Search results for tag #foss
Same pattern of behaviour has been seen in Wayland development where arguments result in the perpetual bikeshedding of protocols. It had got to the point where Valve had threatened to start their own development platform Frog Protocols that rAn concurrently to main Wayland development. Only at that point was a concession made.
It seems like GNOME, FreeDesktop.org and Red Hat always end up the common denominators.
Tags: #FOSS, #Leadership, #FreeSoftware, #Disturbing, #OpenSource.
Tags: #FOSS, #Leadership, #FreeSoftware, #Disturbing, #OpenSource.
(4/4)…being a #FOSS leader isn't a *right*, it's a privilege. Everyone loves when ppl listen to them & promote their work, but no one has a *right* to it.
With a privilege come obligations to your community, & #leadership is such a powerful #privilege that there are grave requirements.
I am frustrated *weekly* that I'm held to a higher standard than most people in #FreeSoftware.
But that's the price I *should* to pay.
I wish some other #OpenSource leaders would start paying their fair share.
(3/4)…Poor #FOSS leaders use their formidable skills to deflect, manipulate, & post-hoc justify bad behavior or errors. This is meta-toxic behavior & we should no longer tolerate it.
I calculate that I have spent at least 1,500 hours in therapy (group & individual), & at least 100 more reading psychology books. I had to do this b/c I suffer from CPTSD, but that was (weirdly) *lucky*, as I had no choice but constant self-questioning & analysis. …
(Slightly OT, but watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCvmsMzlF7o )
(2/4)…all #FOSS leaders are high functioning, intelligent, & politically capable. Sadly, many #OpenSource leaders apply that skill to dodge accountability when they've erred.
Leaders aren't gods; they're humans like us. Thus, they're are extremely flawed and have well-known cognitive biases (most notably on this point, self-serving bias). Humans say horrible things to each other in anger. They fail at some their endeavors.
Good leaders own such occurrences, apologize, & fix it…
(1/4) A #disturbing trend I observed over the last 30 years in leadership (speaking primarily of #FOSS #leadership) is a slow but steady tendency as leaders get more powerful, they become increasingly unwilling to admit they've erred. I've observed this both with prior generation of #FreeSoftware leadership (eg: Moglen, Raymond, Rosen, Stallman), & with FOSS leaders contemporary to me (eg: Behlendorf, Dolan, Torvalds, Zemlin). …
(This is 4 posts long; reply here to help threading.)
😲 … 👀 at this essay from @jcolag. John is doing something that I really think makes #FOSS great: exploring incomplete philosophical, political, and/or policy ideas in public.
Strive to be comfortable with the stream of consciousness ramble and consider the ideas that John is exploring:
There are real insights about how errors in #SoftwareFreedom leadership left the #FreeCulture movement w/out its natural allies. Fascinating!
I look forward to next installment.
https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2026/07/12/free-culture-creators-1.html
I've helped #FOSS projects rebrand, and worked with NGOs that considered rebrands.
#Apache [sic] Software Foundation is not exaggerating the financial cost being somewhat steep. I'd estimate they'd need to spend about $100k over a period of many years to successful rebrand to another word that begins with 'A'.
The 3 year wait would have been reasonable, *if* #ASF came back with a plan for full rebrand, a clear timeline, and a fundraising pricetag.
Cc: @wwahammy
I agree with @wwahammy that there are a lot more steps #Apache [sic] Software Foundation could easily take, & those steps would indeed make the problem that @zacchiro speculated might exist easier to solve in the long term.
But I'm still trying to figure out what this problem (that they believe they have) could possibly be. If it's what Zack described, that is so straightforwardly solved —especially with help from other #FOSS NGOs. (I'm confident such help would be gladly offered.)
#FSFE today celebrates their 25ᵗʰ year at their annual meeting in Kraków, Poland: https://fsfe.org/about/summermeeting-schedule.en.html (it's a side event to #EuroPython ).
@kirschner (FSFE President) kindly personally invited me to be there, but sadly due to a transient medical issue, I couldn't make the long trip this week to the event.
Some might not know that the FSF Europe is *not* the #FSF; FSFE is an entirely different organization. FSFE has been doing great work the last 10 years!
I got a response off-Fedi from someone of authority at #Apache [sic] Software Foundation.
The answer remains (as seen on https://news.apache.org/foundation/entry/introducing-the-asfs-new-logo ):
> “For security concerns and continuity of the software ecosystem, ASF Projects will continue using their established names”.
Can someone ELI5 what that means? It makes no sense to me (based on my own #FOSS NGO experience), but it's stated so definitively, I gotta check that I'm not missing something.
😠🤬🧑💻
Tell me why oh why oh why oh that all programmers everywhere did not have a meeting decades ago and decided clearly between `elif`, `elseif`, and `elsif` as the universal standard to handle the dangling else ambiguity in context-free grammars!?!?!?!?!
#ContextMatters #DanglingElse #CFG #ContextFree #elif #elsif #elseif #programming #hacking #FOSS #OpenSource #FreeSoftware
Folks here might be interested in this post I just made to the copyleft-@next mailing list — covering many issues including:
* Do we still need weak #copyleft at all?
* How do we deal with companies who use strong copyleft as a bait-and-switch?
* The so-called¹ “FOSS sustainability” problem.
https://lists.copyleft.org/pipermail/next/2026q3/000091.html
¹ In the age of #LLM-gen-AI, ppl still use the word “sustainable” to refer to #FOSS developers not getting paid enough is #disturbing.
If a casual chat about #Linux and #FOSS over a curry sounds fun, please come join us! Just reply to me by the end of 21 January so I know numbers for the booking.
Time: 24 Jan, 19:00
Address:
Kings Cross Tandoori
341 Gray’s Inn Road
WC1X 8PX
Hope to see you there, and any questions feel free to ask.
Over next 1-2 weeks,I'd appreciate an extended thread re: #FrameworkLaptop, #mntreform, & #FOSS.
TL;DR on my idiosyncratic needs:
* minimize binary firmware blobs¹
* Having 2 disks in RAID-1²
* Runs stock Official #Debian stable³
* Understanding best current replacement keyboard options⁴
* Form factor that works for my travel needs.
Is @frameworkcomputer or @mntmn better for me?
I'd be glad if ∃ active engagement on this!