You’re absolutely right. Sorry for that (admittedly catastrophic) omission.

It’s 2025. If you are getting a ‘free’ software product, there’s a chance of about 99,9% that the answer to that question is either ‘analytics/tracking/telemetry/customer retention’ or a combination of many or all of them.

So you see…up to a certain point it’s kind of our own fault too

I’d love to, but I can’t. Colonialism’s ‘Divide and conquer’ rule is only applicable and effective if the targets are either willingly in the game (i.e., corrupt enough to collaborate) already relatively divided (i.e. Already fragmented enough), or stupid enough not to realise what’s being done to them.

I don’t want to be that person either, but I really don’t think that Sykes is personally to blame for Britain’s shitty policies in and for the Middle East, the consequences of which still play a major role in the mess the region still is. Point being that, besides Gringoland, Britain should also be held accountable for the role they have played around the world in everything from ethnic cleansing all the way to supporting brutal, even murderous, dictatorships.

Regarding the last part of your comment, a dude called Christopher Simon Sykes, whose last name you might recognise, wrote a book called ‘The man who created the middle East’. It’s a biography of his grandfather, and an attempt to vindicate him.

I know this will most probably be an unpopular opinion, but as someone who was born and raised in Central America, I have never understood why these countries are separate countries.

I don’t see LibreCMC (https://librecmc.org/) mentioned anywhere in this thread, so correct that.

Unlike Open WRT, LibreCMC is recognised by GNU to be a fully free Linux distribution, and you still get the time-honoured LuCi web administration interface.

LibreCMC runs on much fewer devices as OpenWRT, which can be a feature for those who are overwhelmed by the length of OpenWRT’s list.