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Ask Slashdot: Which Tech Company Do You Respect Most?
dryriver writes: On Slashdot, we often discuss the missteps and non consumer-friendly behavior of various tech companies. This company forced people into a subscription payment model. That tech company doesn't respect people's privacy. Yet another tech company failed to fix a dangerous exploit quickly, protect people's cloud data properly, or innovate and improve where innovation and improvement was badly needed.
Here's a question to the contrary: Of all the tech companies you know well and follow -- small, medium, or large -- which are the ones that you respect the most, and why? Which are the companies that still -- or newly -- create great tech in a landscape dotted with profiteers? Also, what is your personal criteria for judging whether a tech company is "good," "neutral," or "bad?"
Here's a question to the contrary: Of all the tech companies you know well and follow -- small, medium, or large -- which are the ones that you respect the most, and why? Which are the companies that still -- or newly -- create great tech in a landscape dotted with profiteers? Also, what is your personal criteria for judging whether a tech company is "good," "neutral," or "bad?"
Lavabit.
Ubiquiti. They have good products, at good price points. They are well documented, contribute back to the open source community, and they are truly revolutionary in their hardware designs.
Their software is mostly free as well. You can download and use it at will.
Enercon ...
Beyerdynamic
Wiha
Wera
Ok, the last two are just Toolmakers, but I still count them in.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Do you realize that Lavabit *did* fight this in a secret court? And that they reconstituted the company with Silent Circle to make a secure mailing protocol? I get the impression you made this comment without reading anything about what happened in court (the owner was given a gag order from his own *lawyer*) and what has happened since 2014. Is that accurate?
They are designed by the non profit Pi Foundation, and are made in a Sony factory in the UK.
Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://www.eff.org/
Enough said.
NearlyFreeSpeech web hosting: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.n...
They defend net nuetrality. Their pricing structure is clearly laid out with no hidden fees, and emphasis on efficiency, and they do well when you do well. They are run by highly competent individuals.
DuckDuckGo web search: https://duckduckgo.com/html/
Great search that doesn't track you. Fuck yes.
PaleMoon web browser: https://www.palemoon.org/
A modern, FOSS, secure, fast, lean, extensible, and highly configurable browser that took over where FireFox left off. It's run by individuals who have ethics, and stick to them.
Proton Mail web mail: https://protonmail.com/
FOSS end-to-end encrypted e-mail. The only issue I see here is that it is free, so you're likely not the customer... There is another end-to-end encrypted web-mail solution that is $5/mo. or so but I've forgotten the name. Anyone?
Lennart Poettering has been a RedHat employee for a long time. They didn't just adopt it, they paid him to write it. He's also responsible for PulseAudio, and I think was working for RedHat then as well.
He's also responsible for Avahi, which is at least only mediocre rather than actively harmful.
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