2024-08-08 - Rambling About FLOSS
The State of The "Open Source Community" is... In a bad place... Instead of the organisations doing their jobs - which is providing developers with the opportunity, infrastructure and resources to develop software - they focus on things that are wholely outside of that scope.
At the end I talk about a problem in the GNOME project, about a bully.
Introduction
Software development is not easy. It requiers many things that are not always in the grasp on ordinary developers. It requiers infrastructure to host code, and bug-trackers (or even mailing lists), lest we devolve it to chain e-mails.
GitHub is sort of a default home for many projects now, but it is not very reliable with the current sate of the site focusing on AI. (Stealing code from users, and laundering them through LLMs [end-of-creativity] .) So that has become less appealing to many. And GitLabs public instance is perhaps better in that regard, but some organisations need things "in-house" so to say, so they set up their own servers for different things like source-control, bug trackers, CI [CI] and herhaps chat-services.
Not to mention it is legaly better for an organisation owning it's own infrastructer. Thus the need for these organisations is real, and not something we can just ignore.
The Lunduke Question
Before we contitue, I'd like to adress the elephant on the roof: Hello, can you hear me, Elephant sir!? Down here! Yes, me! I think you should get down from there, it's not safe..!
With that out of the way lets talk about Lunduke... As you can see I have linked many
articels from Brian Bryan Lundukes blog. The reason for this is because he is often the
only one who ever talks about some topics.
Is Lunduke a good journalist? As far as I know he does not have any journalistic education at all(?).
Would I agree with Lundukes personal politics? Probobly not. He has said that he is a conservative, and I would probobly end up having fisticuffs with him if we ever ended up having to debate politics with him, IRL.
Organisations not Doing Their Jobs.
As stated above, the FLOSS organisations are doing things that are outside of the scope of what they should be doing. They are spending less on actual development and giving money to developers to work on things, and instead do things like "outreach" Which has not always had the desierd effect to bring people onboard with helping out with development. (These different programs will have to be evaluated, and those that have low returns [read: those that does not bring people into the project as developers] should be cut.)
Or worse, only spending a fraction of the money they get in on actual development, and intead invests in things that are activly harmful to the project - like AI [lunduke-linux-sepnding] .
We Are Not Your Personal Army!
... or politics, belifes, and introperonal relations should not taint this space.
FLOSS is in a sense political, but it is not a left-or-right-up-or-down kind of political. So then what belifes you have, that are outside that narrow political view, should be discussed somewhere else.
I am a very left-leaning person (I vote Green or SocDem), even I see that my politics should not be in the discussion of what it takes to be a developer for a project. That is a discussion that does not have any merrit in the context of what contitutes good software. The "code of conduct" should not have any language that dictates what political or religious belifes you should have.
Filtering people because they have a differing view on something that is outside the scope of software development is not good; it will filter out many people that have, or can contribute time to the project. You will lose precious developers, and the precious time they can contibute.
There was some projects that threw out prominant developers for not wanting to pleadge alligiance to Trans Rights [lunduke-nazi-purge], to me this is insanity; Why would that ever be part of the discussion of software!? How does one persons personal belifes impact the code they write!?
I am mostly an outsider to the development side, but I care about having software being written. That's it. I care about code, I care about developers doing development.
That being said, I do not think calling people Nazis for not wating to say they are pro-trans (which is not the same as anti-trans) is a good thing. Forcing people to say things they do not agree with makes you look like a bloody wanker, to be frank; You are someone who needs a proverbial pineapple stuck up your arse.
We should not even be talking about these things to begin with, as it has no impact this-or-that way what your belifes are on how the code runs or what it does.
Figurehead - Developer - Bully
Emmanuele "embassi" Bassi is often seen as a sort of figurehead of the GNOME project. As an engineer and developer, he is excellent. As a community head... He is not.
It seems that the whole CoC[CoC] inforcement in the GNOME project is all about what Bassi belives. It's his personal belifes that that are the be-it-and-end-all. He makes unveiled threats to people who dare critisise the Board of Directors or the Code of Conduct must be banned (it feels like he's sayin "you will regret it!" or "do not critisise, or else!") [embassi-threats]!
This in unacceptable behaviour, in my opinion. Not even being able to question the leadership is insane. You do not threaten people. You should not behave like this if you are in a possition like that.
Perhaps mister Bassi is being forced to say these things? Who know?
In my honest opinion, mister Bassi should step down from his high horse, and his position as the figurehead of the GNOME project.
embassi... If you ever read this, know that I do not dislike you personaly, I do not know you, you seem like a nice person, but you need to behave better to others in the community. Threatening people is not very poggers, as the kids would say. Go out and touch some grass, mayhaps. Read a book to relax? Get some other perspectives? I don't know... I'm not one to talk... As what I suggested is just me throwing briks in a glass house.
Be kind...
Regards,
Gustav.
Footnotes
- [end-of-creativity]
- 2024-03-10-rambling-about-the-end-of-creativity.html
- [CI]
- Continues Integration
- [lunduke-linux-spending]
- https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4408159/linux-foundation-decreased-linux-spending-to-3-2-in-2022
- [lunduke-nazi-purge]
- https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5819317/nixos-commits-a-purge-of-nazi-contributors-forces-abdication-of-founder
- [CoC]
- Code of Conduct
- [embassi-threats]
- https://discourse.gnome.org/t/one-simple-lifehack-to-get-banned-from-gnomes-discourse/22301/4