Meredith WhittakerApr 2, 2024

I keep brooding on the way the xz backdoor was enabled in significant part via weaponizing the FOSS culture of shitty behavior and abuse.

Yes, there're other pathologies at work here (the big tech capitalist pillaging of the commons, etc).

But what is striking is that the uncool, mean standards of FOSS conduct that many of us have decried for years, & that many defended as authentic, tough, etc., ended up not just being exclusionary loser behavior, but a significant attack surface.

Show threaddevnoname120Apr 21, 2024
@Mer__edith Could you expand on this? I'm struggling to understand what you mean with “mean standards of FOSS conduct” and how it actively enabled the xz backdoor fiasco to happen.
Show threadMeredith Whittaker
@devnoname120 there are many people providing a lot of additional context in the thread.
Apr 21, 2024 at 1:03pmWeb
Show threaddevnoname120Apr 25, 2024
@Mer__edith I read the whole thread and it's mostly vague statements taking “FOSS culture” (whatever this means) as a scapegoat, just like some people claim that capitalism is the root of *all* evils. The abusive behavior that you see is more indicative of human behavior than FOSS. You see the same thing happening in pretty much every associations, cooperatives, political initiatives, boy scouts, you name it. It's misguided to point fingers at FOSS as if it enabled worse behavior than elsewhere.