Shamar @Shamar@qoto.org

@psymin

In fact #Devuan supports #FreeSoftware and #Stallman

https://medium.com/think-do-tank/open-letter-to-the-free-software-movement-7ddc7429b474

@shusha

I forgot to say: all of this is why people look for more general explainations of what is going on.

Because in this case, checking sources or looking for evidence or even "following the money" was very easy. And yet, three thousand people joined the mob against a single man.

Which is an autistic hacker, but that doesn't matter much.

Why this happened?
Cui prodest?

Can it be prevented in the future?

It's difficult to look for answers to these questions without going beyond the case in point.

At least for me.

But I'd really welcome you insight about them!

@shusha

As a father of 3 daughters, I think I understand your perspective.

But one of the issues of this whole story is that the struggle you are talking about, has been misdirected toward a man who was not sexist, mysogin or transphobic at all... just weird.

It's a long story, and I do not want to annoy you if you don't care about the details, but well known feminists and transpeople (and even several women that I personally know and know #RMS by decades) have either signed the letter in his defence or publicly wrote against this attack to his person.

I could provide you a few link but you find most interesting ones https://stallmansupport.org/articles-in-support-of-richard-stallman.html

You can trust my words or not, but you can easily check that even the attackers have retracted some their accusations to reduce the legal risks for the signers https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix

So here is the thing: the alligations against Stallman are false.

And yet, they managed to force him to resign from FSF 2 years ago and now that he is coming back, they raised this new campaign again.

And if you look at the organizations that signed the harrassing letter early, you will notice how many have BigTech among their platinum sponsors (Google in particular)

Since 2013 FSFE (that joined the lynching mob early with their own letter) takes more than 10% (but less than 20%) of its whole income from #Google: https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.en.html

So ultimately the struggle of women and trans working in IT (and in #FreeSoftware in particular) has been weaponized to target a single man.

Now I'm happy to stay on the struggle, but here we have to ask which one?

The one strumentalized and weaponized or the one of the victim of such attack?

I'd argue: both!

But in this hatred climate it's very difficult to talk with the people whose suffering has been weaponized.

And this is heart-breaking.
And dangerous, I think.

Because it won't fix problems, but hide them.

Anyway... thanks for your link, I'll read as soon as possible.

And if you want to talk about the struggles of women in tech and how they could be addressed, I'm very interested.

@paoloredaelli

Just like it was writen in the first time.
With "olio di gomito". 😉
("olio di gomito" is an Italian way to say "with a lot of hard and valuable work")

But beware: you can't build the SAME software system from scratch AND make it simple.

No matter how good and simple are your tools (language, compilers, operating systems...) if you want to build #GCC, #Linux, #Chromium, #Firefox and so on, you are just going to fail and waste huge amount of time.

You are addicted to primitive tools (mis)designed to lock everybody in and keep powerful élites in control of your computing.

The next generation of #FreeSoftware that I envision will be very different.

Designed to empower.

@timorl

@timorl

GCC does not satisfy the "one month" requirement: that's why we need better compilers (and languages)

But this IS a political issue!

If you cap complexity, you reduce costs and this way you reduce the power corporation can extort to users.

If you can rewrite anything you run in a month, no company is going to betray your trust.

As for the "simplicity ideology with complex compilers" you are talking about, I think you are confusing simplicity and easiness.

Simplicity is very different from easiness: simplicity provides freedom, easiness produce lock-in. But more often than not, simple tools requires more mental effort than easy one.

IMHO simplicity should always be preferred in Free Software.

@timorl

I used to trust #GCC.

I spent a huge amount of my free time over the last 2 years to port it to my operating system (a Plan 9 fork).

In fact, Jehanne has been the first Plan 9 fork to run a modern GCC (9.2.0) and compile C++ programs correctly.

Then, with the removal of #RMS by the GCC Steering Committee, I realized they cannot be trusted: https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-April/235285.html

Indeed they are discussing to leave #GNU in these days.

Now I'm exploring the alternatives.

So far, #TinyCC looks promising: https://bellard.org/tcc/

Other alternatives are listed here http://suckless.org/rocks/ but some requires either linker or assembler.

And while I obviously ported GNU binutils too, I prefer to avoid this toolchain since they are all showing they do not give a shit about free software, but about "#IBM, #Google, #Facebook, #ARM, or other big supporters" https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-April/235367.html

A serious alternative could be the 9front compiler suite that I dismissed years ago because I was still naive (dumb).

Also, it's urgent to design better programming languages, and for "better" I mean simpler both for humans and for compilers/interpreters. So that all people will be able to read the software they use.

But the point remains: if it cannot be completely read and understood in at most a month by a single professional programmer, it's broken beyond repair and need to be replaced.

@timorl

No exception.

Enormous projects produce enormous risks (when not enormous threats).

It's time to move beyond the stone ages of #Informatics.

@ekaitz_zarraga

I'm sorry... but...

I don't make the rules! 🤷‍♂️

"If it cannot be read and completely understood in a month, it's broken beyond repair."

My new mantra in #FreeSoftware development.

@lthms

Actually this https://backtracking.github.io/ocamlgraph/ looks quite similar to https://www.simple-cc.org/

I mean... somebody should have taken the lecture on minimalism too literally! 🤣

(but all in all... I still prefer code I can read than corporate documentation I have to trust)

@gubi

No, la prescrizione non era un regalo ai delinquenti, solo una garanzia di impunità per i delinquenti ricchi.

@generalespecifico @quinta

Non funziona così.

L'informatica è una attività intellettuale creativa fortemente politica.

L'idea che l'informatico sia un mero esecutore, come un operaio in catena di montaggio, è saldamente ancorata nel management tutto, quanto falsa.

E' l'informatico a decidere cosa il software farà.

Al politico che crede di fare scelte "politiche" l'informatico può dire "No" e non fare ciò che il politico chiede.

O può dire "Ok"... e poi fare ciò che vuole.

http://www.tesio.it/documents/2021_AIUCD_La_lotta_informatica.pdf

Ci sono però diversi problemi, @quinta.

Anzitutto: quali informatici?
Avrai certo notato che l'informatica è ancora così primitiva da vivere di mode e marketing. E molti "informatici" sembrano estremamente competenti solo a chi non ne sa nulla della materia.
Tutta la fuffa della Blockchain, ad esempio, crolla miseramente davanti a considerazioni banali come il consumo energetico o il teorema CAP. Non può funzionare, sia da un punto di vista matematico sia da uno economico o ecologico.
Eppure i campioni della blockchain vengono presi sul serio.

E poi, immagino tu sappia quale influenza hanno le grandi aziende statunitensi quando si tratta di "farsi riconoscere la ragione".

Anche quando è oggettivo ed evidente che c'è un enorme problema (pensa a Google Meet a scuola dopo l'invalidazione del Privacy Shield), sono capaci di far sorvolare chi dovrebbe controllare.

Nulla di nuovo, se pensi a Eternit o ILVA, ma su scala globale.