FOSS-culture
FOSS culture is largely built on libertarian ideas. That is understandable, since FOSS stands for “Free and Open Source Software” and is completely based upon the idea of “Everybody can use, modify and distribute it”. Me, personally: I am not the most libertarian person out there but… Yeah, I believe software needs to be free and open source. The only problem this raises is libertarian governance. And by “libertarian governance”, I mean anarchy and minarchy. Basically it means “Do what you want”/“Do almost what you want”. While this is very good in the distribution of open-source: This book is about the development of open-source. And in that case, anarchy is… BAD! Shocking, right? But if you don’t understand what I mean, I’d like to explain that to you.
Fossarchy and Mossarchy
What I define as “FOSS-Anarchy” (abbreviated as “Fossarchy”) is as following:
“Fossarchy” is the fundemental idea that everybody – without question – can contribute to a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) project. Think of it as a governance-type in FOSS. The fundemental problems start to arise when people ruin projects and break them.
“Mossarchy” is the fundamental idea that everybody – with minimal question – can contribute to a FOSS-project. It is the FOSS definition of “Minarchy”: The idea that there should be a very, very minimal government. While this might work with smaller projects: It does not work with larger ones. The reason for this is that sabotage can occur and that… Certain people might not be… Desirable. Regulation – and much of it – is often necessary to not see sabotage occur and having “undesirable” people contributing.
FOSS-tribalism
You know the USA? I don’t live there, but I certainly know it. There’s a certain politician there who has followers so tribal, so forgiving to their holy leader: That they’ll forgive him for committing multiple felonies. His name is Donald J. Trump and he is now – somehow – the president of the USA. What I’m trying to convey is that the FOSS community is almost as tribal as the USA Republican party (though it be for a more noble cause), and that leads to… Situations. Certainly.
Richard Stallman
Richard M. Stallman is a FOSS-legend, known for his incredible initiative “GNU” (GNU’s Not Unix) and the FSF (Free Software Foundation), he’s truly a legend in the FOSS community! But he shouldn’t be. He shouldn’t be the icon for the FOSS community. It’s a really strange controversy he found himself in… Yet it happened. To save myself some time, I shall quote the wikipedia article on Richard Stallman:
In September 2019, it was learned that Jeffrey Epstein had made donations to MIT, and in the wake of this, MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito resigned. An internal MIT CSAIL listserv mailing list thread was started to protest the coverup of MIT’s connections to Epstein. In the thread, discussion had turned to deceased MIT professor Marvin Minsky, who was named by Virginia Giuffre as one of the people that Epstein had forced her to have sex with. Giuffre, a minor at the time, had been caught in Epstein’s underage sex trafficking ring. In response to a comment saying that Minsky “is accused of assaulting one of Epstein’s victims”, Stallman objected to the inaccurate wording. Minsky was not accused of “assault”, and from the victims’ testimonies it was not clear whether Minsky had committed “assault”, and Stallman argued that “the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to conceal that from most of his associates”. When challenged by other members of the mailing list, he added “It is morally absurd to define ‘rape’ in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17”, holding that it was not relevant to the harm that was done to the victim.
Doesn’t that seem like… Pedophilia? Or at least pedophilia sympathizing? Whether he’s a pedophile or a pedophile sympathizer: (shocker) It’s morally wrong to sympathize with Jeffrey Epstein!!!
It’s very strange that people seem to forgive Richard M. Stallman: Pedophile sympathizer but not Linus Torvalds: Not pedophile sympathizer for banning Russian contributors of the Linux project. Doesn’t that seem morally corrupt?
Linus Torvalds
Linus B. Torvalds is a Finnish programmer and father of the Linux kernel and the Git version control system. He seems like a good person. Well, that’s because he is! But… Somewhere in his career something strange happened. A war in Ukraine. He decided (rightfully) that it was morally wrong to support Russia when they were attacking Ukraine. He (somewhat impulsively, I shall admit) excluded Russian maintainers of the Linux Kernel because: “I’m Finnish. Did you think I’d be supporting Russian aggression?”. I completely agree with this, though the way he acted was a bit impulsive.
For the last controversy I’ll be covering, I’ll be covering the Godot controversy. This is truly the strangest one and it makes me very mad just thinking about it. This is also where FOSS and the USA republican party intersect (yes, it’s going to be some conservative bullshit).
Godot Foundation
Godot is a game engine popular among the masses. It’s FOSS, which makes it an attractive choice for people like myself. Everything was going well – EVERYTHING – but then…
“Apparently game engines are woke now? Well then, we won’t complain! Show us your #wokot games below!”
Harmless PR-message from the Godot PR team, right? According to FROSS (def: Free, Republican and Open Source Software): It’s not! But how? Oh, wait! They are conservatives! Oh, I forgot: They don’t have a single good opinion on anything. The average debate with a Republican goes like this:
(R = Republican, P = progressive)
R: Trans people shouldn’t exist! Capitalism is king!
P: What?
R: I have all the best opinions!
P: No? Also, what arguments do you have against trans people?
R: I identify as a penguin!
P: Now you’re just making fun of people.
R: Waaa! You’re invalidating me!
P: What? Also, penguin isn’t a gender.
R: There are only two genders, facts don’t care about your feelings!
P: Gender is a spectrum.
R: No you *****!!!! YOU FUCKING ******* ********!
In reality, the only people hating Godot after this is homophobic and transphobic media, no one else. A very good example of demented people criticizing Godot is this schizophrenic “justice manifesto” by “XRayez”.
Impacts
Tribalism – whether in politics or in FOSS – is bad. It leads to people making bad decisions because “You got to stick to the tribe”. Tribalism often has an “Us Versus Them” mentality which can lead to innocent people getting hurt, and guilty people getting away. Whatever you do, do not fall into the tribalism mentality: It can lead to people getting hurt.