Add tags to distinguish services from software
When looking at the recommendations it's immediately important for users to know whether it's a software or service being recommended. I propose tags like:
- centralized service
- decentralized service
- free software
- non-free software
The existing OS tags kind of imply software is being recommended but it's unclear. Some of the existing tags are confusing:
Osmand works offline but still relies on servers to download the maps from, so why doesn't it have the servers
tag?
Although DDG needs to be removed, the listing currently omits Android
for example, despite the existence of an Android app. Users then must wonder if that means it was overlooked or if PBP is simply not recommending the app.
The Riseup VPN is tagged web services
, yet there is no servers
tag when VPNs are most commonly used with VPN tools. I know riseup supported openvpn at least at one point. Some VPNs can run entirely with web apps on the client side but I doubt riseup works that way so web services
is most likely wrong -- it's likely a copy/paste error from the email section.
Replicant is tagged iOS. I'm sure that's a mistake. Replicant is in itself an OS and it does not support Apple hardware. Even tagging it Android
is a bit sketchy. The Android
tag makes sense when describing an app or service that makes use of Android OS. Replicant does not run on Android OS any more than Android OS runs on Android OS. It's not even clear you can call Replicant itself Android OS once it's been forked and modified. Replicant offers an escape from many of the walled-garden anti-features that dominate nearly all Android devices, so having an Android
tag is misleading to those looking to escape Android pitfalls.
Tails and Debian have the same problem as Replicant. Tails itself is an OS. It does not run on the OSs listed. Is the intent here to dumb things down to tell macos users that Tails runs on their hardware? When people see tags that are wrong or misleading the effect is that they distrust the tags and don't find them useful.
Gitlab is insidiously misleading. @yegortimoshenko mentioned that PBP endorses Gitlab software but not gitlab.com
(and rightly so), but visitors are lead to believe it's gitlab.com
being endorsed. The omission of a web services
tag makes it clear only to very meticulous readers that gitlab.com
is excluded from the endorsement, while most visitors are likely only aware of the gitlab.com
service and probably don't even realize that the software is available. Putting gitlab.com
in the avoid column (as it should be) will avoid that mistake. E.g. something like
Avoid | Prefer |
---|---|
gitlab.com (caution: hostility to Tor users, Google sharing, Google reCAPTHAs, forced disclosure of non-temp email) servers web services
|
Gitlab application gnu/linux macOS Windows
|