One of the problems with FOSS (free and open source software) is that a lot of them use some Google proprietary bits, some examples being ProtonMail with reCAPTCHA and Linux Mint’s website with Google Analytics. My friends and I started a hobby project and are trying really hard to deGoogle a lot of those software (need to sign into GitHub in order to view this), but we cannot do it alone because the vast majority of FOSS uses Google Analytics, Google Fonts, Google reCAPTCHA and more. We also need people to help us convince maintainers to use open source alternatives like Matomo instead of Google Analytics as they won’t listen if only one or two people are asking for this change.
So here is how you can help! We have submitted tons of merge request and are waiting for answers, and you can do this too. If you do not know how to remove the Google junk from a source code, then you can simply open issues and recommend them to use open source alternatives that will be mentioned here:
- Google Analytics => Matomo and more
- Google Fonts => System fonts. On top of that, this method will be helpful for people suffering from dyslexia.
- Google reCAPTCHA => Honeypots and more
Once you open an issue or submit a merge request, please ask in communities for help to convince the maintainers to switch. We are a community so we should all work together and support each other.
We appreciate a lot for helping us deGoogling FOSS. It is really difficult to do it in a team of 4, which is why we want to inspire people to help FOSS become free of Google for the better.
You can now join our community at c/ReverseEagle!
Awesome work! I’m mainly bothered by reCAPTCHA as that can actually make a website unaccessible if you block Javascript and Google stuff. Analytics and fonts are luckily easy to block using a browser extensions like uMatrix, but reCAPTCHA is a pain.