Imagine being one of the most valuable companies on earth, making billions thanks to open-source software like #ffmpeg, without contributing financially to it, without contributing to its codebase, and even expecting those unpaid volunteers to fix bugs for you in a timely fashion as if they were your own employees. Imagine contributing to a huge piece of software like ffmpeg that works behind the scenes on literally any device that can either play, record or transform media, a project that has become a critical piece of our digital infrastructure, and doing so unpaid, uncredited and stressed out by companies that make billions thanks to your work. This is the current state of open-source today. A bunch of burned out, unpaid and uncredited volunteers building free stuff in their spare time that trillion-dollar freeriders feel entitled to use without contributing back. ffmpeg developers are right. Either #Google contributes back, or they won't even look at their bugs anymore. And, in an ideal world where free software licenses weren't written by good Samaritans, either trillion-dollar companies contribute back, or they shouldn't be allowed to use free software for profit. https://thenewstack.io/ffmpeg-to-google-fund-us-or-stop-sending-bugs/
The #ICC [joins]() a growing list of EU-based institutions that has abandoned or is abandoning US-based FascTech and move towards EU-based open-source solutions instead. The reason in this case isn't only saved budget. Karim Khan, chief prosecutor for the ICC, [lost access to his Outlook mailbox]() in May 2025 after delivering the arrest warrant against Netanyahu - on top of getting his bank account frozen. Imagine a world where UN officers for the highest criminal court can't do their job because a single American company can coerce their decisions by simply cutting access to their digital lives. The ICC is therefore switching from #Microsoft 365 to #OpenDesk, a FOSS solution mostly developed in Germany. The fall of American Big Tech will happen one step at the time, one revoked license at the time, one lost user at the time. After 15 years spent evangelizing that there's no technology outside of their clouds, people are finally realizing that solutions are possible - and those solutions both save them money and restore their sovereignty and ownership over their digital lives. The same tipping points that led to their success can also lead to their demise. There's an eternal technological pendulum between centralization and decentralization that keeps swinging whenever the disadvantages of one end start outweighing the disadvantages of the other end. And it will keep swinging, no matter how big the American FascTech has become.