from proprietary software, not from Microsoft; nothing wrong with using free software just because it was developed by Microsoft

I thought the goal was precisely not profit? 😂😂😂

But yes, this is exactly what I meant.

“Web” means HTTP and HTML.

I fail to understand the point of this.

If the goal is to be able to deliver documents without any JS, cookies, tracking, etc., then why not just deliver documents that way through the web? No one is forcing anyone to put those things on any website.

No, they are both not really suitable for that. But I don’t see where the link in the OP implies they plan to store binary image data in XML, they’re probably going to store that in a binary format and use XML to describe relationships and other metadata.

IMHO: XML is superior as a document storage format. JSON is superior as a data transfer format.

Yes, this is true (although the name change happened years before the major version was no longer 10) and doesn’t contradict anything I wrote. But the first version of Mac OS X was an entirely new OS technologically unrelated to Mac OS 9; not the case for later version jumps.

True, that usually costs money though, while Tor is free.

In general no, at least according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS#macOS the name change happened several years before the architecture change. But I don’t know what the distinction is on that graph; it’s possible it just depends on how the OS is called in the user agent string?

The OS was renamed at some point; the first versions of the Unix/NEXTstep-based OS made by Apple were named Mac OS X, then at some point they switched to “OS X” (which hardly anyone ever actually said), then at some point to “macOS”. So it’s somewhat silly that they are separate lines and I don’t know what the difference is on that graph.

except that laws about social media usually target any online service regardless of technology

I don’t see Tor solving the problem of I.D. verification on social media, for example.

It does by disguising the location you’re accessing the website from, which may or may not have such laws.

I was wondering how much closer it can get than it is now… then I noticed the date.

In principle yes, because the government has the authority to legally punish people (with fines, imprisonment, even death), private companies do not…

But your specific example with Palantir is a bit weird because Palantir, as I understand it, is mainly in the business of data analysis for governments, so that is an example of government spying, not corporate spying…

Finding restaurants can be done with the same OpenStreetMap-based apps as navigation. I use OsmAnd all the time to find out where restaurants are.

But OpenStreetMap doesn’t have a review functionality, nor is it trivial to add one from an external site to one. Apparently there have been efforts in this direction, but I don’t know a lot about them: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Reviews

So I don’t have an answer for reviews. But the review databases that currently exist are a manipulation battleground which people should take with a grain of salt anyway.

Of course those would be good things. It still doesn’t sound like priority #1 when it comes to software freedom alone especially in a world where smartphones are mostly not open systems designed for installation of any new operating systems.

Are they planning to license it as free software?

Linux is already the most common kernel in phones in 2026. In this case we really have to distinguish between Linux (incl. Android) and GNU/Linux.

And given that AOSP is already FOSS, it doesn’t exactly sound like a priority to reinvent the wheel of a FOSS smartphone OS.

That is not new. They’ve been doing that since the 2000s.

The way I understand it is that there are at least two reasons, maybe more:

• Google (like all tech companies) uses a lot of open source software internally, so benefits from it being improved
• Google wants to train possible future employees

Not everything Google or other big tech companies do is necessarily bad; we should be taking advantage of the good parts of what they do.

Not a new idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bloc