question about devel team

[bigspark]

As compared to other distros, I notice that here there are no names or orgs mentioned as to who did all the work to package sparky all up. 

Why? 

Who decided to make sparky? 

Or am I missing something. 

[pavroo]

There was a list before at the team subpage, but cleared it out time ago, if you think it is important, I can put it back.

[hedon]

I would like to know, just for curiousity's sake.  I see you (pavroo), paxmark, and lami answer a lot of questions on this forum, so I'm guessing those are the devs.  But it'd be nice to KNOW who they are. 

After a 9+ year run in the 'Buntu family, I'm REALLY digging Sparky LXQT.  Been running it in a VM for an extended period while I get acclimated to the "Debian Way" of things, and the idiosyncracies of a rolling release, but I'm thinking I'm going to make it my daily driver and main business OS.  The main thing holding me back is the lack of "activity" on this forum.  Not sure if that's because Sparky has so few problems, has a much smaller user-base than I'm used to, or some other reason.  But whatever the reason, I'd like to give back as much as I receive, and it'd be nice to see who is in charge of what, as it may help me figure out who to contact to find out WHAT I'm capable of contributing and to figure out HOW.  Just a thought...FWIW.

[paxmark1]

I am not part of the development team.  I can't code perl or python or yad, I am just a decades long user of linux who will answer, sometime with a small crumb from elsewhere, sometimes with an idea that is another way to attack a problem from another angle, and very often a "post more information".  I have seen the usage of inxi in #debian-next and another forum - I am a big fan. 

My strength is a basic usage of the command line and 2 years running sid (uction) on a second machine as a learning device and also following #debian-next on irc.  At present all my Sparky's are on i386 bare metal or in a vm.

If you learn the command line you can be me. 

[bigspark]

Yes, I would prefer to see the developers listed.

The danger today with all software is that spy services simply flood the net with comprimised projects and without enough developers to oversee everything, the entire free/open source concept just gets overwhelmed with vulnerabilities no one has any time to look at.

With no reputation on the line, with no actual face behind which someone has to testify they are actually independent and not a shill or agent of someone else, a software project is indistinguishable from corporate bullshit or outright state surveillance-ware. 

What has happened, now that everyone who can think a little bit better than a cow has ditched OS X and Microshaft cloud-ware that in no way resembles a personal computer as it is fully integrated with 'cloud' crap that can't be deactiated or monitored, is that all the actual interesting people are using linux.

So it is 2x, 5x, 10x, more important for the fbi/nsa/cia/mossad/china/russia to infiltrate linux and what better way than to ensure that the best gaming systems, or the only linux capable gaming systems, or the most noob friendly linux(canonical...) are fully back doored. 

Consider that every major corporation has to allow fbi access as part of an investigation, now that in the united states and most everywhere, any political views besides 'moo' are being outlawed, what if, for instance Steam itself had an fbi backdoor that could allow remote filesystem access to fbi agents(or whoever can afford to bribe them)?   

So anon devel teams should be assumed to be advanced persistent threats, and anyone who does not understand this question, like apparently the three previous responders, is either an APT themselves or helping them. 

For instance, in order for me to be able to play a certain very popular game I had to download a special driver with a long obscure name that was only mentioned in some reddit comment. 

What if only people on 'the list' have to install that file, and then you show up with stars in some active database and end up playing your game with actual fbi agents who are there to surveil you, bait you into crime, and otherwise fuck with you? 

I admit I am paranoid.

But my paranoia is justified, your naive is not. 

Basically if you are so ignorant that you don't mind using spyware, you are of no interest anyway because you are only barely intelligent enough to breath. 

But if you actually attempt privacy, then you are 10x more valuable as a surveillance target.  For example if you are willing to take the performance hit to game with linux, in order to have privacy, then you must have something to hide. 

So who exactly can confirm that steam doesn't surveil the disks of sparky users?  Who is going to ask GabeN to what extent the FBI is allowed to harass steam users in games or if people involved in ongoing investigations will encounter agents in their steam games? 

I have seen some things that make me gravely concerned about these things, which you can probably tell from my tone, so please provide adequate answers or welcome suspicion. 

After years of reddit, that is what it has become, an arm of state propaganda staffed by actual soldiers on military bases defending us from our own ideas.  And steemit is actually lockheed martin, and most if not all of the 'whales' there are law enforcement operations.   Red Hat and Amazon are directly integrated with state apparatus.   With intel backdoors out of israel and systemd hook-ins, there is no computer on the planet they won't be able to not just surveil, but control and destroy on demand. 

Please identify yourselves, state you are not affiliated in any way with government or police or corps, and that to your knowledge sparky linux is not compimised, and some acknowledgement would be appropriate. 

[kanliot]

reading bigsparks's
"Yes, I would prefer to see the developers listed. "

If the devs want to remain anon, then that's fine with me.   I assume that the current devs trust each other, which is a more important than anything they could disclose on the internet.

Also, did you hear about the kidnapping and theft at the N. Korean embassy?  You should call them to ask what distro they were using since the break-in was probably done by state security really needing it.  http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190325000677 .

[bigspark]

Further, there is no reason for a free gaming distro to have 5+ links to google and aws and other mystery items blocked by ublock. 

Of all the hosting options, why AWS?  Of all the analysic options, why the full tie in with google? 

Why can't 0 things need to be blocked for a simple sparky linux forum? 

Now that there is no forthcoming answer, espect real scrutiny. 

Next question, why can't I turn off the automatic update feature?  Or am I missing something? 

[pavroo]

Why Google ads?
It's very simple - the Sparky project sell nothing so doesn't earn money, you get everything for free.
But living is not for free, I have to pay for everything, and find money to keep my live and Sparky alive.
So... Donations don't cover my bills; Google ads don't cover my bills too, so have to keep ads and ask our community for donations both, every single month.
If you don't agree with that, I suggest to not use Sparky and move to an other project.
But If you like Sparky, and thinking about removing adds, there is a way to do so - simply send donation every month which replace ads income.
There is no other way, sorry.

And, to disable automatic upgrades, simply uninstall 'sparky-aptus-upgrade-checker'.

[bigspark]

Scrutiny level increased.   

Are you intending to evade the main question I am asking and only answer the smaller ones? 

Google ads for revenue, and the tip for turning off automatic updates, that is nice.

But I am asking you to publically reveal who the devel team is and stand by your work, and also promise that you are independent and not part of a government or spy agency. 

Why did you not answer this question?  Why have you not yet published the devel team like you said you would above? 

Why have you not acknowledged my clear and plain explanation of my concern? 

Do you recognize that this is a manipulative tactive, to ignore the main question and only answer distractions to the main question? 

This is a very common tactic of forum spies, and if you are trying to build your reputation positively, that is a big mistake to do something like this.   

I have a lot of experience from reddit and other sites being harassed and tricked by people who are not authentic and are only around a topic or project to cause chaos and infiltrate. 

Who is the devel team? What other projects have you worked on?  Why did you decide to do sparky linux besides to generate google ads? 

Answer the big questions first please. 

[kanliot]

promise that you are independent and not part of a government or spy agency.   

BUT, what if the SparkyLinux devs crossed their fingers when they did this?   ;D

Shut up.

BTW, IBM is the biggesthttps://www.crn.com.au/news/ibm-wins-1-billion-whole-of-government-contract-496942 government information contractor in the world, and Debian will always be downstream to IBM/Linux software. 

[pavroo]

I can say, I am an independent man (hope my wife can't see that), not depend of any government, a company, a corporation, an organization, a fundation, etc.
I run Sparky project by my own, with big help of a few Sparky community members, that's all, no hidden dark things.
Hope, it will make you calm and relaxed.

[bigspark]

Thank you for this response, I appreciate it.

I hope you can understand why I am direct and persistent.  It's important to me and I think a lot of people who don't have the guts or capacity to ask.  I think it is time we hold all projects to these standards, please argue with me if you think I'm wrong. 

I think it is absolutely supercool to make something like sparky for us gamers and I frankly really like the os.  I am concerned about systemd and steam as a corporation,  and I think these things deserve some scrutiny, if you think I'm wrong please argue with me.   

Arguing with me is way better than no response or dodging these big issues.   I am honestly looking for how other people think about this. 

Are you comfortable revealing your name and some of your background so, you know, we can see it's not all madeup or shady, or is that something you are not comfortable with for privacy reasons or otherwise?   As someone who also has such online identity concerns, I will take your thoughts very seriously.

There is something afoot that is threatening public culture, between all the spy crap and all the marketing crap, it's getting really difficult to see what is what. 

I look forward to your response. 

bonus question: do you think the fbi uses steam to investigate people or bother them?  do you think other orgs do so like idk russia, china, that other country idk?  do you think steam provides american law enforcement access on demands to linux systems?  how could we ever test this?  or do you think that is a good idea?  and i admit this question is totally separate from spark devel team, maybe i open new thread idk

[kanliot]

Eh, this is going to sound critical.

Basically, the devs would have identified themselves if they felt like it.  Now you're focusing on one fact.  Focusing might help you in dark souls 2, but here, not so much.   

Ok, so you've decided that you don't want to be tracked.  Well, there's distros for that.  You can stop asking for stuff now, and start hitting the donate button. 

But you raise a decent question:  Has microsoft ever gotten a warrant, then complied with a warrant to enable eavesdropping through XBox Live?    I think so,  since known terrorists have used sidechannels like in-game chat to communicate. 

Honestly if you ask one more time, i'm going to assume either you are a security player, or are off your meds.

Ehh, or is there a legit reason why you need uncompromising privacy? 

BTW, the application tracking in ubuntu was found pretty fast, and it was pretty lame anyhow.   If the spooks are tracking me, i'm sure they're doing it at the ISP level.  Not on a kernel that changes every week.


*** Edit

SO, instead of asking other people to give you multiple privacy features,...
HOW about you, start devoting your time to secure your own data against unknown privacy risks....

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/big-techs-challenge-to-our-humanity/

[pavroo]

Already updated the team sub-page, so have a look into there.

[bigspark]

Thanks, that is a big improvement.  Still semi anon, but at least there is a place someone can start to ask and connect. 

Using any open source software with no listed development team is I think at this point for me out of the question. 

The other responder mentioned xbox live, and I kindof assume anything microsoft is basically the fbi. 

But what about steam?  They are supposedly an anarchist company and in all other regards very cool.

I am not talking about hunting down violent cells and pedos, I'm talking about what if the level of political oppression americans have experienced, that i have experienced, is now multiplied across every major corp software platform.

It is not just you can be investigated, they are doing more than that.  They are harassing people, they are destabilzing their lives and then trying to bait them into crimes. 

Once you come on the list, they never stop.  They could come to you in eve online and ruin your corp, they could make it so your matchmaking always matches you with actual fbi and then in  game they pause and use that time to download stuff off your hard drive. 

If I had only seen evidence of american police hunting down bad guys, I would never mention this or bring it up.  But I know they are using all of these tools for political repression, actual east german stasi zersetzung. 

Believe me or don't, but now the community has at least heard the idea.  But if the fbi decides they want to harass a specific steam user on steam as part of their plan to make the lives of all potential activists miserable and ineffective, and prevent activists from making friends, etc, then I don't see anything that could stop them besides GabeN moving steam out of the united states.   The reason this would be the killer app for the fbi/cia is that anyone who decided to be an activist would be immediately excluded from all these communities, just like I was when I noticed they were harassing me on facebook.

And take this to the bank, the person who got me interested in dota, out of the blue, was an fbi agent that had infiltrated my life.   I do not believe this guy really wanted to game with me. 

I do not understand why others do not see the threat of this and the historical trends which indicate, even absent of what I am telling you, that it is plausible and likely.  Especially under the current jackass regime of petty tyrants. 

That is all I will say here, but like I said in my first post, my paranoia is justified more than your naivete. 

Zersetzung is active in america, beware, but only if you know how to think.  They let uneducated unintelligent people do pretty much whatever they want, only pointing them at intelligent people to disrupt whatever they are doing.   

Anyone who tells you this isn't happening is a cop. 

Bye!