Nice article! Are you the author? If so, I’d like to give you a suggestion: the part about the deepin Linux story and technical background is interesting enough to be its own article. That way, it would be more findable on web searchers and probably help a lot of people who look for information on it, which is a bit scarce in english.

5 years already? Shit, I’m old.

But what do you do when services and institutions in general require you to use whatsapp? That’s what is mostly keeping me from deleting that app.

I have been looking at this possibility, but running a bridge means that I will need to self host a service, which adds one more point of failure, while not really removing whatsapp from my life, so I’m not convinced it’s a good alternative.

Whatsapp

And no, I can’t simply stop using or ask friends to move to an alternative. I’m from Brazil and that thing is so popular and mainstream, that even stores or public services use it.

Just this week, I had to report an animal abuse case to the authorities, and the official communication channel I had to use was through whatsapp.

It’s sad to see how dependent of a single proprietary service for something so important we allowed ourselves to become…

Let’s invert the question: what makes it worth the switch? If I’m going to change something, you have to prove why it’s worth, not me proving why I shouldn’t.

This.

Not all violations are ill-intended, and most amaetur devs aren’t specialists in licensing.