I know I'm a little late to this party, but I feel my two cents is needed here. Don's original question was about "Freedom-Respecting" but all of the responses where about privacy. While many Free Software supporters are also "privacy and security nuts" normally "Freedom-Respecting" is about respecting the 4 freedoms listed in the definition of Free software * The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0). * The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2). * The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
You should note that nothing direclty links software or newtwork security to software freedom. I am unaware of anything about Startpage that is Free Software. A good portion of DuckDuck Go is "Open Source." From their marketing materials it seems very clear that their reason for doing such is around security and allowing users to verify such. Most of which they do publish is under the Apache license. [1]Apache License, Version 2.0 ([2]#apache2) [3]This is a free software license, compatible with version 3 of the GNU GPL. [4]Please note that this license is not compatible with GPL version 2, because it has some requirements that are not in that GPL version. These include certain patent termination and indemnification provisions. The patent termination provision is a good thing, which is why we recommend the Apache 2.0 license for substantial programs over other lax permissive licenses. The "core" of their search engine, which i understand to include the actual search algorthym, however remains propritary. You can find what they do publish [5]https://github.com/duckduckgo. SearX is Free Software published under the AGPL, which many consider to be the most freedom-respecting software license currently in use. As Paul said you can self-host it, which certainly gives you more freedom and control. You can view their Free Software here [6]https://github.com/searx/searx. SearXNG is a fork of SearX primarily focused on users who want to make the service available to the general public through hosting instances available via the www, similar to how Mastodon and other fediverse platforms work, it has slightly fewer privacy controls than SearX to make it easier to use for the genearal public. A list of currently available public instances can be found at [7]https://searx.space/. As a fork of SearX it is also published under the AGPL and its source can be found at [8]https://github.com/searxng. As SearX[NG] is a metasearch engine, not all of the tools it utilizes to make searches are Free Software, however it has built into it the ability toggle on/off which search engines it references for your particular search. On my personal device I have my default search engine set as [9]https://searx.tiekoetter.com/ and I have cookies saved on my browser such that it saves MY default prefernces of using mostly the "minor players" of the search engines they use including, but not limited to Alexandria which brands itself as THE open source search engine. Alexandria's code is100% Free Software published under what they call "[10]THE MIT License" which i think is the same thing that the FSF calls [11]The Expat License. You can find there code here [12]https://github.com/alexandria-org/alexandria. On my work device, where much of the www is blocked, I have my default browser as Microsoft Edge, and my default search engine as Bing, linked to my old high school hotmail account with my Microsoft Awards set to make monetary donations to the charity of my choice, the Free Software Foundation, that increases based on how much I use their services. This is mostly because I think it's funny to have Microsoft donate to the FSF. Yours in liberation, Jim Fulner Promoting Freed Minds, Freed Markets and Free Software and whenever possible Free Beer "For as long as one of your brothers is not free, none of you are free" 586-473-7007 Follow me [13]@f...@libranet.de on [14]#Friendica the world's best poly-centric social media platform, or from anywhere else on the [15]#Fediverse. Aren't you tired of big government backed corporations managing your social interactions? This Free message sent via a Free SMTP server running the Free Operating System GNU/Linux [16]www.fsf.org __________________________________________________________________ From: Arthur Torrey Subject: re: What search engine best at "Freedom-Respecting"? Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2022 13:05:06 -0500 (EST) __________________________________________________________________ I found Duck Duck's results to be underwhelming, especially when doing things like looking for technical documents on a product - DDG would return umpteen places to BUY the product, but not manufacturer's websites, or manual pages, etc... I now use "Startpage" <[17]https://www.startpage.com> which is based in the EU, so under the GDPR for whatever good that does... They claim that they don't log, monitor, or track searches or users. Supposedly what they do is pay Google to use their engine / database on an anonymous basis (all the requests to Google are marked as coming from Startpage, not you) and make their money by doing adds (that are clearly marked as adds) based strictly on the search terms used, which seems reasonable. I believe they also have some 'premium' extra cost services like VPN's, etc. They do have some sort of javascript that is reported by NoScript, but I'm not sure if it's proprietary or free... (I haven't checked) ART ------------------ Arthur Torrey - <[18]arthur_tor...@comcast.net> ------------------- From: Abe Indoria Subject: Re: What search engine best at "Freedom-Respecting"? Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2022 09:13:52 -0700 ___________________________________________________________________________ (Oops, originally replied to author only, my bad) I was under the impression that SearX-ng (use the ng) can still be used to build an ad-profile of you. A major advantage of searX is that the more people use it, the more anonymous it gets. Otherwise, it's just an aggregator, and thus, Google/bing/Brave/DDG etc will still be tracking you if you're the only person to use it. Potentially anyhow. On the other hand, the benefits of searx-ng are good enough for me to self-host and use it everyday. -- Abe ___________________________________________________________________________ From: Paul Sutton Subject: Re: What search engine best at "Freedom-Respecting"? Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2022 15:12:37 +0000 ___________________________________________________________________________ I would guess Duckduckgo is much better than the main search engines such as Google and Bing. There are several such as SearX which are more decentralised, but can also be self hosted, which that comes with the price tag of time, resources, cost and effort to set up and maintain. It probably depends what you want or are looking for. Paul -- Paul Sutton, Cert Cont Sci (Open) [19]https://personaljournal.ca/paulsutton/ OpenPGP : 4350 91C4 C8FB 681B 23A6 7944 8EA9 1B51 E27E 3D99 Mastodon : @[20]zl...@qoto.org ___________________________________________________________________________ From: Don Saklad Subject: What search engine best at "Freedom-Respecting"? Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2022 11:50:41 -0500 ___________________________________________________________________________ What search engine best at "Freedom-Respecting"? __________________________________________________________________ References 1. https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:Apache2.0 2. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#apache2 3. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html 4. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html 5. https://github.com/duckduckgo 6. https://github.com/searx/searx 7. https://searx.space/ 8. https://github.com/searxng 9. https://searx.tiekoetter.com/ 10. https://github.com/alexandria-org/alexandria/blob/main/LICENSE 11. https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:Expat 12. https://github.com/alexandria-org/alexandria 13. https://librandet.de/profile/fu 14. https://friendi.ca/ 15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse 16. https://www.fsf.org/ 17. https://www.startpage.com/ 18. mailto:arthur_tor...@comcast.net 19. https://personaljournal.ca/paulsutton/ 20. mailto:zl...@qoto.org
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