Paying to have Microsoft spy on you, what a deal! lol

true bro

That's why I'm on Mint, and most of my family as well. :)

people pay microsoft?

@ostream presumably some shady bullshit

@Fast-Nop I've switched to Zorin Pro, never regretted it

@sutekh42 you still need to buy a license to use their products, right?

@dIREsTRAITS i'm using a volume license key i found online, got free office accounts from work + uni and a load of old dreamspark stuff, think vista is the only thing i've ever paid for

@sutekh42 try and do your research about what they collect from you.

@dIREsTRAITS exactly the same shit every other tech company collects - whatever they can get their grubby little fingers on

@sutekh42 that's why i moved to Linux and i use only open source apps

@dIREsTRAITS Yes. And here's the list of big corporations by their contributions to Linux kernel. But I'm sure open source is somehow safe from collecting user data lol...

These conspiracy theories doesn't really fit a developer... People pay us to build software to "spy" them, processing and analyzing data...

@nuts haha what else

@ostream Sure, just like you can't get away with including questionable shit in EULA because everyone reads it, right?

Most open-source software you're using has been compiled by some third party, and even if you compiled it yourself, you probably just downloaded the source code from some provider without checking it. With most people doing the same, it's pretty fucking easy to slip in something "extra", or maybe just add tracking with an opt-out compile flag that only some dedicated nerds will ever notice and disable...

@ostream So you're saying if Microsoft published the code, you'd trust that they published the actual code and not a modified version with the "problematic" elements removed? And if someone actually spent a whole bunch of money and time to audit all that code, you'd trust their findings? Or is that also irrelevant, like everything that doesn't fit your perfect open source vision?

Oh and the good ol' NSA, the developers of Security-Enhanced Linux... If you have Android phone (including vanilla AOSP), you already have their software right at the core of your OS, and you worry about some companies giving them your data? Or do you seriously think somebody could do an independent audit of 16 million lines of code without NSA somehow getting "involved"?

@sutekh42 by buying their OS license and Office Suite license