Aral BalkanFeb 2, 2018

I want to make one thing very clear regarding #fosdem2018 #fosdem

A conference on freedom-and-human-rights-respecting technology should not have a titan of #SurveillanceCapitalism like Google as sponsor. The good people in our community shouldn’t have to choose between having a platform to meet up at and having their legitimacy usurped by association to whitewash such companies. I’m attending under protest to meet and chat to some lovely members of the community.

Google doesn’t belong there.

Show threadJean-Baptiste
@aral
Friday troll? We often want offender to pay for damages, if there is nothing in return, it's totally fair.
Feb 2, 2018 at 4:39pmWeb
Show threadAral BalkanFeb 3, 2018
@jibec Being listed as a primary sponsor is a position of prestige, not punishment. (If this is really how #FOSDEM sees it, please just copy the text of your toot to the sponsors page next to Google’s logo in parenthesis (“We often want offender to pay damages”) and I won’t have a problem with the association at all at that point. Otherwise, if FOSDEM has any legitimacy in privacy/human rights it’s the equivalent of Greenpeace being sponsored by Exxon Mobil. i.e., whitewashing
Show threadJean-BaptisteFeb 3, 2018

@aral
"FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate". There is nothing about privacy or human rights. https://fosdem.org/2018/about/

I fight google everyday by contributing @yunohost and #selfhosting but it still is OK to have google as sponsor for fosdem, even if imperfect.

FOSDEM 2018 - About FOSDEM

Show threadAral BalkanFeb 3, 2018
@jibec @yunohost Interesting, this is the first I’m hearing that Free Software/Libré has nothing to do with human rights/privacy (pretty sure Richard would be surprised to learn this too). I know open source doesn’t but FOSDEM styles itself as more than “open source”. I guess they’re not so I was confused by the discrepancy between what they say they are and what they actually are.
Show threadMMN-o ✅⃠Feb 3, 2018
@aral The whole point is that if the software is libre, the power is among the commons to use it for good (or bad). The underlying requirement for an open, democratic society is transparency, so in that sense libre software is a requirement. But also - considering it _is_ free/libre - there is nothing contradicting per say in the use of !fs for surveillance, military projects etc.
Show thread͞ᴀ̶ʟ͘ʟ͏ ̛ʜ͞ᴇ̡ᴄ͢ᴋ̨Feb 3, 2018

@mmn @aral And some people write articles with title like « Stop trying to make Libre Software a political topic » - because they don't care : for them, libre software is just "the best way to make software" in the technical sense.

In fact the whole "ethical technology" thing is very different (though related) than just libre software and we have very few semantic tools / words to properly talk about it...

Show threadAdrian CochraneFeb 3, 2018

@aral @jibec @yunohost Yeah, Stallman regularly says in his speaches that:

a) The Four Freedoms are vital for supporting our other human rights in the digital age.
b) And before you can trust your privacy to some software, it must respect the Four Freedoms.
c) But licensing restrictions aren't the right tool to prevent the powerful for misusing FS for surveillance, etc.

But he might not be surprised FOSS doesn't maintain these principles to the same extent.