France Needs to Focus on Software Freedom, Not Flags
Today we received our phone typical bill. Yes, zero. No calls made. No conversations initiated/placed. We don't own or use mobile phones either. We use Mumble, which leverages encryption and is hosted, securely, at home.
It might sound "geeky", but actually - in practice - not having mobile phones is a lot easier than having even 'just' one! We're not even talking about "smart" "phones"; "dumb" "phones" have several overlapping issues. Ownership of gadgets disguised as communication tools (rather than tracking and addiction) is a huge overhead.
Suppose simple is better. French philosophers have long spoken about this principle.
Mumble, to us, isn't just a telephone; it's good for group chats and it has plenty of fine functionality/ies. It's not bloated and it can connect to very high-performance microphones. What's not to like?
At work we used to have SIP; we always relied on SIP and at one point worked for a SIP provider. The media barely mentions it anymore.
"There's not enough coverage of SIP tools these days," an associate too has noticed. "Everyone has been broken to the point where they expect tools to each have their own, separate (often proprietary) protocols. Sadly Mumble is a little like that too."
At least Mumble is free/libre software and runs fine on many platforms. The same goes for the back end, Murmur.
"But SIP is still an option if one can find a service or have the skills to set up Asterisk or similar," said the associate.
"I'm surprised and disappointed that France did not build on SIP in their move for digital independence and are instead doing more of the same: lock-in but with a different owner," he said.
France recently complained about the overuse and over-reliance on Microsoft, Zoom, and all those other American spying companies (which facilitate political espionage for a hostile nation). While some platform like Matrix get adopted aplenty in France/EU, for video/audio they focus on nationality (or locality) rather than transparency or software freedom.
We need more SIP advocacy! █
Image source: France