An article written for extroverts. I will be happy to spend my all weekends during the work days of everybody else.

Since when are (human) managers accountable?

You've never seen a manager get fired or decide to "spend more time with their family" ?

No, not really. I only saw them promoted or quitting for an even better management job.

Why wouldnt linux and FOSS benefit from usage? At the least it result in social validation, if not bug reports

Social validation brings incompetent users expecting something like Windows that "just works".

Even if they could bring some bug reports... We have lots of those already! We have decades of ignored bug reports.

Why would only incompetent users expect something that "just works"?

Because they don't know (yet) that Linux just doesn't work.

Wait, do we not want incompetent users on Linux? That's a weird take. Linux is not for elite technologically profound users, it's for everybody. If things don't work for non-technical users, we should strive to make it better?

As if Linux devs just sat and did nothing for the last 30 years... Linux today is the best they could do and it's not even at the Win95 functional level.

No, we don't want incompetent users on Linux. It's going to be something like eternal september.

> I like the idea of a central signing authority for open source.

It would be the most corrupt(ible) org ever involved in open source and it would promote locked-down computing, as that would be their main reason to exist. Be careful what you wish for!

While agree that this is a problem if becoming an attack vector, FDoid does already do central signing of their own builds. With reproducible builds actually the attack vector would be minimal and actually maybe there could be multiple of such entities, which would make this even more robust. I just think the answer to power is not always decentralization. Alternatively government actors could also build open source for their citizens. Here would have at least democratically mandated corruption. IMHO this is much better than the current quasi government of the internet by a few powerful gatekeepers.

Then it wouldnt' be a central signing authority. Not that it matters. Several signing authorities would not equally divide the clients. One would emerge as central, become corrupted by industry commercial interests, promoted further by them, and end up some sort of Google of signing where you can't do anything on your computer without their knowledge and approval.

My second argument stands.

They love trees. What they hate is sharing their trees with everyone else!

It is explained in the article. You should read it.

The article is sensationalist, I actually read the policy, did you?

No, since I don't expect the article to be wrong. Sensationalist - yes, a little.

It's their job and if they're good at it, they still win / earn money. Someone who's staying eyes glued to the price charts on 12 stacked monitors will be the first to see a trend and buy/sell immediately after the action of the insider trader.

No, that's not the answer. It only applies to those people who have time and energy to spare to do that reasearch. I'm not talking just farming equipment, but ordinary items such as a vacuum cleaner or printer.

If you're low income, work 2 jobs, single parent, get home at 23:00 broken tired, want a meal but your fridge just broke down and everything is spoiled inside, you don't spend 2 more hours doing reasearch. You clean it, go to bed hungry, call repair in the morning (optional, if your hopes are high), and when they tell you it's not repairable, you get the first new fridge you can afford in a 10 min online search while on the bus/train/tram being late to work.

Reasearch, self-repair, is for wealthy people.

Self-repair is an average day on a farm. A farmer that does not research equipment they about to purchase, especially before spending a small fortune, is a fool.

That's like saying you don't bother learning what illnesses your animals or crops may contract, and how to prevent/cure them, because you're not wealthy. Buying a book and reading it, to the improve your abilities, is time well spent.

Most maintenance on a tractor is not major, and require basic skill and parts. It's the companies that don't want this, they want specialized technicians to come out to replace an oil filter.

I have a 30 year old vacuum cleaner, which I continue to maintain, which mostly amounts to stripping it once every 10 years and cleaning out all the filters that caked up with fine dust. Definitely cheaper to strip it myself one evening, than to pay someone to do it, or purchase a new one. It is like an hour of work for years of service.

It takes twenty minutes to figure out what other people are saying about a product. And even if you don't have time to do research, you develop a feeling for brands over time. I would never buy a lawn mower from Deere, not because this or that lawnmower is a known bad item, but because the company has had a bad reputation for decades.

A tractor can be almost a million dollar item now, and nobody spending a million dollars should be doing so without doing some research.

This 100%. I live rural and my water pump broke. No water means no showers, no dishwasher, no washing machine, and everyone in the family being uncomfortable. Realistically you get whatever the plumbing place has in stock and knows how to install - even if it's not technically the best one for the site.

I'm no farmer, but brand loyalty might have practical reasons, such as compatibility with attached farming equipment (plows?).

The attachment mechanism is usually standardized, so you can just switch between brands.

Nowadays a larger factor might be how close the next dealership/repair shop is. Some things are time critical, and when it breaks in this time, then you don't want to drive hours to have it fixed/get a part/ have a mechanic available.

There are some differences between the brands... And you can always be Clarkson and get a Lamborghini, even when it makes no sense ;-)