I think (do correct if wrong!) the EU has approved an interoperability law for big tech companies? So it should be just a matter of time until you can switch messaging app and still be able to communicate with people on wa and big messaging apps
Ofc if all your friends all use whatsapp zuck will still be able to read all your messages and get your phone number via your contacts… so it’s only a partial solution. Still better than nothing tho.
Theres also jak and daxter, i believe it was called openGOAL?
This is the way i see the situation:
Letting meta join the fediverse means they will captivate the general audience and the fediverse will stop growing. Realizing this, it could lead a lot of contributors to the lemmy/mastodon/activitypub projects lose interest, which will slow down development and could eventually lead to the death of the fediverse project.
This is how it goes:
People get accustomed to all the content from Meta/Threads
Meta adds extra features to their website which do not work with other fediverse instances
People switch from lemmy/mastodon to threads or join threads directly and never ever consider joining the real fediverse.
The fediverse project either dies down or remains a niche project forever.
AFAIK european laws only allow to patent “inventions”. Software is considered to be a series of “words” in whatever programming language you’re using and, like sentences, it’s not an invention and can’t be patented.
On the other hand, software-assisted inventions can be patented as a whole.
With that said, software can still be considered a “work” protected by copyright laws.
Since a few months ago I get so many AI generated blog articles as top results with ddg (a lot with google as well, but less so)