I woke up to a comment so smug, so perfectly soaked in gatekeeping and faux-righteous posturing, it earned its own blog post.
You want freedom? You want GNU/Linux to mean something?
Then maybe start by not telling disabled users to go fuck themselves with a smile.
This commenter thought they were defending "software freedom." What they were really doing was kicking people out of the room. Dismissing accessibility. Mocking effort. Pretending that cruelty is some kind of rite of passage. They quoted Stallman like it was scripture, ignored real-world experience like it was noise, and wrapped it all in condescension dressed as virtue.
I’ve spent over a decade in this ecosystem. Writing patches. Rebuilding broken stacks. Helping blind users boot systems upstream doesn’t even test. I didn’t "just install Arch and whine about the terminal." I lived in it. I survived it. I held it together when maintainers disappeared and no one else gave a damn.
But apparently, because I didn’t call it GNU/Linux™ and because I dared to talk about how this OS chews people up and spits them out, I’m lazy. I’m weak. I should "get a dog."
So I wrote a response. Line by line. No mercy. No euphemisms.
This isn’t just about one comment. This is about every time someone’s been told they don’t belong because they couldn’t learn fast enough, code well enough, or survive long enough. It’s about everyone who was pushed out while the gatekeepers patted themselves on the back for "preserving the spirit of free software."
You want a free system? Start by making it livable. Because freedom that demands you crawl bleeding through a broken bootloader isn’t freedom. It’s abandonment dressed in ideology.
And if this kind of gatekeeping is your idea of community?
You can keep it.
https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/you-dont-own-the-word-freedom-a-full-burn-response-to-the-gnulinux-comment-that-tried-to-gatekeep-me-off-my-own-machine/
#Linux #GNU #FOSS #Accessibility #BlindTech #FreeSoftware #Gatekeeping #DisabilityInTech #OpenSource #Orca #ScreenReaders #ArchLinux #BurnItDown #blogpost