I don’t know if this is a sick burn (by a FOSDEM organiser spilling the truth about FOSDEM) or an own goal.
🤷♂️ https://pleroma.debian.social/objects/f49df30a-d65e-4195-833d-29b7481b3aba
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@aral well FOSDEM pretty much demonstrated their values last year.
https://www.onepict.com/20250119-cobbles.html
About that time they picked Jack Dorsey as a headliner.
https://www.onepict.com/20250122-mirror.html
I called for some transparency.
https://www.onepict.com/20250206-mirror.html
No Dorsey, Matrix got to talk instead. Oh and no transparency.
@aral 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.
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.
@aral Why do so many supposedly smart people think tech is not inherently political?
@aral Silly you! "F" in FOSDEM stands for "Open Source". 
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:
https://small-tech.org/about/#small-technology
#FOSDEM #openSource #freeSoftware #SmallTech #freedom #privacy #humanRights #democracy
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 there that.
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.
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?
@aral 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
@aral "Oh, my political project isn't political at all"
-white dudes everywhere
@aral It baffles me that people think there's any point to FOSS besides improving freedom/privacy/human rights/democracy.
They should fire that guy.
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