be delivered without being discovered. Of course malware / spyware may also be brought into open source products, and of course open source does not guarantee for being free of malware / spyware. It's just more difficult to hide it from a large community than from a few coworkers / reviewers.

Just take sourceforge as an example. They delivered malware, it was discovered by the community, they got blamed.

[embryo2]

I am originally from Germany, and one very important thing for Germans is their privacy (which might be related to a lack of privacy in Eastern Germany during the GDR time).

A bit of correction - Easter Germany's name was DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik). So, I see here "west deutsch"

And the GDR abbreviation was mostly used in USSR (Германская Демократическая Республика).

Things like the NSA activities revealed by Snowden have caused many Germans to mistrust American companies, from which the NSA might get information almost with zero effort. Also here in Estonia, which was ruled by the Soviet Union for quite some time, similar feelings exist, probably also due to the vicinity to Russia.

Well, Russia is not so dreadful anyway But corporations are.