I have only partially until now. But sadly it looks like we’re entering times where choices regarding activism will become more important and inevitable. The pool with get larger. Any kind of support: money, time, developing, participating, promoting, legal…
Yes I don’t support FOSS projects that aren’t willing to engage in activism. But I don’t shame them. That’s exactly the point of my post. Rather than shaming people or projects who’ve made a different choice, I think it’s best to find and focus on those who share one’s choice, for mutual support, discussion, and planning. It’s important to understand that FOSS and activism are two different things.
Regarding “pro human rights”, what I mean is that software development can be (for some) a form of activism for human rights, just like it happens in the arts and in science.
Agreed, there’s a whole spectrum. On my part I’d more properly say against giving too much power to corporations.
Well said. In fact there’s more than an ecosystem problem. We must understand that saying or using “FOSS” or “Linux” does not automatically mean to stand up for human rights, for the community, and against corporations. I’ve personally been under this gross misunderstanding, and I think other users might be too.
If we read the comments in current debates about FOSS, Linux, and age verification, we can see that many developers and possibly also users make statements like “the developer has no obligation towards the community”, “the law is the law, no matter what the community wants”, “we must comply”, and similar. It’s important to realize that many developers work on FOSS not out of consideration for the community or for human rights. For them it’s just one kind of software development. We may have projects that are FOSS and pro-corporations or pro-surveillance. The “F” in FOSS stands for freedom to modify and distribute the software by/to anyone in the community. But it doesn’t stand for “software that promotes / stands up for general human freedom” or human rights.
So for anyone who, like me, wants to use and promote software as an assertion of and a stand for human rights and against corporations, beyond the simple “software” aspects, it’s necessary not to stop at “FOSS” or “Linux” but apply more scrutiny and a more careful choice.
It is an ultimatum, nobody said it isn’t. So what? An ultimatum, just like an argument between people, can still be polite and respectful, as opposed to rude or threatening.
Here’s an example of a sentence that isn’t an ultimatum and is non-polite and non-respectful: “Go and read a dictionary and think with your own head, instead of babbling about LLM output”.
I was very confused about this too. But now I realize that’s not what “FOSS” means to everyone. There are developers that work with FOSS in the same way they could (or do) work for a corporation – note the many comments like “users don’t have any rights to make demands of developers”, “developers don’t owe anything to the users or to the ‘community’”, and similar comments. Luckily there are also developers for which “FOSS” does mean what it means to you and me.
Maybe there are other FOSS users that are under the same misunderstanding as I was. It should be made clear that “FOSS”, per se, really means nothing else than “not requiring payments” and “with source open to the public”. Any extra meanings depend on whom you’re speaking to.
Thank you. My initial thought was simply that we users should tell how we feel to the FOSS and Linux developers of the software that we use and are especially attached to; but we should do it in a polite way. I’ve now realized that “FOSS” does not have the connotations that I thought it had, like “community-oriented”, “inspired by human rights”, and similar. My bad, honestly. There clearly are developers for which working with FOSS is really not different than working in or for some corporation. But luckily there are also developers for which FOSS does have those extra meaning. What’s important for me now is to keep supporting the latter, and ignore or shun the former.
Yes, it’s polite, as opposed to rude. Go and check the meaning of “polite”. One for example says “She politely asked them to leave”.
I don’t think enough developers realize that the majority of users does not want this. They’re acting exactly like the legislators: “we don’t give a shit about what the people think”.
The legislators won’t take the Linux community seriously, because the developers aren’t taking the community seriously either.
I’m curious to see how it’ll develop.
I don’t think it’s unproductive at all. Positive changes and resistance to negative changes are caused by many, extremely different and complex factors, one of which is voiced discontent at all levels. It’s a chain of pressures. Some elements press on other elements which are not the final target, but this pressure makes them in turn exert even more pressure closer to the target. Edit: take for instance the Montgomery bus boycott – was the bus company responsible for the law? shouldn’t the black people have done the boycott then?
Without such internal pressures, positive changes may fail. History shows examples over and over (a good read is the historian Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence). I’m sure that if it wasn’t me posting stuff like this, it’d be someone else, and maybe sharing a much less polite post.
Also, I think that this kind of moderation ends up giving a very false picture on the forums, as if everyone discussing there doesn’t really mind about the topic.
I think developers can do something about it. They don’t want to, maybe for obvious reasons, and I respect their choice. But there is a choice.
If you visit, say, the website of the American Association of Physics Teachers or similar associations, you can read their complaints, protests, and alarming messages about cuts and bad policy changes in the education system. So clearly laws like these are not truly targeted at the well-being of children. Fu*king invest on education of children and adults instead.
We forget that there’s no just law, there’s also morality. And sometimes they are against each other. And we must make a choice.
I don’t live in California, but I was one of the many who wrote to EU parliament members against the chat-control law proposals, and participated in other local activities about that.
I’d be happy to write to the lawmakers in California. I suppose my email would immediately go into their spam folder.
No, because the Afghan woman doesn’t live in California…
Indeed! As I wrote in the post, these are just examples that explicitly mention age-verification.
No official decisions yet, although in a discussion thread I read developers basically saying “the law is the law”. This is why I politely wanted to let them know, as a KDE user, what’s my stance.
You’re absolutely right. And it’s the same group of people pushing for this in all these places.
💪 🤝