One of the best quotes ever is "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." I didn't look into who said it, but it is attributed (or otherwise, misattributed) to Eleanor Roosevelt.
"We don't give ideas enough due, particularly ideas that could help us like never before."Marketers typically encourage us to disengage from the context of ideas, and treat them superficially, so they can keep those ideas in a setting they dictate themselves. This is classic manipulation, and more people should learn about the dirty deeds of marketing and propaganda. Doing this changes your world.
Although the first quote is true, we are encouraged as a society (and probably as a function of our own nature, even if it's also our nature to try to transcend this thing) to focus on the person rather than the idea. Sometimes this is useful, I think more often it's to our detriment. As a result, people attack Stallman's Free software ideas by attacking Stallman. To make it more effective, they use lies and then backpedal from there, working their way backwards from a damaging conclusion to whatever people will buy. We end up defending Stallman because the attack was unfair.
Nonetheless, there are many ideas that will make us a more advanced and (just as importantly) a more free society. Those ideas are under attack, and if you read this article as an autobiography (I am after all, going to talk about myself) and miss the ideas, then we both will have failed the points I want to make. I do stand for my ideas, but I care more about them than what you think of me personally. If you forget about me, I hope the ideas will still inspire you. Most of them are not really mine anyway. I have generally borrowed them from various places and tried to build them up. Lawrence Lessig, regarding Creative Commons, made a similar statement -- that he got many of his ideas from Stallman. In the same video, he pointed to the Free software Award in his office.
"Marketers typically encourage us to disengage from the context of ideas, and treat them superficially, so they can keep those ideas in a setting they dictate themselves. This is classic manipulation, and more people should learn about the dirty deeds of marketing and propaganda. Doing this changes your world."If we don't stand up for Stallman now, then in the future they will do the same to us when we carry his ideas. If we let them dishonestly and unfairly smear him, then we let them erode everything he worked for -- that undermines what we do. If Stallman really was a bad person, we could still use the good ideas and condemn the man. There are people making that argument. However, the argument doesn't work if we are talking about a good person. Even good people have faults, and Stallman certainly is a good person, with faults. We can't let good, even great people be turned dishonestly into bad people. It still weakens us (as would pretending he is great if he weren't.) It's more important to find the truth than to punish people, otherwise we do ill to those who are good. We do of course, want to discourage doing evil in some way.
As fictional former tech evangelist Ted MacReilly, I said in June some words that are even more true today:
"Fortunately, Stallman and his followers are tightly-knit in their ideology. Attacking any of them is like attacking all of them– we can play up their hacker style as social ineptitude, their adherence (where it exists) to standards and interoperability as a refusal to evolve, their playful culture as a refusal to grow up and be professional, and their self-reliance and independence as being non-team-players and even toxic masculinity."
"Their hacker philosophy is about putting certain values first– just as we use new features to get people to accept new flaws that we can promise to fix later (and then say that we have a greater commitment to security) and use open source to bring people to our exclusive software lines, we can use their values to steer the next generation of customers (and critics) towards a more corporate culture."
"Any social values that we are saddled with keeping up appearances about in the workplace, we can instill through open source and then claim the rest are not putting enough emphasis on. Of course, some of these values are good values in and of themselves. But as much as we have 'social value theater' in the workplace and have to play along, we can dump the same corporate culture onto anyone who will call it professionalism, and then say everyone else is just unprofessional and toxic."
"I wanted to remind people that the Halloween documents are as true today (even more true) than they were in the late 1990s.""In the short run we can use this against Stallman and his organization, but in the long run we can even use this to shackle Linus and gradually push him out the door. In our culture, it doesn’t pay to be eccentric except when it makes us billions– get with the program or get out. A leader that isn’t making us money is a leader who has let us down, and we need to get rid of them as quickly as possible."
Why did I create Ted MacReilly? (a recent tweet from Perens should make it obvious why this name was chosen) I wanted to remind people that the Halloween documents are as true today (even more true) than they were in the late 1990s. I wanted to synthesise everything I spent years learning about corporate tactics (and the dark side of "open source") Because open source was taken over and used as a weapon against Free software. You can't teach Defense Against the Dark Arts without talking about them. I helped write the FSF Titanic series as an update to my "Church of Emacs 2.0" work, and an answer to the problems in the handbook. This was just before it became a lot more apparent that the handbook wasn't just old news.
When I first fell in love with Free software, I took the "open" side of it. Why? Torvalds had a certain outward charm, a certain "coolness" and open source seemed, well -- more "open." It certainly claimed to be! But as with a few things I've found in my life, the veneer of being "more reasonable" is often a false one.
You can find plenty of examples of that today, with people drumming out our pioneers in the name of inclusion. Read about Pol Pot -- what he did to Cambodia is not unlike what corporations are asking us to do to our own visionaries. It is so venomously, cynically (and supposedly) anti-elitist that it goes after any good person with accomplishments. But it mostly goes after low-hanging fruit, after Martha Stewart but not Kenneth Lay. If Stallman were guilty of even half as much as Gates, they would still go after Stallman and Gates would be "the enemy of my enemy, thus my friend."
"You can find plenty of examples of that today, with people drumming out our pioneers in the name of inclusion. Read about Pol Pot -- what he did to Cambodia is not unlike what corporations are asking us to do to our own visionaries."When I fall in love with a topic, I try to learn more and more and more until I'm sated, which can take years or longer. I fell in love with computers as a kid, that love still isn't sated. Computers are not the only love I've had, either; I was once married, and if things go my way, I will marry again.
But my love of Free software, which I used to call "open source" -- made me interested in getting to know everything about the subject. I was conditioned, early on to think of Stallman as an unreasonable person, as a has-been, as a zealot. These are not uncommon attacks when they go after someone who has ideals of any kind, but the more I learned about Stallman the more I knew that most of these characterisations were wrong and about justifying disagreements in a one-sided, dishonest way.
I realised years ago that "open source" wasn't as "open" as they claimed. They used to talk like open source let you say much more than Free software did -- and on a certain superficial level I still get what they meant. They meant you weren't encouraged to avoid promoting non-free software. The "openness" didn't go both ways however:
"Raising ethical issues such as freedom, talking about responsibilities as well as convenience, is asking people to think about things they might prefer to ignore, such as whether their conduct is ethical. This can trigger discomfort, and some people may simply close their minds to it. It does not follow that we ought to stop talking about these issues.
"That is, however, what the leaders of open source decided to do."
Ultimately if I wanted to talk about non-free software, open source was okay with that. But any time I wanted to talk about the abuses of Microsoft (as Eric Raymond did before they got him to remove the Halloween document from the OSI website) or the ethical (or even "practical") problems of non-free software, these problems were treated as taboo, and I was quickly put in my place. "Open" isn't more free, and the last straw was watching them rewrite history to make themselves out to be the sole "help" in all this.
"That's the GNU operating system you've got there, wearing nose glasses and a cheap business suit. And it wasn't created to run a software that gives Microsoft access to your webcam even if you can technically use it for that purpose."Free software was co-opted (even Perens said this in 1999) and I've devoted years to showing how it happened. That's the GNU operating system you've got there, wearing nose glasses and a cheap business suit. And it wasn't created to run a software that gives Microsoft access to your webcam even if you can technically use it for that purpose. (Nor should it technically restrict you from doing so, and indeed it doesn't.)
Two of the biggest, silliest fallacies in open source are that Free software "tells you what to do" and that the word "free" is ambiguous. This is designed to make open source sound more reasonable, though in a way that relies on a very deliberate misunderstanding (propaganda.) "Free" has two meanings, though today "Open" is attached to everything and far more ambiguous. The idea that "open" is less ambiguous than "free" is probably the biggest lie that open source ever pulled on us (but not the most important one.) You know, "Apple" has two meanings as well -- do you think that confuses people in a way that actually matters?
Free software talks about what restrictions developers and vendors can ethnically impose on the user on their own computers. The answer comes out to roughly "none." It is unethical to design a computer in a way that disregards the needs/freedom of the user. As it happens, the best way to advance Software Freedom is to use Free software. The FSF has said this, but OSI speaks for businesses even though the FSF isn't against businesses (they are against monopolies and unethical behaviour.)
"And whatever you or I may think of Eric Raymond, I think the Halloween documents (including his commentary) were a great contribution -- unlike OSI, the FSF still hosts a copy of some of them on their website!"OSI turns this "use Free software to advance Software Freedom" idea into "ethics means supporting developers." You can package this using a subtle shift in priorities, but the initial shift isn't from "ethical" to "practical" and isn't even that subtle -- it just leaves the context and real motivations out. (Or it is naive and simply let businesses take over later. That's also possible, because I've always considered Raymond's initial anti-Microsoft sentiments to be sincere. We all hated them at one point, until open source gave them their mojo back.)
When "Ted" wrote the handbook for destroying the Free software movement, a lot of people said it was old news. Personally I felt history was repeating itself, but as with Snowden making it clear that quite a few "conspiracy theorists" were not entirely nutty, I think if you go back and look at the handbook it is just as true now (perhaps more now than before) as when the Halloween documents were published. And whatever you or I may think of Eric Raymond, I think the Halloween documents (including his commentary) were a great contribution -- unlike OSI, the FSF still hosts a copy of some of them on their website! (Think about that one for a minute.)
I spent years trying to find the best way to promote Free software, and years trying to find the most reliable, solid distro. I was overjoyed when Debian moved all non-free software (non-DFSG at least, and I'm very fond of the DFSG despite it being a prototype for the Open Source Definition) to non-free repos. Devuan has undone this useful separation, which is unfortunately for "pragmatic" reasons.
Dyne is a far better organisation than Devuan is a distro, and think in Europe at least, Dyne is actually more likely to stand for your freedom than the current FSFE. I have long thought (and still believe) Jaromil is Europe's true answer to Stallman and I miss dyne:bolic. I hope in the future there will be a new one. Devuan does talk about a libre version some point in the future. When Devuan talks about its "future" I picture flying cars whizzing by, or possibly the Singularity taking place. There's a very good reason they aren't further along, but they won't say the real reason.
But, it's good enough for Bruce Perens, and it was definitely (in my own opinion) good enough when Jaromil put out the pre-alpha Valentine in early 2015. I was very happy, 6 or 8 months earlier, getting used computers and installing Debian on them (with the contents of the source ISO too) and giving them away to everyday people for free. Instead of fixing their Windows problems (and Windows is an ethical problem too, beginning with being non-free and turning into a surveillance platform that is deeply un-American) I would say "Hey," (I knew they were just going to replace their computer anyway -- even if they couldn't afford it) "if you're having computer problems you can borrow this one. If you like it, keep it -- if you don't, I'll take it back and you don't have to worry about it."
"Advocacy against systemd is stifled, even by Devuan's own community."I'd tried so many other methods of promoting the GNU operating system and Free software. This is the idea behind the "freedom lab" -- Think of it as a miniature organisation or project short of creating a full-fledged one to work on certain aspects of Software Freedom. What aspects? Well, you decide. In my opinion more of us should be creating little projects, small organisations and umbrella organisations to both diversity as well as unite many different efforts in ways that are generally autonomous, voluntary and voluntarily collaborative -- rather than feigning democracy or corporate values, as has plunged Debian into chaos and despair.
But I recognised systemd as co-opting everything and Devuan was by far the most serious effort to counter it. I don't think that it is the best but I think we are seriously lacking, 4 and a half years in. Advocacy against systemd is stifled, even by Devuan's own community. In many ways, it has the same problems as the FSF and Debian have (which lead to Devuan being necessary in the first place. Why should you have to fork Devuan to make it live up to the long-abandoned promises of 2015? You can't even talk about it anymore.)
As I waited for things to move forward (I would have lent a hand in any way I could) I worked on a programming language based on Python -- easily the best project I ever made. I did most of the development in Devuan and Devuan-based Refracta, from early 2015 onward. I was very happy to get my language into Refracta, which is still the best version of Debian I've ever used. (And getting its lead into Devuan development is the best decision Devuan ever made.)
Still, there is no real way for Devuan to distinguish between honest critics and trolls, and there probably never will be. That alone is cause for despair, because if you can't say what's true (no matter how it's said -- and as with Stallman they will say it's just the way you say it -- but as with Stallman, this isn't really the reason) then there is no science, only the story you must accept -- the official narrative. It is not fair to put this entirely on Devuan when it is true of so many communities, but it is fair to say it matters a little bit more when Devuan does it -- because of how important Devuan is right now. The last thing Devuan needs is an attitude that puts "good facts" over "real facts".
I gave up on it after a year or more, and went out looking for alternatives. I started using my programming language as an engine for automated remixing of distros. And to this day, although I think all non-free software is unethical, I believe very strongly that instead of only relying on libre distros (which are still a great idea) we should take non-free distros and create a culture of removing the non-free parts.
If done the way I have always advocated, it does not stop someone from removing the thing that removes the non-free parts. But I call this "distro-libre" and there's a chapter about it in the FSF Titanic series. I don't think the author of Linux-libre (who I have for years considered an excellent stand-in for Richard Stallman) will ever endorse this, but I hope someday he will look at the legacy of systemd and realise that I was right about that. Many of us were right about systemd.
All in all, I want programming to be easier for everybody -- to make coding more accessible is to make user freedom more accessible. We can't just make everything "user friendly" because a lot of it (not all!) is a marketing myth. It's like making "junk food" more nutritious -- so much of that (not all) is just bunk. It's a scam. But we can make programming even easier than Python, and that's what I tried to do with fig. I've even used it to teach people fairly new to coding how to create their own programming languages.
"Systemd should take security seriously -- your hobby project doesn't always need to."If you can create your own programming language, that will change how you use computers forever. It will make you a better coder and a better user. And you can do it in a week, without becoming an expert.
People create this mythology, one I've always stood against, that you can't do something until you learn the right way to do it. You're not really coding until you are an expert, you're not really developing until it's corporate -- when it comes to things like security, I actually sympathise with the people who say we are too lax. But, for so many things we can use to tinker and explore and learn, that isn't very relevant.
Systemd should take security seriously -- your hobby project doesn't always need to. Particularly at first. Learning by doing is still one of the best ways, and if your project needs security then even Bash for example, was not perfect (and remains imperfect.)
One of the great things about a functioning community is the ability to take cool prototypes and turn them into things that are suitable for production servers or broader user. You don't have to start out as an engineer and your project doesn't have to start out as something good. The only serious problem with a piece of garbage like systemd is the way it is foisted on people and how it worms its way into situations where it should never be used. Everyone who has it foisted on them and doesn't want it, knows this.
"Free software has always made it possible to reduce e-waste."But we need more hobbyists and we need more free users. If our goal is still to make all software free, we need to make a Free software movement that includes everybody -- by actually making it possible (allowed) for us to include them, not by emulating the House Un-American Activities Committee.
At the same time that we need more hobbyists and hobbyist projects, key projects -- the ones that provide our foundation and enable our everyday work, need greater stability. Free software has always made it possible to reduce e-waste. When I was giving away machines with Debian I was also keeping those machines out of being dangerously recycled (look up how they do it) or wastefully thrown in landfills. I'm not an environmentalist per se, but I was proud of that.
All this abandonment of 32-bit is tragic, Roy knows it too, I'm deeply saddened by this. I own at least two or three really cherished and useful machines that only do 32-bit, and 64-bit software is wasteful of RAM sometimes. When you're working with old machines you can't always just upgrade the ram chips, some useful machines are too obscure for that. Free software used to be great for this, but the shift in what Free software is really for is changing -- too much and in too many ways.
Stability and preservation (along the lines of Trinity and MATE, two things Debian should have supported better/made allowances for instead of stifled -- but they were so petty about it) is a mission of librarians, but it will make Free software much stronger if we gain a more enlightened attitude about this sort of thing. A fork has good and bad points, people talk about forks as if they're inherently good or bad but it really depends. But not forking and letting a project turn into something that abandons its own good points is worse than a fork.
It's important to have freedom first, but once we have established that freedom through good licences and advocacy, there are good things we can advocate for (such as an end to illegal wars) on top of that freedom. No, I don't support putting such things in the license -- that is clearly the wrong way to do it. Nor do I support censorship and crybullying via misguided (mandatory) agreements that stifle communities. I don't support the Malleus Hackerum.
I do support advocating other causes as outlined in my articles about PONIX and the Fourth Age of Free software, as well as my replies on Techrights to Jagadees. I wrote the THRIVE guidelines not to dictate how anybody does Free software, but to give people an optional way to collaborate voluntarily when they agree on something, even when it's the only thing they agree on! There is too much of this "let's do nothing together unless we all agree on too many things." Nuts to that, that's why not enough good is getting done. That's far more exclusive than the "exclusion" we are supposedly fighting (and I have always considered coding to be "for everyone." We should keep working on that, without the Malleus Hackerum to exclude people we already celebrate.)
But for many years it was impossible to say these things. It took practice and perseverance. It took ignoring bullies -- it always takes ignoring bullies, but I don't think it should have taken so much of it. We are too busy separating bullies from non-bullies to worry about truth vs. bullshit, and let people we have put in the non-bully category bullshit people who are in a more difficult (but honest) position. This is anti-reason, and there will never be a perfect solution to it because honestly -- all people are stupid in one way or another.
"We are too busy separating bullies from non-bullies to worry about truth vs. bullshit, and let people we have put in the non-bully category bullshit people who are in a more difficult (but honest) position."Any notion of perfection ultimately disqualifies everyone one of us, and the closer we get to that as standard, the more people we throw away in the name of inclusion and progress. "The perfect is the enemy of the good." In many ways that's never been more true than it is lately.
My favourite ideas, including those about making software and coding more friendly, were inspired by people like Grace Hopper and Dartmouth's Kemeny and Kurtz, as well as Seymour Papert. Since they don't get credited as often, Logo was also invented (along with Papert) by Cynthia Solomon and Wally Feurzeig. In fact when I was a kid I loved both BASIC (Torvalds' first language) and Logo, and today the latter is alive and well as the grandparent of cool ideas like App Inventor -- Logo is a great design for simple automation. When you want automation to get sophisticated, you use whatever (free) tools you absolutely have to. Sometimes machine learning will play a role. When you want it to be simple, adapting Logo is the easy and simple way. It was always made for robots and to be beginner-friendly.
I was so inspired by the ridiculous simplicity of Logo but the flexibility of BASIC, since I was a kid I wondered what it would be like to combine the strengths of both. I had other ideas, like an array that used an alphabetic "index" rather than a numeric one. Alright, I didn't know that computer science was decades ahead of me on that, but when I used Python dictionaries I was pretty excited.
"Most people have already decided whether or not they're a "computer person" by age 10, so you want them to get computing before then."When I hear people talk about why it's hard to learn to code, so many of the things they say are things I addressed with the design of fig. I took out the all the unnecessary requirements I reasonably could. I only added features one at a time, when I couldn't stand not to include them. I wanted to create a BASIC-inspired language that was (if possible) even easier than BASIC.
And I still feel like I took the best aspects of Logo and BASIC in one simple, largely consistent language (any more consistency would only make it more difficult to use, but I wanted it to have as few rules as possible and be coherent, so there was less to teach and more exploration possible) and I honestly love using it more than any other language I've used. That was a childhood dream that Python 2 made possible. (PyPy, you are carrying on a great tradition like MATE and Trinity, by keeping Python 2 compatibility. It is more fun and easier to use in many ways. I've even known professional developers that prefer it.)
I even experimented with trying to teach programming by letting someone make up a language and then implementing it in fig or Python. Figplus, instead of compiling to a file (which it can still do by default) gives you the option of compiling the entire program to a big string which is run with exec(). I call that "compterpreting" in a sort of tongue-in-cheek way, which is different than "transpiling" (which is really just a subcategory of compiling.) But "compterpreting" means that an interpreter written in Python can load a file written in fig or whatever language, and that it will work like a compiler (easier to write) but run like an interpreter -- without creating a file.
"If you want a free society with Free software, computer literacy isn't optional -- it's the way you get a free society using Free software."Fig is 1000 or 2000 lines of code, some people say it's a "jungle" so I made a colour-coded guide to each part of the program, as an ODT file. But I've been knee-deep in QB64's code (fun fact, the person who made the public domain fig logo -- Bob Seguin, is the same person who made the QB64 logo) and that code is far more of a jungle than fig is. You couldn't imagine. I've also taught people how to make their own (some arguably better, in my opinion) versions of fig-like language. Fig is a little more flexible, because it has received years of love where others received months. Though anybody who worked on a fig derivative is farther ahead in terms of accomplishment per time spent and deserve credit for that.
The best way to start a project like fig (until you learn how to professionally develop a language, which is something I've never had a good reason to do and probably wouldn't be up to it any year soon) is to make a program that can interpret a few commands. I consider a programming language to be a "parser" (whatever, you can make it more complicated) and a collection of routines. Text file goes in, text file comes out. Until you get to things like loops and conditionals and functions, writing a simple interpreter is easier -- read code, do stuff. You can store variable names and values in a dictionary. After you add more complex features like the ones just mentioned, writing a compiler (especially when your implementation language is a high-level language like Python or Javascript, which is increasingly common if considered a joke many years ago) makes a compiler ("transpiler") more trivial. It's a shortcut -- loops and function definitions already exist!
I've spent more than a decade debating with fans of OOP, I love Python 2, and I still hear regularly from people who were forced to start with languages like Java that are so happy that you don't (necessarily) have to think about objects to use Python. Yes, I know it is object-based. Technically that means fig is too, and it's no accident that it isn't designed to be.
"Until Microsoft and others got schools to replace computer literacy with application training, we were on the road to a computer literate society rather than a road to everyone being a Microsoft customer."Objects do become very useful for large complex things like some websites, some video games, some applications (such as a web browser or possibly a photo editor.) If you like them in other contexts, that's great. If your goal is to teach the masses, then BASIC and Logo-like code will always be easier to teach and learn early on. This isn't a diss of Smalltalk. People have made OOP more and more (probably needlessly) complicated for years. (I never used Smalltalk, which is probably why I'm not in love with OOP.) Most people have already decided whether or not they're a "computer person" by age 10, so you want them to get computing before then. Logo made that possible and practical -- if it isn't possible now, we've forgotten something important.
If you want a free society with Free software, computer literacy isn't optional -- it's the way you get a free society using Free software. Literacy doesn't mean that everybody can understand binary search trees or every CS reference that Randall Munroe makes, though learning to code is the shortest and easiest route to computer literacy. Until Microsoft and others got schools to replace computer literacy with application training, we were on the road to a computer literate society rather than a road to everyone being a Microsoft customer.
It amazes me that people try to escape learning Logo or BASIC by teaching "computational thinking" or logic first instead. It's easier to teach coding than logic before high school -- understanding how to move a cursor with instructions the language can process involves logic. Coding in this sense is less abstract to a developing mind, not more abstract. Logic is more abstract and more difficult to grasp the importance of. It's boring (until you've had practice that coding provides.)
Making logic a prerequisite is backwards and self-defeating. It's also more fun to drive than change the oil, but if you really love to drive you'll appreciate an oil change more. That's what I think of teaching "logic" just to avoid coding. But obviously this doesn't mean logic won't ultimately help as well. So do oil changes.
A few more points -- because this is basically about everything I've cared about over years of working with Free software. Everything (including a programming language and a distro) can be treated like an application. Distro-libre is the distro-as-an-application concept, which I didn't even invent. OLPC (the project responsible for introducing me to Python) has created automated distro remixes to modify Ubuntu, and so have I. They did it first. If you produce a distro as an application, you can distribute (and change) the distro as the application that produces it, instead of an ISO. Instead you can use an existing ISO.
"Where I'm going with this has relevance to a stronger Free software movement in every possible way."I tried to demonstrate that to Devuan developers and users with mkfigos (a Refracta derivative I have also used to automatically modify Puppy Linux, Void, Ubuntu, and Debian, removing non-free software, systemd and fixing security issues/integrating security updates that existed at the time for Refracta and Puppy) all using a language that can abstract Bash code in a way that is easier to work with and call.
I was yelled down by enzo/Katolaz when I protested that this was a distribution, who made claims that I tried to refute (because they were superficial and in error) but Katolaz wanted to treat me as an inferior. This is not uncommon behaviour for him or some other people associated with Devuan, and standing up to the relatively few bullies there will get you all but ostracised (for a while.) The point is, you can't make an unconventional point or introduce an idea (or have a conversation) while someone in authority is yelling down what you're saying by leaning on their authority.
When it comes to my idea, I'm the one that knows what I was talking about -- I was the one with a working implementation, and I didn't need someone who spent 5 minutes not really getting familiar with what I saying yelling at me and belittling me just because he didn't understand what I was trying to do.
When a similar event happened with a developer (once again, not the lead developer -- anticap has never given me a hard time about anything) at Antix, I was getting yelled down for conveying something about Linux-libre I got directly from the author (Alex Oliva) himself -- I was stating a fact, and I received all kinds of insults and accusations. Do you know what happened? An inquisition? No, that's overkill. Was everything fixed? No, that's a dream, isn't it? But the forum administrator (even though this was months later when he found out) apologised to me for the way I was treated. That's all.
"I didn't do it for me, and I didn't do it really. I just took this mission of mine and went everywhere, seeking out the best people in every corner of the community, every corner of the entire Free software ecosystem."Is that setting a great example for how to run something like Antix, even when I was unfairly attacked by one of its developers for stating a fact? Yes! Not only that, but although he (the forum admin) didn't recall the event, he had actually commented in the thread at the time, that it was too bad these misunderstandings get so out of hand. I agree. I am not always patient, not always fair, not always calm. I'm human. Though in that situation, I retained my calm several times until the abuse reached a point where it was too repetitive and excessive, and I decided to leave Antix behind.
But it does a great deal for both integrity (broadly speaking) and peace of mind (abuse is worse when it goes unacknowledged -- which is why we should let assholes apologise sometimes or more often than we do -- not in every situation) when someone in authority acknowledges what happened and apologises to you. I didn't demand anything from him -- I didn't think there was a point. It was simply offered, and today while both have strengths and weaknesses, I can honestly say you are more likely to be treated well going with Antix than Devuan. But if you spend years of effort on it, you can be treated almost fairly with either of them.
I can point to both examples with disappointment and poor treatment and even mitigation (there are some very kind people who develop Devuan) but what happened with Antix, it was less called for (I was absolutely right and completely dressed down for it) and better mitigated (I do feel better about what happened.) Also with Antix, it was just a one-time thing. It was enough, but it was not a string of ongoing abuses. In general, lots of people have suffered worse -- for no reason and without any apology.
"I know, I used Ubuntu (Xubuntu) in 2007. It's very much like "open source" is -- you can be political as long as the politics are corporate."Where I'm going with this has relevance to a stronger Free software movement in every possible way. There was a time where I was more likely to get socially "beat up" for having an innovative idea or a legitimate complaint. This is all too common in Free software, and I don't believe a perfect solution exists (or is required.) Some solutions are excessive and counterproductive (such as the Malleus Hackerum and the not entirely un-Cambodian purges of experts and visionaries.) But more than anything, the reason that the past year or so was largely productive and largely positive (despite being arguably the darkest year of Free software so far -- and this says a lot about human potential as well as human foibles) is that I worked to build something that brings so many of us back together.
I didn't do it for me, and I didn't do it really. I just took this mission of mine and went everywhere, seeking out the best people in every corner of the community, every corner of the entire Free software ecosystem. To quote a philosopher, I "found the others." And considering that I switched from non-free platforms exclusively to free ones in 2007, that was a long wait! Ubuntu didn't do "humanity to others" so much as "political apathy and corporate lip-service to others." I know, I used Ubuntu (Xubuntu) in 2007. It's very much like "open source" is -- you can be political as long as the politics are corporate.
Thank Jono Bacon for bringing cancel culture to Free software, I think he did as much as anybody with "openrespect." In the end, openrespect is what cancelled Stallman. They will try to use it to cancel Oliva too (dumb idea, he's a warrior and together we've all helped made Free software redundant in a positive way) and they are already attacking Roy a bit, and they might even tell you to ignore what I say.
"Thank Jono Bacon for bringing cancel culture to Free software, I think he did as much as anybody with "openrespect." In the end, openrespect is what cancelled Stallman."I've had idiots from Pluspora barge into threads saying you shouldn't pay any attention to what I say just because I chose Naturalnews as a Diaspora instance. You know I was on JoinDiaspora when Diaspora was new -- who cares what instance I think is best? I chose Naturalnews because pirate.party was shutting down, and I figured that one (a victim of censorship on a network that pretends it can't really be censored) was likely to stay up for a while. So we project what we think people's values are in a superficial way, based loosely on association that may actually include diversity of opinion -- and for being "open" to diverse opinions we are censored, as we were for criticising Microsoft when I was new to open source.
This corporate kowtowing just never ends, that's why I've spent years criticising it and even wrote a book (A Handbook for Destroying the Free Software Movement) that emulates the very worst of it. Go back and tell me it still sounds like "old news" to you. It's also a known fact that there are paid shills and people influenced by them.
However, what really helped me -- and will help so many people -- is if we "find the others." That's what a Free Software Federation ought to make possible. For us to freely collaborate on making culture and software (and hardware) more free -- because the threats we removed when we made software free, are making their way gradually into hardware as well. It's just a matter of time; plus, Management Engine and everything like it.
"For us to freely collaborate on making culture and software (and hardware) more free -- because the threats we removed when we made software free, are making their way gradually into hardware as well."What really made the difference wasn't me, but everybody that treated me fairly, that heard me out -- that learned something from what I had to offer. That's the true meaning of community. And for years, I swore it was a myth.
To shamelessly rip off William Gibson, Community is here -- it just isn't evenly distributed. It may take years, but if it means enough then you can build it, not just find it. I once wrote to Spider Robinson and (like many readers) told him I was sad that Callahan's didn't really exist. I told him even the USENET group didn't do it. He said (in the nicest way possible) that the answer could be to try to build it.
Communities and ages of Free software come and go, it (hopefully) is our job to renew and to preserve such things. For more than a year I've done everything in my power to make it clear to you that these things are under attack. For years I've worked to take what I know of philosophy and history to try to help people build a community that is everywhere and withstand these attacks. But I've documented how I did that, and how you can do that too.
"Communities and ages of Free software come and go, it (hopefully) is our job to renew and to preserve such things. For more than a year I've done everything in my power to make it clear to you that these things are under attack. For years I've worked to take what I know of philosophy and history to try to help people build a community that is everywhere and withstand these attacks."If that community comes into greater existence and solves many of the problems I've experienced and protested -- it will be because of people like you, not because of me. It will be because of the people who worked with me throughout this struggle, people who have earned a right to call themselves a friend -- even if they don't think of themselves that way. Every person I've added to my diaspora feed is an "Associate" because I didn't want to bother with Facebook vocabulary. But people who really acted as friends deserve the title, even if officially they are something more generic than that.
Really, that's sometimes what it means to be a great human -- acting more often like a friend, regardless of your title. So these people may feel I've shown my gratitude (I hope so) and maybe I didn't express it enough or in a way that got the point across. Regardless, they've earned the right. I wish it didn't take so much effort, really, but considering that we are up against the biggest most powerful corporations in the world -- maybe this is what it takes.
I learned to read at age 2, I declared myself an atheist at age 4, I fell in love with science at age 3. I am an amateur in so many ways, and many novices have more talent than I do. That isn't modesty, it's a fact. Some people are freaking amazing and I can't do half of what they do. But you don't have to be them to do what you love, to come up with good ideas, to create, use and promote software you love. I have mostly learned by tinkering and being curious about things.
"I have mostly learned by tinkering and being curious about things."Just using Free software puts you in a better position to promote, learn, assist, improve it. Just using Free software is a seed for contributing. And it means that freedom has one more person standing for it. Sure, there are bigger things you can do. But don't let someone with a Mac laptop tell you they're doing more for Free software than you are. There's a good chance they're lying or trying to make you feel bad about doing something helpful.
It's not about purity or perfection, but progress. Removing non-Free software helps. Using a completely free distro helps too. Letting people express and explore ideas without unnecessary levels of control or unearned "respect" (which is one-sided and favours companies over people) makes people want to stay. Many of these people are learning -- we should celebrate that, but instead many get knocked down without any good reason. Openrespect was inhumanity to users, not humanity to others. If you intend to use the word "Ubuntu" then let it mean the real thing, real humanity in with its foibles and potential and at best, honesty -- not an insipid knockoff.
"But don't let someone with a Mac laptop tell you they're doing more for Free software than you are. There's a good chance they're lying or trying to make you feel bad about doing something helpful."And stop saying that people just want "freedom from consequences" rather than freedom of speech. What the hell is wrong with you? People want freedom from witch hunts and inquisitions. They want the freedom that comes with fairness, due process and not hypocrisy and fighting human imperfection with bullying. We can all do without bullshit "consequences" like that.
Don't expect a utopia. If the past year has made anything clear, it's that things will keep getting worse before they really improve. It takes a lot to stay on top of life when everything is being attacked. It takes a lot to have faith -- whether it's faith in better days, people improving themselves or faith in something greater than we are -- faith in a better society is ultimately necessary to fight for a better society amidst the struggle which can be truly painful (and sometimes made deliberately worse.)
I have always turned to philosophy, something much underrated -- whether it was logic, imagination and introspection, one of many almost-useless self-help tomes, religion and mythology, or just simply finding a friend to talk to.
"And without Stallman, I'd just be using some proprietary version of BASIC I couldn't control or (easily) learn to create a version of I liked better."To me, these things have more in common than not, but the details are different. Some of those details are important -- more of them aren't, at least to me.
But approaching it all as someone who believes that truth can be objective while our perspective is always subjective, we can only get glimpses of things that are bigger (bigger philosophically, if nothing else) than we are. And without Stallman, I'd just be using some proprietary version of BASIC I couldn't control or (easily) learn to create a version of I liked better. I couldn't remix my entire operating system and then give you a copy of it. These may not quite be miracles, though they truly are wonders.
And we need a lot more wonders -- we need the freedom (Software Freedom, free as in speech, as in freedom of speech!) to learn from each other, to speak truth to each other without someone putting themselves over us to decide if we have rights -- if we can choose our own friends, our own instances and not be subject to the same tactics of the Spanish Inquisition -- torture and endless accusations by corrupt authorities.
"Remember, as these people try to destroy what Stallman built and what you and I fought for -- Karma works if you give it time."The present situation is ridiculous and deserves our mockery, not our respect. But as humans -- not monopolies or authorities -- we can do so much more. For once, that's not a critique. It's a promise.
Remember, as these people try to destroy what Stallman built and what you and I fought for -- Karma works if you give it time. I spent years studying mysticism (as an agnostic, interested in the philosophy of it) and what holds true again and again is just as true as the ugliness that attacks our freedom--
Knowledge and power and judgment and authority and emotion are balanced by the bigger picture, by generosity and kindness and having principles and integrity -- the kind that ever strives to be honest, the kind we measure ourselves by rather than our measurement that comes from others.
The whole universe is flawed, stupid, out of balance -- but not inherently. It is stateful. It can heal, and we can all help if we choose.
"We are all searching for something better."Knowledge (details) and power and judgment and authority and emotion are not bad things, they allow us to create. But when we focus exclusively on such things, as our enemies do -- they only create things that destroy themselves, things that are self-defeating. In that is the greatest (philosophical) hope I have found in decades of searching everywhere I could. If you believe in something higher than that, I don't intend to contradict it. We are all searching for something better.
Without those things, without power and emotion (passion) nothing can be created at all. We have to judge to act in a meaningful way. We can't create things from apathy. If we have apathy, if we don't care when people are wronged or are in pain, we have given up the world itself.
But as we balance those things with a larger picture, with generosity, with mercy, while striving for personal integrity -- those things heal the universe and create things that are philosophically (and some might argue in other ways also) sustainable. If we want freedom to last, if want it to be sustained, we need a broader picture and we need to have some kind of mercy, we need to honour what personal integrity makes us who we are when we stand for the most important things.
"If we want freedom to last, if want it to be sustained, we need a broader picture and we need to have some kind of mercy, we need to honour what personal integrity makes us who we are when we stand for the most important things."This is just as true I think, if you are an atheist. It is true if ethics matter. It is true if you want to be less superficial (that's what a "bigger picture" means) while other people try to convince you to replace these things with the excess and imbalance of power that only a monopoly can create.
But if we all strive to be more human, these monopolies will always destroy themselves. However long it takes, that is the fate they seal for putting everything out of balance. The sooner we abandon apathy, the less damage they will be able to do before things improve again.
I am planning to retire from this fight soon and if I manage to reestablish myself in another country or another continent, I would like to continue this quest for freedom with you. Many thanks to the friends who made it possible. You deserve so much more for who you are, and who you decided and strive to be.
I still think "Be excellent to one another" works. It's easier said than done, and don't forget that one of the key people in that story was played by George Carlin -- a comedian, smartass, iconoclast who spoke ill of authoritarian abuse -- and did so for a living: "Originally, this occupation was called 'foole'..."
"Thanks to everyone who let me talk, because talking is not very much without someone listening.""Be excellent" doesn't mean you have to be (or ask people to be) a kiss-ass. It means something more profound, something that could never be handed down from a cynical and destructive monopoly -- which will never deserve your respect.
None of these words do anything for you until you take them and do what you will with them. They are identifiers that point to the definitions and priorities you carry with yourself. It's really up to you, and that's the nature as well as the burden of freedom. I hope we don't ever give that up, I don't really think we were ever meant to.
"Long Live Stallman, Long Live Oliva, and Happy Hacking.""Because otherwise you're living under systems that don't match who you are,
and you'll be fighting that all of the rest of your life." - Reggie Watts, "A Song About Apples (Always Love Yourself)"
Thanks to everyone who let me talk, because talking is not very much without someone listening. Thank you for listening, and for sharing your stories with me. I have tried to amplify some of those stories, and we can do that for each other sometimes. I hope that far more people will be able to do so in the future. That would be a natural result of Free software's mission -- to make all software free as in freedom.
With many special thanks to Dr. Roy Schestowitz, Techrights and the Free Software Federation--
Long Live Stallman, Long Live Oliva, and Happy Hacking. ⬆
Licence: Creative Commons CC0 1.0 (public domain)