Comment on Facebook flags Linux topics as 'cybersecurity threats' — posts and users being blocked

• millie@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I’m curious how this approach is meant to achieve solidarity. Can you elaborate on your thinking?

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  • SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It was more of a call out to people that only care about foss and nothing else, a challenge.

    I in general do not think most of the foss community is good because they have shown themselves time and time again to be overly protective of it and themselves in opposition to what most people actually need from software or other things.

    It has some very worrying views politically which likely stem from abusers like stallman and that we live under such a myopic, self centered system such as capitalism and so this leads people to have a very blinkered view on what is important, often times, sadly foss obsessives are smug know-it-alls who tell you that if you don’t like it then just fork it or to go back to windows etc, instead of actually being helpful. Not to mention many of them have very bigoted views.

    They do not see that foss could be more liberatory if they actually pulled their heads out of their ego and a took a more community based approach. I get that some are like this and I am grateful, but I’ve been told many times no without any justification given or given bizzare workarounds that do not actually fix the problem and so had to basically abandon the software they claim is good because it no longer works for its supposed purpose.

    Part of the problem with it is that we all live in a system where the developers need money to live and so will refuse point blank to help if they are not paid which sadly leads to them mostly supporting companies and not what people say foss is actually useful for: the common person. So it is as subject to them whims of capitalism as anything else but people like to pretend it is not for some reason.

    People do need to eat and so it is good if they are paid, but I wonder how many people actually do so and how much developers care if they do unless they are getting the big bucks from them somehow.

    The point therefore is that foss on its own is not as liberatory as people seem to think it is and it is more that people who only care about foss this was directed at.

    I use linux and other foss things daily, but I do not think they are as good as they could be because they are actively hostile to people’s needs and to devs too (see the kernel rust incident), this is why I find it a bit silly to care about linux compared to other things, but if people do care about both then that is good.

    Also sadly, having more people in the community with more diverse needs does not inherently shift many developers and they double down more, so I did not think having facebook censor it was neither here nor there as to whether foss was or could be good or not.

    I do understand now that maybe that was presumptious of me but for other reasons unrelated to linux and foss itself and more to the discussions people might have and how much those are allowed or not.

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    • irvinefantasyno@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Thank you for explaining! While I didn’t like your initial comment, you definitely brought up some excellent points. I also agree that the FOSS community can be more welcoming.

      And it’s been great running into you around here. Hi!

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      • SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Sure! Glad to have explained and hopefully helped. I thought I had better after people called me out for something I didn’t exactly mean and possibly things I did but was incorrect about.

        Yeah! Nice to run into you too around here! How’s it treating you? If you’d like to say, that is.

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    • millie@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I definitely agree that there are problems with some FOSS enthusiasts, but I don’t think it’s constructive to paint FOSS and FOSS enthusiasts as a whole based on their actions. To me, responding to problems involving diminishing the visibility of Linux and FOSS with “but why don’t you care about x” isn’t particularly constructive, and does little more than drive a wedge between people who think FOSS is a priority (but not their only priority) and people who place FOSS as a lower priority but who are otherwise natural allies.

      In particular, the casting of open source devs focusing on what their own creative impulses drive them to make as ‘authoritarian’ is itself an attempt at authoritarian imposition. To take one’s own time out of one’s own day to code something is an act of creativity. FOSS is, by nature, less inclined to operate on a top-down model than corporate software development.

      What you’re asking for isn’t a less hierarchical structure, it’s a more hierarchical structure. As it stands, open source devs create what they feel is best and you are, as they say, absolutely welcome to fork it. There’s nothing authoritarian about that. They’ve put their time in to create what they see the need for, and you literally are able to either go code additions you want to see yourself, roll back to earlier versions, or even hire someone to make it for you. You are not free to demand that they create what you want to see.

      That isn’t them holding an authoritarian model over end-users, that’s them graciously handing out their hard work, their mental energy, indeed even their spoons, to the rest of us. The only authoritarian part of the conversation between end users making demands of developers and developers focusing on what they choose to spend their time on is the attempted authoritarian demands of end-users.

      This is work that they literally give out for free. Not just the end product, but the source. If there’s a feature you want, you literally are welcome to add it. That is not the case with closed-source software. In fact, if you attempt to modify closed-source software and redistribute it, there’s a significant chance that you’ll end up with a lawsuit or at least a DMCA take-down notice on your hands.

      Stallman is a creep. 100%. There are other creeps who code. 100%. But there are also all sorts of other people, including members of marginalized groups, who code. For some of them coding is something that helps them feel okay. For others it’s something that takes up a lot of the energy that they have. It is completely unfair to demand that they code what you want the way you want when you’re unwilling to do that yourself.

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