Thank you for your patient, thoughtful, and thorough explanations. Such things are very hard to come by in today’s internet.
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As the one who started this thread, I wanted to add that the Capitalists and the resulting companies they build are not all bad guys. There are those who wear the black hats and then there are those that wear the white hats. It’s all about the effects of a given company’s business model on the public. I think that what the surveilance capitalism market is doing is bad for both the individual and bad for the collective society. The globalized information infrastructure can be built in, and financed through better ways than using the so-called ‘free’ model. The ‘free beer’ (using Richard Stallman’s analogy) is not really free. We just need the guys in the white hats to ride in and fix things. Until they do, the market potential for a healthy alternative will continue to build.
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Is that why do I get robocalls saying they’ve been trying to reach me about the warranty on my 21 year old used car?
I’m usually the guy in the room who is advocating for good government regulation, but this is one of those instances where I think that you have to lead by demonstrating the business case. Until some companies can demonstrate that there is demand for phones that aren’t based on surveillance Capitalism like Android or a walled garden like iPhones, we might get some mild regulation like GDPR, but we won’t get much real change.
I actually think that many of the phone makers will jump on mobile Linux, once it can be demonstrated that there is demand and the software selection is large enough to cover most people’s needs. All the phone makers, except Apple, are caught in the Android commodity trap, where there are few profits. Lenovo/Motorola, LG, Sony, HTC, ZTE and TCL have been losing money for years and surveillance Capitalism doesn’t benefit them at all, so I foresee some of them being willing to switch to Linux.
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smells like pig money to me … 
that being said we do NOT like the smell of pig in our back yard but we do like it nicely cooked in the plate 
oh and by the way pig fat (LARD i believe it was called if i’m not mistaken) seems to be healthier than most mono/poly saturated oils available on the shelves of vegetable origin.
the thing is that there are huge societal changes looming on the horizon (and some are happening as we speak). for most people since Snowden pulled his lil’ stunt in 2013 there seems to be much stagnation and indecision regarding moving to other platforms. it seems to me that when a “normie” is hit with terms like surveillance-capitalism they just go “well i’m ZUCC-ed and COC-ed anyway” so it’s this despair state that i’m more worried about …
most people need a BIG saving hand to start seeing the benefit of using a free-software ecosystem. i do mean much more than just advice and talk and the occasional technical demonstration that they can’t grasp no matter how “dumb-ed” down it is presented to be … i mean that they sometimes require a gift or a donation of some kind or just a period of time to see what it all can do for THEM … Purism is at a HUGE disadvantage here because they don’t have “Stores” like Apple does. meanwhile Apple seems to open up shop everywhere and that speaks volumes about the way they use their money. now that their “space-ship” is almost-done the sky is the limit …
it’s a hard battle no matter how much free-software means to our community …
This point needs bringing out.
The article headline talks about “maximizing profits” but the text of the article more precisely talks about
your duty to maximize shareholder value
It’s not the same thing at all. A short term reduction in profit, if done for the purposes of successful investment, may increase shareholder value.
The term “shareholder value” is not defined in the article but we could take it to mean … the value of the company as a whole (and hence of any shareholder’s holding), taking into account all future profits (even though those profits can only be estimated).
However the particulars of that specific case are about more than profits and shareholder value. They are also about predatory behavior by the majority shareholder (Jim and Craig) to disadvantage minority shareholders (eBay) - hence, in this case, not just about maximizing shareholder value but ensuring that shareholder value and profits (whatever the amounts in dollars are, and whether they are going up or down) are shared equally in proportion to the number of shares and not preferentially in favor of specific shareholders.
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where money is involved (as a PRIMARY incentive) there is a high chance that users and developers alike are going to be COC-ed in some way or another …
the BEST choice (if possible) is a libre as in free-beer first development model and if all else fails (or as an exception) go for other non-GPL licenses that are more COC-y in nature … the www is COC-ed enough as it is. no need to add unnecessary bloat to it if it can be helped …