I don’t know if this is a sick burn (by a FOSDEM organiser spilling the truth about FOSDEM) or an own goal.
🤷♂️ pleroma.debian.social/objects/…
This entry was edited (2 days ago)
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I don’t know if this is a sick burn (by a FOSDEM organiser spilling the truth about FOSDEM) or an own goal.
🤷♂️ pleroma.debian.social/objects/…
Simon D.
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Ahhh, Free Software is not about Freedom…
Well, well, well.
Aral Balkan reshared this.
Aral Balkan
in reply to Simon D. • • •Simon D.
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •It must be the "other Free" like it was the "other private" in Mastodon confidentiality levels
(remember ? the public one)
mmu_man
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •the elder sea
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •-white dudes everywhere
sortius
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •there's a reason I ran like the wind from open source communities.
There's dudes like this everywhere in them. As far as I'm concerned, if you're not developing for human rights, you're developing for fascism
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Aral Balkan
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Because “Free and Open Source Software isn’t about freedom/privacy/human rights/democracy” is one helluva take.
(And yes, you’re right, “open source” isn’t about any of those things. It’s just about the source being openly available. Not about protecting its openness or anything. It’s open as in “open for business.” But free (as in freedom) software/technology…? Well, I guess some of us would beg to differ.)
Oh, and if you want a philosophy/movement that isn’t shy or apologetic about being about freedom/privacy/human rights/democracy, see Small Tech:
small-tech.org/about/#small-te…
#FOSDEM #openSource #freeSoftware #SmallTech #freedom #privacy #humanRights #democracy
Small Technology Foundation: About
small-tech.orgjohn r red-horse
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •A fair bit of your declaration seems like a straw man to me.
I've always interpreted free to mean free of payment cost. Free of cost has never meant freedom in the free from tyranny sense.
Open source? Well, open to acquire and scrutinize, etc. Also, are you saying there are no protections available for open source, that something like one of the GPLs doesn't protect the open source itself?
tom jennings
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral, I'm with you on nearly everything you post. But afaik FOSS has long been about access to code, and no more. "Free and open" parallels human freedom and openness but in the longstanding software "movement", no. But! it is absolutely taken as such by many people, and I'm one of them.
But FOSS doesn't not automatically mean freedom as in human, very many tech folk are tech-first, and that's that. I intensely dislike those people.
This dissonance, this dilemma is deep if not wide. It makes conversations about the use of FOSS to oppress us very messy.
We absolutely need a way to distinguish and state freedom as in human in software.
mray
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •schrotthaufen
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Charles U. Farley
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •It baffles me that people think there's any point to FOSS besides improving freedom/privacy/human rights/democracy.
They should fire that guy.
Aral Balkan
in reply to Charles U. Farley • • •Why should they fire him? They agree with him.
(The whole volunteer thing aside.)
Wouter Verhelst
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Don't know which part of "I don't speak for FOSDEM" is so difficult to understand, but you do you.
Yes, Free Software is about politics. Which politics? Depends on who you ask. Some will say that freedom/privacy/human rights/democracy are part of that, but not everyone will, and that doesn't mean they're not part of the community.
This is an important debate but I don't think one in which FOSDEM as an organization has an opinion, even though some of its members might.
Wouter Verhelst
in reply to Wouter Verhelst • • •My absolutely personal opinion in this debate: Open Source is about methodology, Free Software is about principles.
The principles in question are that everyone should have the freedom to modify software so it does what they need it to do, rather than what the author of the software wanted it to do. This does often include freedom of expression, privacy, human rights and democracy as a side benefit, but they're not why I care about free software.
Wouter Verhelst
in reply to Wouter Verhelst • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to Wouter Verhelst • • •Wouter Verhelst
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •"I respectfully disagree with you, here's why" is absolutely not the same thing as "I'm apolitical", and it's rather arrogant (and, honestly, disgusting) of you to suggest otherwise.
*plonk*
Aral Balkan
in reply to Wouter Verhelst • • •Esther Payne
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •well FOSDEM pretty much demonstrated their values last year.
onepict.com/20250119-cobbles.h…
About that time they picked Jack Dorsey as a headliner.
onepict.com/20250122-mirror.ht…
I called for some transparency.
onepict.com/20250206-mirror.ht…
No Dorsey, Matrix got to talk instead. Oh and no transparency.
The Cobbles:Mirror Mirror
www.onepict.comAral Balkan reshared this.