It's very nice thate the Blue Angel certificate recognize that user autonomy (uninstability, offline capabilities, freedom from advertising) is also very important for writing sustainable software.
I stopped using KDE along time ago (not because it's bad, but because I realized I'm far more productive in Sway). Two KDE programs that I still use daily are Okular and Dolphin. Okular is, in my opinion, the perfect PDF viewer.
> "In 2020 the German Environment Agency extended the award criteria to include software products, which was the first in the world of environmental certifications to link transparency and user autonomy with sustainability. In order to obtain the ecolabel, a software product must demonstrate that it meets a list of stringent requirements considered critical for the environment over the product’s life cycle. These include providing transparency in the energy consumption when using the software – for example, in the case of Okular, while reading or annotating a PDF – and the ability to run the application on hardware at least five years old. The Blue Angel award criteria also include a list of user autonomy requirements which reduce the environmental impact of software."
Okular is great and I'm a big fan of Free software generally, but the extension of this environmentalism award to encompass Free software values seems like a well-intentioned stretch and that 'runs on 5 year old hardware' thing is a joke. I'm hard pressed to think of any software that can't run on a computer from 2017. They might as well give the certification to the rest of all the Linux desktop software too. That won't happen I'm sure; Okular got it because KDE has organized an effort to get such certifications (https://eco.kde.org/#be4foss). Free software authors/groups that don't have the time/energy to seek the certification doubtlessly won't receive it.
So Okular has this certification and Envice does not. Does this actually tell you anything about which of the two is more ecological? I don't think so, it isn't safe to assume just from this certification that Okular is more efficient than Envice. But if an ecological certification isn't useful for such product comparisons, then what exactly is it for?
Some KDE developers indeed put a lot of time to get the certification, but this is not only for bureaucratic reasons. A lot of measurements needed to be done[1], this leads to various patches to improve the energy efficiency of some parts of the code. Also Be4FOSS is not only for KDE, but can also benefices other projects [2]
I really dig this idea. I also understand why a lot of folks around here will be subconsciously hostile to it. But yes, "user autonomy" leads to "sticky in a good way" software.
This, in a very healthy way, runs counter to "updating software for no good reason," which of course is the cause of pretty much all the e-waste.
> This, in a very healthy way, runs counter to "updating software for no good reason," which of course is the cause of pretty much all the e-waste.
You lost me there. Most "e-waste" is, IMHO, produced by inefficient software that is occupying a whole server farm where an efficient implementation will run on your router and still have enough resources to spare to brew a coffee. See thepiratebay, they disabled, IIRC, more than half of their servers when they switched to open tracker.
Sure. And how are you going to use that software if you don't have "permission" or the meaningful ability to run whatever you want on the machines you own? It goes all the way.
Unfortunately I received a Mac last year for free and have been hooked. So sadly I can't use Okular. Weird there is no Mac support. Have noticed many things are now "Just 3.99"...etc Guess that's my world now.
One app that is decidedly not "eco" is YouTube on the phone.
Google holds your phone's battery to ransom, if you don't pay to use YouTube, as it doesn't allow you to turn off the screen (I can listen to adverts too you know, if that's what they're worried about).
Given the number of Android phones there are, I think that "feature" must have wasted an amazing amount of electricity and contributed to wearing-out batteries.
Rather than eco-certifying apps, some apps could be eco-shamed.
Everyone who can please go find the bug report where users were outraged about the page visibility API and comment. If Firefox can block popups for the user's benefit, it can mess with the page visibility for the user's benefit.
What do you watch on YouTube that you want to be able to turn your screen off for? I pay for YouTube red but I literally never use this feature. Likewise I don't expect to be able to turn off my TV screen while listening to Netflix...
To be completely fair - that's not ecological use either. Decoding a video stream must be more electricity-consuming as comparing to just doing a native audio stream.
YouTube can (and I believe does) serve simple audio streams for scenarios where you're only listening to music/podcasts. Try poking around a YouTube link with yt-dlp, they definitely have audio-only sources available.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 68.6 ms ] threadhttps://produktinfo.blauer-engel.de/uploads/criteriafile/en/...
[1]: https://github.com/esjeon/krohnkite
https://bismuth-forge.github.io/bismuth/
> "In 2020 the German Environment Agency extended the award criteria to include software products, which was the first in the world of environmental certifications to link transparency and user autonomy with sustainability. In order to obtain the ecolabel, a software product must demonstrate that it meets a list of stringent requirements considered critical for the environment over the product’s life cycle. These include providing transparency in the energy consumption when using the software – for example, in the case of Okular, while reading or annotating a PDF – and the ability to run the application on hardware at least five years old. The Blue Angel award criteria also include a list of user autonomy requirements which reduce the environmental impact of software."
Okular is great and I'm a big fan of Free software generally, but the extension of this environmentalism award to encompass Free software values seems like a well-intentioned stretch and that 'runs on 5 year old hardware' thing is a joke. I'm hard pressed to think of any software that can't run on a computer from 2017. They might as well give the certification to the rest of all the Linux desktop software too. That won't happen I'm sure; Okular got it because KDE has organized an effort to get such certifications (https://eco.kde.org/#be4foss). Free software authors/groups that don't have the time/energy to seek the certification doubtlessly won't receive it.
So Okular has this certification and Envice does not. Does this actually tell you anything about which of the two is more ecological? I don't think so, it isn't safe to assume just from this certification that Okular is more efficient than Envice. But if an ecological certification isn't useful for such product comparisons, then what exactly is it for?
[1]: https://invent.kde.org/teams/eco/blue-angel-application/-/bl... [2]: https://invent.kde.org/teams/eco/be4foss
This, in a very healthy way, runs counter to "updating software for no good reason," which of course is the cause of pretty much all the e-waste.
You lost me there. Most "e-waste" is, IMHO, produced by inefficient software that is occupying a whole server farm where an efficient implementation will run on your router and still have enough resources to spare to brew a coffee. See thepiratebay, they disabled, IIRC, more than half of their servers when they switched to open tracker.
Google holds your phone's battery to ransom, if you don't pay to use YouTube, as it doesn't allow you to turn off the screen (I can listen to adverts too you know, if that's what they're worried about).
Given the number of Android phones there are, I think that "feature" must have wasted an amazing amount of electricity and contributed to wearing-out batteries.
Rather than eco-certifying apps, some apps could be eco-shamed.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-backgro...
or the NewPipe App...
[0]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1246485 [1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=Page+vi...