After spending years in it, I no longer believe in the #FOSS movement, or even *the* FOSS community. We use these terms to roughly handwave to 'certain people doing certain things', but without the level of organization or directional purpose that the words imply, there's no real meaning to it.

Now, I DO believe in FOSS, the software, adhering to the four freedoms. But it should be crafted by people who are able to sustain it, and by extension sustain themself with income where that is needed.

#foss
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

just small circles 🕊

@kurtz

My remark precedes 8 years of "commons janitoring", doing #community work and tech evangelism for decentralized open #SocialWeb, and humane technology advancement in general. And using that experience as input for applied research of grassroots social dynamics and the future of social networking. The #fediverse is the ideal 'field lab' for that 😀

It doesn't come out of the blue if you've followed my communication. There's a hopeful and positive path open to us.

discuss.coding.social/t/how-to…

in reply to just small circles 🕊

well it doesn't help when the OSI run an election for advisory board seats and hide the results after setting up roadblocks for candidates.

I think the OSD is only as good as the community trusts it to be.

What do you do when the Organisation that's meant to safeguard it breaks the definition and then hobbled the candidates pushing for reform?

chaos.social/@onepict/11435783…

in reply to Esther Payne

@onepict

My general critique to these kinds of institutions is that they are like wizard's towers and mystic shrines in the landscape that free software developers can take pilgrimage to.

FOSS is created within a commons, and ideally we find such organizations intrinsically embedded i.e. _part of_ the commons, and offer their services.

Instead their positioning is based on relationship networks and governance that work best in biz and gov settings. Some of them favor biz interests above all.

in reply to just small circles 🕊

Thanks for sharing! Something's unclear to me: are you proposing the use of a different set of licenses to those promoted by the FSF/Debian/OSI or just a different development lifecycle more in touch with the people who use the software? I assume it's the latter but seeing the word "sustainable" both here and in introductions to non-FOSS licenses like BUSL and SSPL made me wonder.
This entry was edited (8 months ago)