When you're talking about Linux, it's okay to say that it's "open source".
It's okay to say that it's "free software".
It's okay to call it "GNU/Linux", "Linux", or to mess up its name.
It's okay to refer to it as "the one with the friendly penguin".
Part of RMS' legacy has been an incessant obsession with terminology and pedantry, overshadowing far more important shared objectives which are fundamentally emancipatory in nature.
Pedantry is not activism; it is alienating, not emancipatory.
@eloquence Yeah, like, even setting aside just what exactly rms said about underage sex and exactly how should we be interpreting that, he's just *not a good leader*.
🇺🇸
@eloquence why be focused on activism, why not just making cool software that's Foss?
@jordan31 @eloquence To an extent, you're right kind of right. Deeds, not words. If you want more free software, just build it.
On the other hand, after you've done the deed, I think you should also talk about it so people know you had a particular political motive with that deed.
I wish the FSF had done more deeds. It should be the FSF Summer of Code, not GSoC. It should be FSFHub, not Github; FSF-OS not Android.
Under RMS's leadership, the FSF just has had many words and few deeds.
@JordiGH @eloquence see I never understood why it must have political stigma attached to it. Can't some just produce Foss software because they want others to see the code, help maintain, and feel like their giving back to a cool group of like minded people?
I can care less about peoples political motivation for a software, I'd rather know their road map.
I do agree about the FSF needing to push more deeds. They could help promote other programs or host their own.
@jordan31 Politics aren't a stigma. Everything is politics.
Politics are like accents: if you think someone doesn't have them, that's just because they have the same as yours.
@JordiGH no, not everything is political. I tend to steer away from software that is made "political" by the dev/owner. I could care less how you vote or your beliefs, I'm just needing an RSS reader.
Again, I'm not downloading a program to support someone else's political crap, I'm just in need of a open source version of xyz program.
@jordan31 That's a political stance. You're against software that cares about software freedom. You have a position. You don't want to be told that software should be free. You think that shouldn't be said. Those are your politics: be quiet, you don't want to hear it.
@JordiGH that's actually not a political stance. That's just me not caring about the devs political stance.
@jordan31 If you don't care, then we'll keep saying it and you'll still be happy.
Deal?
@JordiGH I don't think you got it but OK. I never said not to say it, I just could care less. People still talk all day long about Foss and their political ideas behind it. Be my guest. Up to me if I ignore it or use the software or simply unplug the internet and say FCK it.
@jordan31 Okay, we'll keep saying it. I'll keep saying it. We all deserve free software and we should have it and we should keep building it.
We should not need non-free software. We should not have a reason to use non-free software.
And I'll keep submitting patches or building free software whenever I can.
@jordan31 And of course you can ignore because you don't care. But if you don't care you can also hear me, because hey, it's the same to you. It's irrelevant what I say as long as I build software, right?
@JordiGH I think you fell off your rocker with this toot.
@jordan31 Sorry, I missed a word. "Of course you can ignore me because you don't care".
@tealturtle @JordiGH one opinion of one man, just like mine.
@JordiGH that's good, you should. Its how the system works and allows me to use foss that has less bugs.
politics, free software
@jordan31 @JordiGH The activist that invented RSS was killed because of his political view. RSS is not apolitical. It's imply a decentralised vision of the distribution of information. It seems you have a problem with the definition of political. Gnu licence is political, compagny owned program as well. having an open source version of a program is political
"Can't some just produce Foss software because they want others to see the code, help maintain, and feel like their giving back to a cool group of like minded people?"
What you just described is anti-capitalist. The very idea of collectively owned and maintained services is political by its anti-capitalist nature. If you work on FOSS then you're doing anti-capitalist praxis whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.
"Can't some just produce [product or service] because they want others to [use product or service], help maintain, and feel like their giving back to a cool group of like minded people?"
That's communism baby!
@astonedape @JordiGH @eloquence not really.
So the only way to be safe would be to explain all politics all the time. That's tiresome for all involved and it likely means that people will focus on the differences, forming social bubbles and reducing cooperation.
Meanwhile proprietary software continues to be built without that friction because enterprises can paper over smaller (and even larger) political differences by establishing a "don't ask, don't tell" framework for politics, because they want to get shit done, and they pay enough to make people follow that policy.
@patrick Oh, proprietary software has plenty of politics: it's okay to spy on people, it's okay to control people via software, we need more ads and more data collection from people, shut up and do what the people with money tell you to do, you don't wanna starve, do you?
These are political positions too.
Politics are just opinions about how we should organise our society.
@patrick Btw, been meaning to say: I really love your sheep avatar.
@patrick @JordiGH @eloquence the don't ask don't tell and getting stuff done sounds more appealing and productive at this point.
@patrick @JordiGH @eloquence @jordan31@theres.life omg is this sqlite thing real or an april fools?
@robey @patrick @eloquence It's real, the lead dev really is religious.
@JordiGH @robey @patrick @eloquence it was in response to calla for sqlite to have a code of conduct. i don’t know whether this part is true, but what he claomed was that since he’s the only developer, having a code of conduct was kind of absurd. so he put up a statement about how he conducts himself.
@JordiGH @robey @patrick @eloquence i have since noticed there may be other developers?
it was borderline- since codes of condict are a good idea, it was read by some to be mocking the idea of codes of conduct. but i don’t think that was the intent
Apparently they drafted it in response to checkbox items in contract material that asked "what CoC are you using?"
"Everything is political" quickly leads to demanding that people discuss matters that they wouldn't discuss otherwise and then not liking their answer (maybe merely because it's unusually phrased as in the CoE, which is why the reaction to it became my go-to example for the problem).
It's a divisive philosophy and I'm not sure Free Software can afford balkanizing its ecosystem that way.
And just for clarification, somebody who just won't shut up about their controversial beliefs despite being told that they make people uncomfortable is an entirely different situation ("push" vs. "pull" information flow):
Pushing an agenda because "they're right", with no regard if that makes others within a group uncomfortable, poisons a community and there needs to be a way to evict such people - even if they have a claim to fame from 40 years ago.
@patrick @robey @JordiGH @eloquence it’s precisely that situation that a code of conduct is for- and it’s certainly not some weird trend in software, codes of conduct are standard in pretty much all other industries, if anything it’s software that’s weird for thinking it doesn’t need them.
it’s like a contract- it doesn’t really matter what’s in it, so long as everyone understands up front what they are agreeing to. leaving things unstated and assumed leads to problems worse than balkinising.
@patrick @robey @JordiGH @eloquence and its situations like the fsf, and ICE’s use of software against its author’s wishes, and lots of other unintended consequences of the concept of free software that has led to a reckoning. we shouldn’t treat foss as an infallible good, like it’s a cult. it has failed us and we should question it, absolutely. stating all political agendas up front is part of that.
In the industry (no matter the field) the purpose is to clarify "what's your handbook for dealing with bad situations?" We seem to agree on that, given your last paragraph.
The CoE explains that pretty well and yet it created a shitstorm - by the way, that's something you won't get in the industry: your contract might fall through, but your would-be contract partner won't put up a NYTimes ad "they have a weird CoC so they are horrible people."
The motivation looks _very_ different to me and the catch phrase for that motivation seems to be "everything is politics".
In the industry they doesn't care about "politics", they care about being able to work together. Preparing for the worst (that's why contracts are longer than "you do X, we do Y"), but still, work together.
@patrick @robey @JordiGH @eloquence if industry doesn’t care about politics then surely they don’t need all those lobbyists?
@patrick @robey @JordiGH @eloquence a contract might fall through, but at least your employees won’t hire a fleet of paid PR “employees” to slander the concept of trade unions?
@patrick @robey @JordiGH @eloquence everything *is* politics, and i really don’t understand what you are getting at, other than just objecting to a kind of politics *you* don’t like.
(digging a bit because this is such a worn out phrase that I wonder if it comes from some rhetorics course)
@patrick @robey @JordiGH @eloquence i am really not sure, about even whether we are arguing woth each other or just talking about a subject in vague agreement. as a guess, maybe you are worried that pushy people vocal about their politics will discourage cooperation in the free software realm? i think i see the phenomenon you’re describing but see it more as a reaction to uh, monstrously abusive figures in the free software realm that have been tolerated so far using excuses like that
@patrick @robey @JordiGH @eloquence a thing i have gradually learned is that we really don’t know what happens behind closed doors that might lead to ads in the new york times. it’s not fair to assume that what is publically known is all there is to know
@patrick @robey @JordiGH @eloquence also, is the nyt reference to something specific? i’m not sure what that is
@patrick @robey @JordiGH @eloquence if i am gay, or black or jewish or trans, i would certainly want to know up front whether or not the founder believes i deserve to exist or be treated as a full equal human being. it’s the privilege of the favoured class of people to not need to worry about the politics of an organisation. for everyone else it’s a matter of survival.
@patrick @robey @JordiGH @eloquence twitter’s gonna twitter. it’s a ahame that the medium encourages that viral knee jerk reactionary shit, but i am pretty suspicious of any claim that it represents a coherent group of people, or a movement, or some kind of scary phenomenon. i thought everyone just overreacted to a misunderstanding. in their defense, sqlite guy is not a skilled PR person, which is normally what it takes to avoid these sorts of issues.
But yeah, that "don't care about politics" was meant in the context of parties working together, I should have been clearer about that.
Trivial and rather stupid example: Fanboys tend to be stupified if their love-brand and their hate-brand cooperate even though they imagine that there must be some undying hate between the workforces of the companies behind them.
@patrick stupid people
say stupid things, and nothing brings out the stupid like communication mediums with extremely low barriers to entry, no cooldown periods, forced brevity, and features that encourage the deletion of context
@patrick @JordiGH @zens @eloquence i think you might be making the same mistake as the sqlite people in this case: a code of "conduct" is different from a code of "ethics". COE is what they believe inside. COC is a statement of expected behavior. it prevents misunderstandings about someone's actions.
if i ask a project for its COC and they tell me they worship the pangolin gods of venus, i'm going to very naturally be concerned. :)
An earlier version of the CoC document (https://www.sqlite.org/docsrc/file?name=pages/codeofconduct.in&ci=af1ee4516a565747) contained the following paragraph: "However, comments posted on mailing lists or forums are expected to be courteous and professional, and should be worded as if they were written by someone who is a follower of this rule. [...] Violators brought to the attention of the project leader will be reproved, gently at first but with increasing urgency, and may ultimately be banned if the behavior is not amended." (note: it doesn't ask people to "follow The Rule", just to behave in the community in a way compatible to it)
Isn't that the missing link from "professional" CoCs which provides a pledge to honor the company manual in interactions with another company to a "community" CoC that deals with an unbounded set of people interacting together by demanding CoC adherence on everybody "Terms of Services"-style?
@patrick @JordiGH @zens @eloquence the paragraph you quoted would -- to me -- suffice as a perfectly fine CoC on its own. it's a good example of the form. it declares expected behavior and how they handle violations: the very definition of a CoC.
i can't comment on the rest of it because i couldn't even make it past 3 items on their cult declaration page before i closed the tab.
(i don't understand your "company manual" paragraph but i haven't really been following the thread)
@JordiGH @jordan31 @eloquence For what it’s worth, they’ve been looking to host a modern forge since not very long ago. Not sure if they’ve got enough money to pay hundreds of students for coding every year though… and same for phones, really; it’s hard for me to assess what the FSF could or could not have achieved in that field, but the efforts of Canonical, OpenMoko, Purism and KDE leave me with some doubts.
@jordan31 @eloquence free software is inherently political
freedom is a political goal, not a technical one
@romariorios @eloquence pls block me
@jordan31 @eloquence wow no need to get so political
@eloquence "I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as misogyny, racism and other bigotry is in fact GNU/misogyny, racism and other bigotry - or, as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus misogyny, racism and other bigotry." https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1376745698692001801