I usually don't like new tech regulations. One reason is that technology changes so fast that new regulations tend to protect yesterday from last Thursday. Another reason is that lawmakers tend to know little or nothing about tech. One former high U.S. government official once told a small group of us, roughly, "There are two things almost nobody in Congress understands. One is technology and the other is economics. So good luck."

We need a free software mobile operating system. Is it eelo? Remember Windows? It was an operating system that was quite popular in the old days of computing. However, its global market share has been in decline for some time, and last year, the Age of Windows ended, and the Age of Android began.

Pydio Cells is a brand-new product focused on the needs of enterprises and large organizations, brought to you from the people who launched the concept of the open-source file sharing and synchronization solution in 2008. The concept behind Pydio Cells is challenging: to be to file sharing what Slack has been to chats—that is, a revolution in terms of the number of features, power and ease of use.

Finding that Facebook has "data sharing partnerships" with "at least sixty device makers" is as unsurprising as finding that there are a zillion ways to use wheat or corn. Facebook is in the data farming business. Remember that the GDPR didn't happen in a vacuum. Bad acting with personal data in the adtech business (the one that aims advertising with personal data) is the norm, not the exception.

I started writing this on Privmas Eve: the day before Privmas, aka GDPR Day: the one marked red on the calendars of every company in the world holding an asset the GDPR has suddenly made toxic: personal data. The same day—25 May—should be marked green for everyone who has hated the simple fact that harvesting personal data from everybody on the internet has been too damned easy for too damned long for too damned many companies, and governments too.

[24 May 2019: A year after I wrote this post, Global Consent Manager an indirect descendant of the work described below, is in the world and doing the job. Check 'em out.] The web—or at least the one we know today—got off on the wrong hoofs. Specifically, I mean with client-server, a distributed application structure that shouldn't subordinate one party to an other, but ended up doing exactly that, which is why the web today looks like this:

Richard Stallman will love the new GDPR. It's not every day that a new law comes into force that will have major implications for digital industries around the globe. It's even rarer when a such law will also bolster free software's underlying philosophy. But the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which will be enforced from May 25, 2018, does both of those things, making its appearance one of the most important events in the history of open source.

Most people simply are unaware of how much personal data they leak on a daily basis as they use their computers. Enter our latest issue with a deep dive into privacy. After working on this issue, a few of us on the Linux Journal team walked away implementing some new privacy practices--we suspect you may too after you give it a read. In This Issue:

Let us know how the GDPR is affecting your work. The amount of geekery and hackage required to bring companies into compliance with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (aka GDPR) must be huge. I say that for five reasons: