And how exactly does that fix the issue with the client going against the spirit (if not the law) of the GPL?

Wasn’t there also very recently a whole thing about the single guy who maintains the NTP spec threatened to retire so he could get a “real” job, which caused a gigantic internet-wide panic as pretty much everything we do relies on computer’s clocks being perfectly synced?

My phone’s battery is absolutely fine, although it isn’t expensive in the slightest (weird of you to assume it is…) but regularly hits below 30% battery towards the end of the day even without playing games. I could use a battery bank, but I’d still need that external controller which is yet another thing to carry and is awkwardly shaped and wouldn’t fit anywhere near as well in a pocket.

Again, weird to think I’m “worried” about anything. I’d just rather reserve my phone’s battery for when I need to use it, instead of wasting substantial amounts of it playing games.

In what way? I use them and it works just fine. Plus, I already had one so it cost me nothing to use it with my phone.

Well, I have to either attach it to my phone with a clip of some kind (which makes for sometimes questionable ergonomics or for a very wobbly, insecure setup that makes me fear I’ll drop my phone) Or I have to put my phone down on something, which for the sort of thing I use devices like this for just isn’t doable.

I’ve found clip-on ones to be very insecure and wobbly generally. I have an 8bitdo controller with their phone mount clip thing and the setup just feels way too top-heavy like I’m going to drop my phone at any moment.

Besides aren’t you already powering two devices when you carry this thing around with you

Which is exactly the point I’m making. I want to split that battery life up between devices, so my phone is less likely to die on me. I can deal without a handheld game console but if my phone taps out it’s more of a problem.

External Bluetooth controllers are always a pain and those clip-on ones are always awful. Plus it’s splitting the battery life between two devices, nothing bugs me more than using my phone for everything only to be shocked that the battery dies twice a day.

And that’s what I’m questioning. Would you? Would you think others here would? I wouldn’t. I’d rather go to whatever fork Fediverse devs favor instead. If anything, all the fear being expressed every time Threads integration is brought up only emphasizes that this is not how it would play out

The network effect can be strong. Say you’re now able to contact all your friends via your favourite Activitypub instance, you had to previously use Facebook.com or Threads or whatever but now they’re all here. You delete your Facebook and keep your Activitypub account to speak to all your friends who are on Threads.

Now Meta pulls the federation plug, or adds some feature that makes your Activitypub server not able to fully cooperate (Maybe you can talk, but you can’t video call anymore, or you can’t post GIF/images, whatever). Now what? All your friends are over there and getting annoyed with you. So… you eventually succumb and fire up a Threads account.

I guess I’m misunderstanding here - I thought Whatsapp would be the “service” in my case, I’m just making a client to hook into their, presumably open [to people who agree to whatever their terms are] API. So it’s more of a federation thing between services?

So I [in theory, I don’t know how to start with this on a technical level] could make a third-party Signal-compatible app, but allow it to connect to Whatsapp instead of Signal? Even if I can’t use my Signal account to contact Whatsapp people, that’s still potentially useful. Although I imagine the terms I’d have to agree to to do so would be full of nonsense that stops this being remotely feasible.