FOSDEM keynote causes concerns [LWN.net]

By Joe Brockmeier
January 28, 2025

This year's edition of the Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) begins on February 1 in Brussels. The event is widely regarded as one of the most important open-source conferences. One of the reasons that FOSDEM is held in high esteem by the community is its non-commercial nature. It does accept sponsors, but sponsorships come with few perks and no "pay-for-play" speaking slots. Thus, the scheduling of a keynote by Jack Dorsey⁠—⁠primarily known for his role in co-founding Twitter, and currently CEO and chairman of FOSDEM sponsor Block, Inc.⁠—⁠raised eyebrows and led to plans for a protest. The keynote has since been removed from the schedule, but there are still a number of lingering questions.

FOSDEM background

FOSDEM got its start in 2000 as the "Open Source Developers of Europe Meeting" (OSDEM). It added "Free" to the mix in 2001, at the request of Richard Stallman, according to the conference's about page. It is held yearly at the Solbosch campus of Université libre de Bruxelles, excepting 2021 and 2022 when the conference was held online-only due to COVID. It brings in thousands of developers from around the world to occupy the 35 rooms across the campus that host the main tracks and developer rooms ("devrooms"). It is, from year to year, unclear how many people attend FOSDEM as there is no charge for entry or any other way of counting attendees.

The FOSDEM devrooms are organized by members of open-source projects or other groups that share interests in a particular topic, such as the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), distributions, monitoring and observability, or software-defined radio—to name only a few. As a disclaimer, I should note that I have spoken at FOSDEM, assisted with organizing devrooms in the past, such as the virtualization and IaaS devroom in 2016, and have interacted with FOSDEM organizers as a sponsor.

While the devrooms are the main attraction for many attendees, the conference does have keynotes held in the Janson room with capacity for more than 1,400 people. The seating capacity for rooms at FOSDEM varies wildly from as few as 48 seats to more than 800 in the next-largest room aside from Janson.

The controversy

Block, Inc. was formerly known as Square, Inc. It owns the Square payment service, the Cash App digital wallet service, Tidal music streaming service, and others. The title of Dorsey's talk was "Infusing Open Source Culture into Company DNA". The abstract (saved on Archive.org) said that the talk would cover "the strategic importance of open-source technology and why Block has committed to building in the open". Dorsey also had a co-speaker for the session, Manik Surtani, Block's head of open source. Surtani was founder of the Infinispan open-source in-memory database, and has been active in the Java Community Process (JCP).

The talk title and description were unusually corporate-sounding for FOSDEM. A survey of keynotes back to 2013 turns up no other keynote focused solely on a single company's open-source achievements or culture, much less one that is virtually invisible in the space. It is hard to see how it would be highly rated compared to usual FOSDEM fare. Felix Niederwanger published screen shots of the pretalx conference software, used by FOSDEM, which show what appear to be low ratings for Dorsey's talk proposal, with the exception of one positive review. "Giving him this stage is both morally and politically wrong and damaging to the philosophy of open source," Niederwanger said.

Curl creator Daniel Stenberg, said of the talk:

Jack Dorsey speaking about "Infusing Open Source Culture into Company DNA" when not a single soul has ever heard of him in relation to Open Source before this talk title would have worked as a joke to me.

Drew DeVault, creator of the sourcehut software-hosting service, Hare programming language, aerc mail client, and frequent commentator on FOSS, found the idea of Dorsey keynoting at FOSDEM less amusing than Stenberg. He wrote a blog post arguing that "billionaires are not welcome at FOSDEM" and that the Janson stage at FOSDEM was for smaller projects that embody the values of FOSS and for discussing the challenges faced by the community. Dorsey, according to DeVault, was at fault for some of the challenges:

In 2023 this stage hosted Hachyderm's Kris Nóva to discuss an exodus of Twitter refugees to the fediverse. [...] Two years later one of the principal architects of, and beneficiaries of, that disaster will step onto the same stage. Even if our community hadn't been directly harmed by Dorsey's actions, I don't think that we owe this honor to someone who took a billion dollars to ruin their project, ostracize their users, and destroy the livelihoods of almost everyone who worked on it.

DeVault went farther than complaining about the keynote, however. He also said he would organize a sit-in protest of the talk. He asked people to meet outside Janson prior to the talk and sit on the stage after the previous speaker finished until the end of Dorsey's scheduled talk.

Statement

On January 16, FOSDEM issued statement in response to the controversy about Dorsey and news of planned protests of his talk:

To be clear, in our 25 year history, we have always had the hard rule that sponsorship does not give you preferential treatment for talk selection; this policy has always applied, it applied in this particular case, and it will continue to apply in the future. Any claims that any talk was allowed for sponsorship reasons are false.

It went on to say that FOSDEM had always "allowed and welcomed" protest, and that the organizers would not take action against a protest "provided the protest is indeed peaceful and does not disrupt the proceedings". Whether the plans to occupy the keynote stage during Dorsey's talk qualified as disruption was left unstated. It also asked for protest organizers to contact the FOSDEM team in advance to allow them to meet crowd-control and fire-safety obligations.

A discussion on the Lobste.rs community featured mixed reactions to the talk, planned protest, and FOSDEM's request for non-disruptive protest. One commenter, "Hail_Spacecake", said they did not agree with DeVault's reasons for protesting the talk and hoped the organizers would physically remove "disruptive" protesters or summon the police to do so, so that the talk would go on as scheduled. (Update: Lobste.rs moderator Peter Bhat Harkins has notified us that the comment has since been deleted, indicating that they consider calls for "physically removing" protestors to be a dogwhistle for political violence.)

Another commenter, "friendlysock", said that there were "varying degrees of fairness" for critiques against Dorsey, but argued that regular people have benefited from his companies:

Saying "hurr durr he's a billionaire we should automatically dismiss or side against him" is intellectually lazy at best and gleeful willful ignorance at worst.

Esther Payne wrote that it may be true that the sponsorship did not pay for the talk, but "we need to look at the soft power and very real monetary power" someone like Dorsey has. She argued that there is a disconnect between the organizers of FOSDEM and some of the community.

Talk disappears

DeVault published a follow-up post on January 20, in which he noted that the talk had been downgraded from keynote to the "main track", held in the same room at the same time. DeVault said that he had created a mailing list for organizing the protest, and indicated that a number of people had reached out to participate. He also acknowledged "Dorsey does not bear sole responsibility for Twitter's sale" but said he was complicit and profited handsomely from the sale and "all its harmful consequences".

According to Payne's next post, Dorsey's talk disappeared from FOSDEM's web site on January 21. The organizers have not addressed the reasons for the removal or made any public statement about it since the 16th. After the talk was removed from the schedule, DeVault published another post, this time calling for a discussion about transparency and governance at FOSDEM.

DeVault said that it "strains our presumption of good faith" that the talk was rejected by three of four reviewers (referencing the scores published by Niederwanger), and that it was "kind of weird that we have to take them at their word" that the sponsorship did not play a role. Very little about how FOSDEM operates or is governed, he said, is documented anywhere publicly. "Who makes decisions? How? We don't know, and that's kind of weird for something so important in the open source space."

He encouraged those who would have attended a protest to show up and "talk about what we want from FOSDEM in the future" instead. He said that he would prepare a summary of the discussion for the community and FOSDEM staff after the event.

I emailed FOSDEM's press contact, Mark Van den Borre, to ask why Dorsey's talk was selected, and whether it was canceled by the organizers or if Dorsey pulled out. He replied quickly, but said that he was unable to provide answers on those topics—except to clarify that Dorsey's talk "had nothing to do with sponsorship". FOSDEM has always kept sponsorships and programming separate, and will continue to do so in the future.

In response to the calls for more transparency about FOSDEM planning, spending, and such, he said that "I think you'll be hard pressed to find many more open and transparent conferences than FOSDEM". He cited examples such as FOSDEM's free entry policy, its community-driven programming for devrooms, that FOSDEM publishes its site setup in a public Ansible repository, and the fact that none of the organizers are paid for their work. He did not specifically address the governance or transparency complaints raised by DeVault. However, he indicated a willingness on behalf of the organizers to listen.

We don't want to rest on our laurels. We want to keep improving ourselves and help [like-minded] organisers improve. Respectful contact with thoughtful visitors, speakers and other conference organisers is crucial to that.

When all is said and done, this is a puzzling episode in FOSDEM's long history. If money played no role in Dorsey landing a main stage talk, it's hard to see why his talk was chosen. He has no obvious bona fides to recommend him as an authority on open source. Block is not known as an exceptional contributor to open source. The talk's title and description would be much more at home at a corporate event than FOSDEM. One hopes the complete story will eventually come out to help the community fully understand what transpired here.

Other critiques

FOSDEM has received criticism for more than its choice of keynotes. Even before COVID, the conference had the reputation of being a likely place to catch a seasonal illness. This is because it takes place during the height of cold and flu season, in a crowded venue with poorly ventilated rooms, and draws people (and their germs) from around the world. After the advent of COVID, some prospective attendees have lobbied for organizers to do more to prevent spread of COVID and other diseases, and expressed disappointment with FOSDEM's current policies (or lack thereof). For example, Garrett LeSage took issue with the lack of "any kind of sickness mitigation" in the form of a masks policy or better ventilation.

There is also an "alternative, online venue" named FluConf 2025 that calls out FOSDEM as a place where people gather to talk about projects and "spread a cocktail of pathogens known as the FOSDEM Flu". The FluConf organizers have called, instead, for FOSS participants to publish videos, blog posts, podcasts, or other materials that will be linked from the main FluConf website and promoted online with the #fluConf2025 hashtag by the conference's Mastodon account.

Critiques aside, FOSDEM has been pulled together by an assemblage of volunteers with more passion than resources for decades. Putting on FOSDEM is a largely thankless task, so it seems reasonable that the organizers should get some benefit of the doubt when there is a real or perceived misstep. That does not mean the organizers should be immune to criticism or free from calls for improvement, but perspective—and one hopes kindness—is in order. Perhaps DeVault's, and others', calls for more transparent governance could also lead to reducing the workload on individual FOSDEM organizers and improve the event even further.

to post comments

Speech opportunity.

Posted Jan 28, 2025 18:35 UTC (Tue) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (11 responses)

> "hurr durr he's a billionaire we should automatically dismiss or side against him"
This is missing the point. A billionaire has millions more opportunities to give a public speech than almost all FOSS participants. FOSDEM should not squander the limited number of slots they have in the large room to people that do not need them to be heard.

Speech opportunity.

Posted Jan 28, 2025 18:57 UTC (Tue) by jkingweb (subscriber, #113039) [Link]

That reaction by friendlysock struck me as very much unfriendly, and designed to distract rather than argue in good faith. FOSDEM is for free and open source software developers; the question is whether his companies have benefitted *them*, not "regular people". Never having used Twitter but having seen how Twitter's bait-and-switch reshaped open discourse on the Web, I have serious doubts his contribution is positive, regardless of his wealth.

Speech opportunity.

Posted Jan 28, 2025 19:15 UTC (Tue) by seaninspace (subscriber, #168377) [Link]

Additionally, in my opinion, his obscene wealth was made possible by or through the work of the developers and projects attending, and his presence alone feels out of touch.

Computing and the internet has given us great things, and it is wonderful that so many people that really care about these things can have a place to come together, but the very clear and well documented history of those people or institutions ruthlessly exploiting work like this shouldn't be ignored (it feels like all we have is the GPL anyway). To me, the title of his talk reads more like "how Block will use everyone's work here to make me/Block richer."

Speech opportunity.

Posted Jan 28, 2025 20:54 UTC (Tue) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (4 responses)

Is the goal of the conference to give FOSS people a platform, or to make the best FOSS conference with the resources available?

Maybe the guy can do a really good presentation that's totally in line with the goals of the conference? Maybe he can't? In any case, the moment to complain about it is after the fact, not beforehand based on hypotheticals on what may or may not happen.

I'm of the opinion that they who organise it get to make the rules. If you don't like the choices they make, run your own conference.

Speech opportunity.

Posted Jan 28, 2025 21:17 UTC (Tue) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (3 responses)

(Believe it or not, I do run a yearly FOSS-related event).

If FOSDEM has to make a choice between the talk that will benefit the most FOSS, and the talk that will make the best conference, I hope they chose the former.
In the big picture conferences are not important, if J.Dorsey does not give his talk at FOSDEM, he will give it elsewhere if it is of any value, so nothing important has been lost.

Speech opportunity.

Posted Jan 29, 2025 16:40 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (2 responses)

> if J.Dorsey does not give his talk at FOSDEM, he will give it elsewhere if it is of any value, so nothing important has been lost.

Debate has been lost maybe? A long time ago.

Giving such a "bad guy" the limited space, precious time and honor of a one-way keynote looks bad indeed. On the other hand, it would be very interesting to invite people like him in another type of setting, something like those "fireside" chats: a place where he would be asked difficult questions. Or even a plain interview (does not have to be FOSDEM). Even his fiercest contemptors agree that he has extensive open-source "profiteering" experience. Such an live debate could be much more interesting than him just giving his talk elsewhere and then various echo chambers commenting it. Would he accept? Would "passionate" open source advocates accept to engage with him too?

No, not going to happen either. We all need to stick to our comfort of our existing opinions.

Fighting _individual_ "bad guys" like him is emotional and immature. As long as he has not done anything illegal, what needs to be fought is the _system_ that allows people like him, not the persons themselves. And who knows that system better than the people exploiting it the "best"? In other words, we need _more_ billionaires questioning why their tax rate is "lower than their secretary's" and we certainly need to engage with them. They have a lot to share.

Speech opportunity.

Posted Jan 29, 2025 18:36 UTC (Wed) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (1 responses)

> Fighting _individual_ "bad guys" like him is emotional and immature. As long as he has not done anything illegal, what needs to be fought is the _system_ that allows people like him, not the persons themselves. And who knows that system better than the people exploiting it the "best"? In other words, we need _more_ billionaires questioning why their tax rate is "lower than their secretary's" and we certainly need to engage with them. They have a lot to share.

Speaking as someone who works at a giant corporation that does a fair amount of FOSS work, I can tell you right now that any talk with the title "Infusing Open Source Culture into Company DNA" will be entirely content-free. It will be filled with vague platitudes about the "power of open source" and buzzwords such as "synergy." You will not learn anything the least bit useful from it.

Speech opportunity.

Posted Jan 29, 2025 19:27 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

This may comes as a shock but billionaires are not all carbon copies of each other and they don't all behave the same and all follow the same standard policies. Also small fraction of their being is still unpredictably human - as incredible as it may sound. Especially in some unscripted interview context. Not in a scripted keynote: agreed.

That's why it matters to be open and curious and willing to listen. Not to anything in any context of course, but not to "nothing ever, BAD (tm)!" either.

I honestly don't know whether Dorsey is the best billionaire to pay attention to. I'm just saying that "lalalala never listen to billionaires" is a pretty "primal" attitude going nowhere. Dorsey seems to have a relatively complex history, for instance he left BlueSky because it was becoming "another Twitter".

Speech opportunity.

Posted Jan 30, 2025 1:57 UTC (Thu) by Heretic_Blacksheep (guest, #169992) [Link] (2 responses)

I'd argue that if Dorsey's speech had been less self congratulatory on the surface and more about the financial end of getting open source funded and its potential gotchas it would have been more on point for community oriented FOSS conferences like FOSDEM. FOSDEM is more about social networking and increasing the visibility of small projects or hard problems and solutions that may benefit wider audiences irrespective of corporate or government interests. One of those hard problems is financial backing.

That's not how the speech title comes across. To me, Dorsey was intending to talk about exploitation of open source concepts and work product in the typical corporate speak: free labor and ideas from the commons for a better bottom line. This makes it inappropriate for any grass roots open source conference and more appropriate for astroturfed corporate cheer leading conferences.

So to me, the Spacecake comment was definitely over the top and rightfully moderated, while friendlysock was using one of the many tropes detractors use to derail criticism they don't like (throwing insults trope). It's not that friendlysock is missing the point, they're actively trying to derail criticism.

Speech opportunity.

Posted Jan 30, 2025 3:17 UTC (Thu) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link] (1 responses)

> friendlysock was using one of the many tropes detractors use to derail criticism they don't like (throwing insults trope). It's not that friendlysock is missing the point, they're actively trying to derail criticism.

Criticism of criticism is strictly as valid as the original one. Also, I see no insults in this quote.

I'm not defending Dorsey, but it is disingenuous to label everything you disagree with as "derailment" and downplay opposing viewpoints as something "they don't like".

Speech opportunity.

Posted Feb 2, 2025 22:42 UTC (Sun) by ghodgkins (subscriber, #157257) [Link]

Re insults, I would guess Heretic_Blacksheep was referring to the phrase "hurr durr," which when used in a quote implies (at best) that the quoted speaker is a "stereotypical idiot."

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hurr_durr

Speech opportunity.

Posted Jan 30, 2025 8:02 UTC (Thu) by lyda (subscriber, #7429) [Link]

Agreed. Folks like Dorsey get lots of opportunities to speak and air their views. Most speakers at FOSDEM do not.

I have no issue with folks like Dorsey attending and listening at events like FOSDEM. I wish more would. They might make better decisions.

Square and "Open Source Culture"

Posted Jan 28, 2025 21:50 UTC (Tue) by proski (guest, #104) [Link] (1 responses)

I helped my friend connect her iPhone to a Square Card Reader. The app would fail to find the reader. It would also give unhelpful instructions how to fix it. After some searching online, it was clear that a newer iOS was needed. However, that iPhone was too old to be upgraded. The instructions for the Reader said that that the "most recent" iOS was needed, as if Apple could break the Square app by releasing a new iOS version.

That's not the "Open Source Culture". Typical open source software is very specific about the requirements. If those requirements are not satisfied, the software complains about it. If an open source app lacks proper error messages, users will complain and propose fixes.

It's the proprietary software that has a stiff upper lip and shifts the blame onto the user. "Have you read the instructions? Is your iOS the most recent? No? You are doing it wrong, not me."

Square and "Open Source Culture"

Posted Jan 29, 2025 10:38 UTC (Wed) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Part of the problem is that Apple really can break updates to existing apps by releasing new iOS versions. First, it's not permissible to have an explicit "legacy" app in the App Store that's no longer updated - your App Store apps have to be kept up-to-date. Second, if you use older APIs in a new App Store submission, it'll either be rejected outright (so you can't put up the app at all using the APIs that exist in an older iOS), or you'll be permitted into the App Store but with security flags set such that current iOS mocks out those APIs rather than returning real results. And third, which causes the problem, those newer APIs are unavailable on older iOS versions.

The three parts combine to create a situation where the existence of a newer iOS version breaks the app for older phones; you can't use the older APIs for access in your current App Store submission at all, but are required to use the current APIs. If you do use the older APIs, then you get cut off from hardware access on phones running current iOS. But if you use the current APIs, you get cut off from hardware access on phones running older iOS, and there will be phones running older iOS that can't update to a version with the current APIs in it.

Plus, to keep your app in the App Store, you can't tell users if this is, or is not, the case - you must not blame Apple for problems with your app, even if they are caused by Apple policies. As a result, it's impossible to have the app available on iOS for non-EU users (and for EU users who don't install an alternative to the App Store) while also having clear errors.

He could pay people for their work

Posted Jan 28, 2025 22:12 UTC (Tue) by lunaryorn (guest, #111088) [Link] (12 responses)

In 2024 Forbes estimated Jack Dorsey's net worth to be about 5.6 billion.

With that money he could pay all FOSDEM 2025 attendants, all 10000 of them, a yearly salary of $50000 for their work, for ten years, and still have 600 million left, which is about two orders of magnitude more than I, as an employed software developer, will ever make in my entire life.

He took other people's work for free, never gave much back in return, and then gets to talk about how great is is to do open source work for free?

I don't know, but with that in mind I find giving him the center stage on a volunteer conference of mostly unpaid volunteer developers just gross.

He could pay people for their work

Posted Jan 28, 2025 22:55 UTC (Tue) by cen (subscriber, #170575) [Link] (11 responses)

Kindly disagree. Open source licenses explicitly allow any company to take the work and not return anything, as long as they respect the license terms. It's about code freedom, not about fighting capitalism and extracting money. As a matter of fact, my general feeling is that the majority of OSS not only believes in "Free as in freedom" but also in "Free as in beer".

He could pay people for their work

Posted Jan 28, 2025 23:48 UTC (Tue) by warrax (subscriber, #103205) [Link] (1 responses)

That depends very much on the particular license. MIT/BSD license certainly, GPL maybe, AGPL... less so.

He could pay people for their work

Posted Jan 29, 2025 15:35 UTC (Wed) by ericproberts (guest, #139553) [Link]

From the AGPLv3:

> This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program.

> If you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge.

As long as you don't modify the source the AGPL absolutely lets you "take the work and not return anything". Even if you modify the source the only thing you have to provide is the modified source code, and not even to the original authors -- to "all users interacting" with the your service.

He could pay people for their work

Posted Jan 29, 2025 0:00 UTC (Wed) by intgr (subscriber, #39733) [Link]

Both parent posts are missing the point. For a discussion about the criteria for speakers at a FOSS conference, the question should not be license compliance or wealth.

It should be about who is a valuable member and contributor to the FOSS ecosystem.

He could pay people for their work

Posted Jan 29, 2025 13:03 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

> Open source licenses explicitly allow any company to take the work and not return anything, as long as they respect the license terms.

Sure. But that doesn't mean those who just parasite off of the ecosystem get to come to a venue and preach about how they know open source.

He could pay people for their work

Posted Jan 29, 2025 15:02 UTC (Wed) by lunaryorn (guest, #111088) [Link] (6 responses)

Sure, but - sticking to the "free as in beer" analogy - there's a world of a difference between volunteers who organize a free beer party, run it, work the counter, clean the glasses, etc., and people who come to such an event and truck off whole barrels of free beer to sell them elsewhere for big money.

Even if that was legally allowed, or even considered the volunteer free beer party community would probably not appreciate if one of the truckers later came to their event and held a keynote about how great and tasty the beer was ;)

He could pay people for their work

Posted Jan 29, 2025 17:55 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (5 responses)

> and people who come to such an event and truck off whole barrels of free beer to sell them elsewhere for big money. Even if that was legally allowed, ...

As you demonstrate yourself, this is a poor analogy because "stealing" open-source does not deprive anyone else from using it. That aside...

> the volunteer free beer party community would probably not appreciate if one of the truckers later came to their event and held a keynote about how great and tasty the beer was ;)

That's an expected and very natural response, but it's an emotional and not very useful one. The better response is to try to leverage the opportunity of an exchange with the rare (legal) "thieves" who come forward to study and understand why and how all the many other "thieves" also act like this and what could be done about it.

This reminds me when University of Minnesota researchers were adding vulnerabilities to the Linux kernel https://lwn.net/Articles/853717/ A lot of reactions looked like "Booo, you are BAD people! You're banned!". Emotionally and totally missing the critical point and iceberg below the surface: how are many more and much more discrete actors doing the same thing? With a lot more money and resources.

Unlike an authorized "Red Team", those attempts were not ethical at all but it was actual and useful research and these researchers had things to share. I hope they got a chance to. Maybe they did outside of the public eye and asocial networks.

He could pay people for their work

Posted Jan 29, 2025 19:47 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

And also it's completely missing the point - it's not clear but it looks like twitter provided a SERVICE using FLOSS software, and I get the impression that Dorsey was a willing and full participant in the FLOSS ecosystem. The fact that he then sold his SERVICE-provider company and earned megabucks as a result speaks to his clever business sense, not to any desire (or reality) to take advantage of others.

Again, I get the impression it's just people who lack the ambition, the guts, and the skill to take advantage of an opportunity, who have gone green at the gills because Dorsey has made his own luck.

And at the end of the day, if they can't make money off FLOSS but Dorsey can, good luck to him! As I say, he doesn't appear to have broken any rules, and there doesn't seem to be any evidence he's even betrayed the spirit ... !!! It's just a bunch of detractors consumed by the green-eyed god ...

Cheers,
Wol

He could pay people for their work

Posted Jan 30, 2025 8:33 UTC (Thu) by lunaryorn (guest, #111088) [Link] (1 responses)

Do forgive me, but I find this a bit of a simplistic standpoint.

We're not living in Lockean times anymore (if indeed we ever did) where you mixed your labour with nature and extracted your property from the land with your own bare hands, metaphorically speaking. There's no labour theory of property anymore in our complex multi-national, highly specialised societies.

As such, I do not believe in the idea of someone seizing an "opportunity", and I do not think it offers much ground for debate. I'd much rather prefer to debate the economical, regulatory, and financial environment of internet companies, which creates these "opportunities" in the first place, and how it's - in my opinion - exceedingly and unfairly favorable towards these companies, compared to traditional industries.

And that said, as others already pointed out, Dorsey, as a person, never participated in any Foss community.

He could pay people for their work

Posted Jan 31, 2025 17:47 UTC (Fri) by alltheseas (guest, #175700) [Link]

> And that said, as others already pointed out, Dorsey, as a person, never participated in any Foss community.

This is false. Dorsey participates in the FOSS nostr community. Via nostr Dorsey has demonstrated he is looking to give back to FOSS communities.

Dorsey attending FOSDEM is a vote of confidence in the FOSS approach, and FOSS contributors.

It is extremely strange y'all are trying to scare away a potential ally who can help further FOSS contributors passion and vocation.

He could pay people for their work

Posted Jan 30, 2025 8:02 UTC (Thu) by lunaryorn (guest, #111088) [Link] (1 responses)

This is about FOSDEM, _the_ social community event for FOSS people who are deeply attached to their FOSS communities. FOSDEM is a community event, first and foremost. It's all about emotions. Emotions are what make people pour in all those countless hours into their favorite projects.

No one would have objected to this keynote if it had been at a commercial developer conference

He could pay people for their work

Posted Jan 30, 2025 10:21 UTC (Thu) by geert (subscriber, #98403) [Link]

I have learned to ignore keynotes at commercial developer conferences, and move on...
(except for the Fireplace Chat with Linus ;-)

For FOSDEM keynotes, people still care...

Drew DeVault has officially lost it

Posted Jan 28, 2025 22:28 UTC (Tue) by cen (subscriber, #170575) [Link] (18 responses)

I've read the blog post behind this so called "protest" and the reasoning is absolutely astonishing to me. To quote this piece of "mastery", a "masterpiece" if you'd like: "After Dorsey sold Twitter to Elon Musk, selling the platform out to the far right for a crisp billion-with-a-“B” dollar payout, the FOSS community shouldered the burden – both with our labor and our wallets – of a massive exodus onto our volunteer-operated servers, especially from victims fleeing the hate speech and harassment left in the wake of the sale."

First of all, what does it matter who and for how much someone sold a company for? What does this have to do with FOSS?

From what I can clearly remember, the OSS social media community was not only willing to "shoulder" this "burden" but was absolutely ecstatic that they can get a gazillion new people onto their platforms, the same sentiment was felt across different OSS oriented media outlets which celebrated the exodus of people from "evil" corporate social media to free and open media.

Under Dorsey, Twitter had some major contribution to open source, Bootstrap, Apache projects, OpenJDK contributions (I've met Twitter enginners in Java FOSDEM rooms..).. this is just from the top of my head. To paint him as some absolute villain of open source seems kinda weird and I'm not even fan of the guy.

Overall, I do not appreciate the negative tone of this article, it's a major event, thousands of people, yes you might get sick like on any other conference, if you don't like that fact simply don't attend.

Drew DeVault has officially lost it

Posted Jan 29, 2025 0:21 UTC (Wed) by notriddle (subscriber, #130608) [Link] (5 responses)

"First of all, what does it matter who and for how much someone sold a company for? What does this have to do with FOSS?"

I think some of the people protesting this scenario have gotten themselves caught in an unfortunate iron triangle situation, where there's three things they want but they can't have all of them.

1. They want to allow financially struggling people to give talks at FOSDEM, so they can't just charge a fee all the time, and means-based testing has an enormous amount of practical problems. Nobody likes to beg; it's undignified, and might require telling the conference-runners about personal matters that you don't want to share.

2. On the other hand, I don't need a committee to do a detailed analysis of his financial records to know that Jack Dorsey is a very rich man. DeVault goes to a lot of trouble to convince people that Dorsey's a bad person, but, personally, I think that's beside the point. It's just a waste giving the slot to someone who doesn't need it.

3. The third arm of this triangle is that, by demanding that the FOSDEM organizers be more transparent, they force FOSDEM to focus on avoiding controversy instead of on picking the best talks. An "objective standard" to hide behind is going to pick a bad choice either way: either anyone submitting a talk now has to share their financial details to prove they aren't secretly a billionaire, or they can't have a "no billionaires" rule and Dorsey can't be rejected solely on the basis of net worth.

Drew DeVault has officially lost it

Posted Jan 29, 2025 9:29 UTC (Wed) by nhippi (subscriber, #34640) [Link]

the #3 is indeed very illustrative. I remember sitting a FOSDEM devroom a decade ago while an alleged billionare did a lightning talk. Alleged, because I'm not sure his net worth was ever really over a billion dollars...

Drew DeVault has officially lost it

Posted Jan 29, 2025 9:43 UTC (Wed) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

In general, the more specific you make the rules regarding some choice, the less room you leave for sound judgement for things that weren't considered before.

It's better to go for general principles and lets the organisers make their choices as they see fit, than demanding a checklist for every talk with the risk sometimes you get bad results.

It's all about trust in the end. If people don't trust the organisers to make the right choices, then those people are going to be unhappy no matter what.

Drew DeVault has officially lost it

Posted Jan 29, 2025 11:55 UTC (Wed) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (2 responses)

> The third arm of this triangle is that, by demanding that the FOSDEM organizers be more transparent, they force FOSDEM to focus on avoiding controversy instead of on picking the best talks.

They do no such thing. You can weather controversy by being transparent about your decision process, or you can stonewall the people who question your decisions, or you can go out of your way to only put non-controversial talks on the panel in the first place.

Choose wisely.

Drew DeVault has officially lost it

Posted Jan 29, 2025 15:41 UTC (Wed) by notriddle (subscriber, #130608) [Link] (1 responses)

You're not answering the actual question. Which one do you do?

1. Investigate the finances of anyone giving a talk at FOSDEM, to make sure they aren't a billionaire?

2. Allow billionaires to give talks at FOSDEM?

3. Accept the hypocrisy of "not allowing" billionaires to give talks at FOSDEM without actually checking?

Drew DeVault has officially lost it

Posted Jan 29, 2025 22:19 UTC (Wed) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]

None of the above. The primary question isn't whether some billionaire or other should get the keynote slot, the question is whether their talk (and/or keynote) has enough I'll-go-to-FOSDEM-because-of-this merit to be there in the first place. Which I kindof doubt at this point.

*Then* if I were to decide this I'd balance that merit against the fact that Jack D. has a heap of other venues to spread his opinions around the globe (some of which he sold to a certain somewhat-decent-guy-turned-alt-right-fanatic who shall not be named here), and thus more weight should probably be given to people who don't.

The consideration that mayyybe speakers and/or organizations with more money than most people can even comprehend should be expected to contribute some of that to the event they wish to participate in … well it's in there too but personally I'd put it firmly in third place.

Drew DeVault has officially lost it

Posted Jan 29, 2025 10:44 UTC (Wed) by jhe (guest, #164815) [Link] (11 responses)

Yes, something is not well with Drew, but this a known thing and has been going on for years. The question is, why did LWN consider it a good idea to bring it up. Drew is a "lolcow" at this point and should not be given visibility, both to avoid people getting enraged by his stuff and to ensure his own safety from these people.

Drew DeVault has officially lost it

Posted Jan 29, 2025 13:08 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Are you seriously implying that things Drew does should not be publicized because other people might attack him, and that this is in some way his fault?!

Drew DeVault has officially lost it

Posted Jan 29, 2025 18:42 UTC (Wed) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (1 responses)

People in this thread are attacking Drew because of his position on RMS. Whether you think that that's "his fault" is mostly a matter of whether you agree with him.

Drew DeVault has officially lost it

Posted Jan 29, 2025 18:58 UTC (Wed) by jhe (guest, #164815) [Link]

It is because of his inflammatory writing style, which is entirely avoidable.

Drew DeVault has officially lost it

Posted Jan 29, 2025 15:15 UTC (Wed) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (7 responses)

The suggestion that someone should not be given visibility to ensure their safety goes against our guidelines against personal attacks. Please do not do that again.

Drew DeVault has officially lost it

Posted Jan 29, 2025 19:04 UTC (Wed) by jhe (guest, #164815) [Link] (6 responses)

This is to far-fetched to be plausible. I think this is a smokescreen and i violated some other taboo. I concede that i said something offensive, but even after consulting a 3rd person, we can't figure out what i did wrong. I'm at loss.

Drew DeVault has officially lost it

Posted Jan 29, 2025 19:35 UTC (Wed) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (5 responses)

I thought it was pretty clear, but I'll elaborate: saying that a person should not be "given visibility...to ensure his own safety" can be read as a veiled threat against them. If that was not something you considered and it was not meant that way, great, but it can be read that way. Thanks in advance for your understanding.

Drew DeVault has officially lost it

Posted Jan 29, 2025 20:49 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> I thought it was pretty clear, but I'll elaborate: saying that a person should not be "given visibility...to ensure his own safety" can be read as a veiled threat against them.

And I hate to have to point it out, but it can equally be read as a warning that "you are painting a target on your back".

You are falling into the BBC "balanced coverage" trap. Where people who don't understand what is going on believe that ANY logical argument that makes sense deserves equal coverage. Never mind that some of those arguments clearly belong in some alternate scientific reality.

Which is heaver? A pound of feaathers? A pound of lead? It's obviously a pound of lead, because if you drop them together the lead will hit the ground first.

You're journalists. If you're doing your job PROPERLY you can't jump to conclusions, and I'm afraid I think you have. Yes this could have been a threat. But I don't think so - to me it reads as a clear warning - "you're asking for trouble, AND NOT FROM ME!"

Cheers,
Wol

'can be read' is not a valid standard of reading

Posted Jan 29, 2025 23:25 UTC (Wed) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (3 responses)

If 'can be read" is the new standard here, I do not feel safe to comment anymore. English is such an ambiguous language that anything that non-native speaker write 'can be read' in a hundred different way.
Context matters. Especially If you allow selective quoting by using ellipsis.

You could just have said, "Calling someone lolcow is offensive and unwelcome on LWN". That does not require 'can be read'.

'can be read' is not a valid standard of reading

Posted Jan 30, 2025 0:03 UTC (Thu) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (1 responses)

Let's not be melodramatic here. LWN is within their rights to make reasonable moderation choices about what comments they wish to host on their website. The original comment was at the very least suggesting that a heckler's veto applies to DeVault and LWN should therefore avoid covering him, which is already a problematic argument even if you don't interpret it as a threat of any kind.

But reading it as a threat is not out of the question either. The hypothetical of someone committing an act of violence against DeVault because he wrote something "wrong" on his blog seems (to my mind) so absurd as to be farcical. But if we don't think that's a serious possibility, then that leaves 2½ other readings: The comment can be read as pure trolling (suggesting a danger which does not exist, for the purpose of upsetting people), as a veiled threat (suggesting that the commenter will create the danger), or as an intentionally ambiguous mixture of both. Either way, it does not belong on LWN.

'can be read' is not a valid standard of reading

Posted Jan 30, 2025 11:42 UTC (Thu) by jhe (guest, #164815) [Link]

It doesn't need to be an assault. It is already a big amount of mental stress if strangers paintball or spray your house. This has happened before.

Whatever, if y'all are sure that Drew got this situation under control, I'll shut up about it.

'can be read' is not a valid standard of reading

Posted Jan 30, 2025 0:40 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

The name-calling was definitely part of the decision here; we could have made that more explicit.

High quality entertainment

Posted Jan 28, 2025 23:29 UTC (Tue) by snajpa (subscriber, #73467) [Link] (1 responses)

This whole article is hilariously entertaining, even if it probably wasn't meant to be. Please document further developments :)

High quality entertainment

Posted Jan 28, 2025 23:50 UTC (Tue) by daroc (editor, #160859) [Link]

While we aren't sending any editors to FOSDEM this year, we will have coverage of some talks that are being presented over the internet, and hopefully some guest articles from actual attendees.

If you're attending FOSDEM and interested in writing up some conference coverage, check out the "Write for us" link in the sidebar for information on how we handle guest articles.

Open source everything

Posted Jan 29, 2025 9:03 UTC (Wed) by Foxboron (subscriber, #108330) [Link]

If anyone is curious if Jack has anything to contribute at all. Then his latest X/tweet/toot is probably a good indication, and hold your horse;

> open source everything
https://x.com/jack/status/1883976555686420844

I'm confident this person has nothing of value to contribute on the FOSDEM stage.

The usual calls for "transparency" when people disagree with decisions

Posted Jan 29, 2025 9:08 UTC (Wed) by hailfinger (subscriber, #76962) [Link] (1 responses)

It is somewhat puzzling that some people only call for transparency if they disagree with decisions. I didn't see any calls for transparency from the same people when they were happy with the decisions.

Last year, some people in the MySQL community complained loudly that there was no MySQL devroom at FOSDEM 2024 and called for transparency. The previous years, MySQL apparently had a devroom all the time.

Yes, FOSDEM rejections sting. Happens all the time, also to very deserving projects. I've witnessed that personally and saw it as a chance to improve the submission the following year.

I completely trust FOSDEM organizers to do the right thing.

The usual calls for "transparency" when people disagree with decisions

Posted Jan 29, 2025 15:44 UTC (Wed) by ttuttle (subscriber, #51118) [Link]

Is it actually puzzling? You want someone to make good (in your opinion) decisions. When they make a good one, you're happy. When they make a bad one, you want to know why, so you can either understand it or correct it.

Drew DeVault has a hidden agenda

Posted Jan 29, 2025 10:46 UTC (Wed) by rbranco (subscriber, #129813) [Link]

Drew DeVault was the anonymous coward behind a hit-piece against RMS and hates Glibc.

When I realized he was behind SourceHut I deleted my account. I simply can't trust him.

Let people speak and engage with the ideas in a more constructive - and less infantile - way.

Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point

Posted Jan 29, 2025 14:01 UTC (Wed) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/worst-person-you-know-made...

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 29, 2025 15:28 UTC (Wed) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (24 responses)

Do I understand correctly, that there's a free (as in beer) and apparently useful conference put up by mostly volunteers - and some are demanding(?) (more) transparency, talk about governance, bigger rooms, "disease policies"? It feels like very much like the situation where some users are demanding their pet features from the developer of free software who's working on the project only in his spare time...

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 29, 2025 17:39 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (23 responses)

I'd say it's fairly reasonable to request some sort of policy to minimize disease spread at *any* large gathering in closed rooms, particularly when it has an actual reputation as a disease pit, particularly when the policy is as cheap and simple as "please wear a mask, particularly if you're showing disease symptoms".

(Covid-19 has absolutely not gone away and is not greatly less dangerous -- what has stopped, in a number of countries, is *vaccination* against it. Why am I not going to FOSDEM, well that's one reason. Not vaccinated for years, nobody will vaccinate me -- the UK government doesn't refund pharmacies enough to cover the cost of vaccination, so hardly any pharmacies provide vaccinations any more for anyone not in the age group that can get it on the NHS. I don't want to catch it *yet again*, the last bout took weeks to shake off. Don't particularly want to catch flu either. I doubt I'm the only person skipping FOSDEM for this reason.)

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 29, 2025 18:32 UTC (Wed) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link] (11 responses)

> the UK government doesn't refund pharmacies enough to cover the cost of vaccination, so hardly any pharmacies provide vaccinations any more for anyone not in the age group that can get it on the NHS

In Scotland (sadly still part of the UK) I got the vaccine in a pharmacy just last month, so it should be possible, if you look around for one offering it. It should be easier of course

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 30, 2025 10:42 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (10 responses)

Health is a devolved matter to the Scottish government, so health care is one of the big differences between England and Scotland. Scotland has its own NHS, and it puts more funding into health care, and funds more universal care policies. E.g., prescription medicines are free in Scotland (unlike England).

That said, the covid vaccines do not prevent infection - past a few months. Also, essentially 100% of people are now vaccinated, multiple times over. Everyone alive - other than some babies and young children - has been exposed to and infected by covid multiple times now. Your immunity is as good as it's going to get really, modulo senescence.

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 30, 2025 10:49 UTC (Thu) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link] (9 responses)

> Health is a devolved matter to the Scottish government, so health care is one of the big differences between England and Scotland. Scotland has its own NHS, and it puts more funding into health care, and funds more universal care policies. E.g., prescription medicines are free in Scotland (unlike England).

I am well aware of how the health service works in my country, thank you. Vaccine procurement, authorization, etc, is not devolved, and is largely dependent on the JCVI, so the only thing the SNHS can decide is whether to make them available for free or not and to whom, but private pharmacies can sell it (or not) to paying customers independently of it.

> Your immunity is as good as it's going to get really, modulo senescence.

This is illiterate nonsense. "Natural immunity" fades within months from the infection. Vaccines do not do great for infection prevention, but help MASSIVELY with lowering the severity of the illness if it is caught, and the likelihood of long-term effects such as long covid. Please stop spreading anti-vaxx nonsense on LWN, I'm sure you'll get plenty of "likes" from bots if you instead go do that on twitler or whatever it is called this week.

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 30, 2025 11:04 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

> I am well aware of how the health service works in my country, thank you. Vaccine procurement, authorization, etc, is not devolved, and is largely dependent on the JCVI, so the only thing the SNHS can decide is whether to make them available for free or not and to whom, but private pharmacies can sell it (or not) to paying customers independently of it.

In large parts of England they have elected not to -- the cost of doing so is too high, and it was literally driving pharmacies bankrupt (which you'd think would have made it obvious that there was a lot of demand...). So they almost all stopped. I think last I checked there were two left providing vaccinations in all of Cambridgeshire, both with huge backlogs.

> This is illiterate nonsense. "Natural immunity" fades within months from the infection.

There are two distinct things going on here. Antibody levels drop fast -- this is a *good thing* because if you had the immediate post-infection level of antibodies to every disease you ever caught your blood would be a thick soup at best. The level you get after antibody ramp-up is the level you need to drive out an *established disease*, not defeat a newly-landed one). Antibody levels are really easy to measure, so have got most of the attention.

What probably does not fade so fast is T cell recognition of viral antigens: T cells have a remarkably long life (it can be decades!) and remain receptive as long as they live -- but can be killed off by other things, can go nuts attacking some other disease they are also receptive to and get exhausted doing that, etc. But if they survive all that, they will probably protect you from getting actually killed by covid for a long, long time. Not always -- this is statistical -- but probably.

Neither of these things really kick in fast enough to prevent viruses that replicate in the respiratory tract from getting in there, replicating, then going straight back out to infect someone else. That sort of immunity is very hard to attain, which is why no covid vaccine to date prevents transmission, and why the common cold is so incredibly hard to stop.

But, y'know, it's not just getting killed I want to be protected from! I don't much want to land in bed for three weeks feeling like death either, like I did last time I got covid (let alone the two months of being too enervated to do much work). And *that* is helped by reducing exposure, by, say, getting people who might be infectious to wear masks, or just not going to FOSDEM.

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 30, 2025 11:46 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

Another factor is the imprinting if you keep being exposed to the same antigen. Your humoral immune system works on a form of rapid evolution, where B-cells (which later will produce antibodies, when stimulated) are "trained" and selected for in germinal nodes/centres (GCs). Your B cells go through rapid evolution in the GC, to try adapt to antigen collected in the GCs, with a selection pressure applied (at least in part) by T-cells. Different lines of B cells in the GCs will evolve to recognise different features of an antigen - it's a stochastic learning process. You end up with different lines of B-cells that have been trained to recognise different parts of different antigens _in different ways_.

There is evidence that repeated exposure to the same antigen will lead to this system becoming very specifically trained to that antigen - "imprinting". With rapidly evolving pathogens, with rapidly varying antigens, this is not per se a benefit.

E.g., (and without making a specific point about any particular disease), repeated immunisation with a vaccine that contains (or causes the manufacture of) 1 specific, unchanged, antigenic protein of a pathogen, is likely to lead to a population of B cells with a stronger bias towards that antigenic protein (kind of like doing ML with a large data-set except it's strongly biased to one feature). Yet, if that pathogen evolves rapidly in the wild it is likely to lead to mutations in that antigenic protein so as to evade those immune responses trained to that old version of that protein.

It is probably better to train your immune system with a /spectrum/ of antigens. Not just 1 protein from 1 version of a pathogen that was in the wild 3+ years ago (and has evolved numerous new, slightly different, lineages since). The literature suggests this is the case across a number of diseases, where we have some data on repeat exposure to unchanged v evolved antigens (be they from vaccinations or infection). That is NOT to say there is no value in immunisation by vaccination! But it does suggest there may be /diminishing/ value - even sometimes negative value - in repeated vaccination with old antigens (in the general sense). There is /some/ evidence in the literature this may be the case for ever-repeating covid19 vaccinations (all in the west present a subunit protein of the spike, with a very infrequently updated version of it). In tandem with vaccinations, we all are anyway - unavoidably - exposed to the full pathogen, through minor infections, when it comes to highly infectious respiratory pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2, so we will still get that wide exposure.

Then there are also T-cells, which directly kill pathogens, and also help mediate B-cell evolution. Some will last you pretty much a lifetime, as you say.

Things here are fascinatingly complex. There are many systems and interactions. There are trade-offs. Sadly, clever people on both sides prioritise politics over educating themselves and reading actual scientific information - instead getting their knowledge largely from popular political media, which is nearly always laughably simplified to point of just being incorrect - and that's true be it "Colbert" or "Fox News".

There is far too much knee-jerk idiocy on /both/ sides.

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 30, 2025 11:56 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Oh, "immune imprinting" and "original antigenic sin" are interesting terms to search for in your favourite tool to google scholarly articles - and then follow the thread of higher-prominence citing articles. There's a body of work on this in immunology predating 2020, and so generally free of the politicised stuff post-20, and it's interesting and informative.

Complexity. Trade-offs. They abound.

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 30, 2025 12:04 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

> Neither of these things really kick in fast enough to prevent viruses that replicate in the respiratory tract from getting in there, replicating, then going straight back out to infect someone else. That sort of immunity is very hard to attain, which is why no covid vaccine to date prevents transmission, and why the common cold is so incredibly hard to stop.

There is /some/ evidence that nasal spray vaccinations have a degree of better efficacy for preventing covid infection than injected vaccinations. There are many different kinds of T-cells, and 1 variant is specific to the mucosa - a kind of front-line of defence, at the point of entry for respiratory infections. Nasal spray vaccines appear to stimulate immune responses in those mucosal cells a little bit better than muscular injections.

Been a while since I read into this though, and the evidence base was still preliminary and weak/suggestive at that point. I have not followed evidence since, and I do not know if stronger evidence now exists and if so whether it confirms or contradicts the earlier. (I don't think nasal spray covid vaccinations are widely used yet (??), in which case there is unlikely to be any strong evidence yet either).

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 30, 2025 11:05 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Authorisation, etc., may be centralised, I thought though you were talking about something connected to funding - free vaccines at pharmacies. If you meant private, sure, that's not "NHS Scotland".

You mentioned "natural immunity", not I. Vaccine immunity fares no better (it physiologically can not do better, for obvious reasons). Your rant there is completely off and disconnected from the body of published evidence - your illiteracy claim has the sense misplaced, if anything. But.. .that's not for LWN.

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 30, 2025 11:08 UTC (Thu) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (1 responses)

> This is illiterate nonsense. "Natural immunity" fades within months from the infection.

… unless you continue to be exposed to low-level background viral load. Granted that this probably is not the case for most of the troglodytes who only leave their cave once a year, for FOSDEM. :-P

> Vaccines do not do great for infection prevention,

Depends on the vaccine. They did super with smallpox (and would do the same with measles if it wasn't for the conspiracy nutcases).

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 30, 2025 11:30 UTC (Thu) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link]

> Depends on the vaccine. They did super with smallpox (and would do the same with measles if it wasn't for the conspiracy nutcases).

Yeah totally, was talking about the covid ones exclusively

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 30, 2025 14:24 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> > Your immunity is as good as it's going to get really, modulo senescence.

> This is illiterate nonsense. "Natural immunity" fades within months from the infection.

And that's ill-informed arrogance.

The reason the common cold (AND CoVid!) is usually harmless is because it is so common. It comes round every few months in a slightly new variant and re-infects you. And because your body remembers the old variant it fights the new one off with ease. So your natural immunity IS as close to perfect as it can get. The virus is constantly changing, your immunity is constantly changing, there's a balance that shifts back and forth.

HINT: Even when CoVid was brand new, one of the factors that helped it spread so fast, was because the MAJORITY of victims did not know they'd been infected. It was just the unfortunate older people who got hit so hard because it was too different from anything they'd ever met before.

Cheers,

Wol

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 30, 2025 14:33 UTC (Thu) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

This is getting off-topic and unnecessarily heated. Let's end the COVID threads here -- all of them.

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 29, 2025 18:43 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

> (Covid-19 has absolutely not gone away and is not greatly less dangerous

Actually, Covid is just a new variant of the Common Cold. The problem is that word "new". Because we had never met it before, it spread faster, more easily, and was far more severe, especially in older people with weakened imune systems.

And of course, the press spread absolute nonsense because they're not interested in investigative journalism any more (not that the gutter press ever were). I remember someone (no names, no pack drill) saying "even our grandparents never saw anything like that". EXCUSE ME??? All four of my grandparents lived through the 1919 Spanish Flu epidemic which was *much* worse. (Admittedly both my maternal grandparents were children, my paternal grandparents were in their 20s.)

We had a very similar epidemic round about 1890 (just before my grandparents were born), that killed thousands upon thousands in the UK. And we now understand it much better because we realised that (a) the virus behind that epidemic was THE common cold virus (okay there are a fair few different viruses but that virus is now the one behind 30-40% of all cases of the Common Cold) and (b) Covid is almost the same virus. Which to some extent makes sense because kids (a) are used to meeting all sorts of new bugs, and (b) have strong immune systems. So kids never *seemed* to catch it. But older people with weaker but more experienced immune systems were knocked sideways because they'd never met this particular virus before. Older people don't have (that) much problem coping with new variants of old cold viruses because they don't change much, but a completely new cold virus is another story!

And talking of stories, those into Royal History may know that Princess Mary of Teck came from Denmark to marry the Prince of Wales (who she'd never met). When she arrived, she was told "The Prince of Wales has died," (from this very epidemic) "would you like to marry the new Prince of Wales?". To which she replied "I came to marry the Prince of Wales, so I'll marry him, whichever that Prince may be". And the couple are now known to history as King Geeorge V & Queen Mary.

Cheers,
Wol

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 29, 2025 19:08 UTC (Wed) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (1 responses)

Before this runs away into a tangent about how severe COVID is or isn't (or royal histories...) let's stop here. Thanks.

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 30, 2025 11:18 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

(Taken to email to try to rectify some of the backwards assumptions in that reply, such as that "the common cold" is a type of virus rather than a description of symptoms...)

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 30, 2025 10:21 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

The 08/09 winter season was worse than either of the "covid pandemic" winters in the UK.

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 30, 2025 10:29 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (4 responses)

> particularly when the policy is as cheap and simple as "please wear a mask, particularly if you're showing disease symptoms".

Firstly, the evidence of efficacy of masks to protect against respiratory illness is not good. The best source of evidence in the field of medical interventions are the systematic analyses of the primary evidence base by the Cochrane Library, and the last 3 or so reviews they have done shows that - over the data from the primary studies - there is not evidence of efficacy (and the data is also poor). Tracy Greenhalgh (a prominent mask supporter), et al, would disagree with how the Cochrane review was framed, but their own systematic analysis came with the same result - no statistically significant protective effect.

Secondly, masks are not harm-free. They impede lip-reading for the hard of hearing (a family of member of mine found the pandemic very difficult for this reason - they rely on lip-reading). They create mountains of plastic waste. They lead to the inhalation of plastic micro-fibres.

So... efficacy: Questionable at best. No statistically significant effect in systematic reviews of the data. To be weighed against /definite/ harms. That can NOT be a basis for policies that /impose/ on people.

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 30, 2025 14:17 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

> So... efficacy: Questionable at best. No statistically significant effect in systematic reviews of the data. To be weighed against /definite/ harms. That can NOT be a basis for policies that /impose/ on people.

Efficacy at WHAT? Protecting the wearer? Or protecting other people?

Part of the see-sawing in the UK was the belief by the medical profession that CoVid wasn't air-born - as a result of a half-remembered TB study from a century before, that explicitly said its conclusions were specific to TB and should NOT be used for anything else.

And the above WHAT question - masks do not protect the wearer! But the evidence that they help prevent an infected person from spreading it is apparently quite strong. If you're infected, you shouldn't go out. But if do go out you should wear a mask. Not for your sake, but for other peoples'. And the face shields apparently, while a very good comforter, are pure ineffective placebo at both tasks.

Cheers,
Wol

Stop this

Posted Jan 30, 2025 14:35 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Wol, you know that this is far off-topic for LWN. Why do we have to continue asking you to stop drawing out this kind of conversation? Don't do this, please.

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 30, 2025 15:10 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

I am cognisant of the editors warnings, but I want to make a factual correction:

> the evidence that they help prevent an infected person from spreading it is apparently quite strong.

This is incorrect. We have primary R(C)?CT evidence for protective effect on wearers, and enough of it for Cochrane to have been able to conduct their systematic reviews - though, the body of data there is still, by their standards, poor. We do NOT (TTBOMK) have any substantive evidence for this novel "source control" theory (i.e., that even if they do not protect wearer, they protect others) for masks. I.e., we don't even have any RCT.

It stops here

Posted Jan 30, 2025 15:13 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

What part of "this is off-topic, please stop" is hard to understand here?

This article is now moderated; the bar for any new comments will be quite high.

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 30, 2025 10:41 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm pretty sure that a "wear a mask" policy would be at least controversial as the lack of disease policy... I'm afraid catching a cold in winter is practically inevitable if someone goes to crowded spaces (public transport, school, etc.). In a previous decade I was single and rarely used public transport to commute - but nearly every time I did take the tram and underground, I caught cold. Now this problem is solved, the kids bring home all new germs from kindergarten/school, so I don't even need to leave home :-)

One can make precautions like getting vaccinated, wearing a mask or avoiding such places. Maybe the conference could be moved to spring.

I feel entitlement-vibes

Posted Jan 30, 2025 18:07 UTC (Thu) by laurent.pinchart (subscriber, #71290) [Link]

As far as I understand, one of the key reasons why the FOSDEM takes place on the first weekend of February is because the ULB campus is free of classes on the week before, as students are on a break after an intensive period of exams. This gives the organizers time to setup everything for the conference. Moving it to spring would be quite difficult, if not impossible (assuming of course it stays organized at the ULB, moving to a different venue would be an entirely different question).

The other critiques appear quite crankish

Posted Jan 29, 2025 16:57 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

I'm surprised at the inclusion of Garret Lesage's critique. Appears to be well along the crank spectrum.

Privacy matters too

Posted Jan 29, 2025 18:02 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> Perhaps DeVault's, and others', calls for more transparent governance could also lead to reducing the workload on individual FOSDEM organizers and improve the event even further.

Not necessarily. One of the reasons privacy matters is: it gives more "trial and error" freedom.

Here's an analogy: imagine you don't get a chance to rewrite your commits before submitting them. Like this:
https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/tip/www/rebaseharm.md

Or even one step further: imagine the undo history of your editor has to be public.

This would slow you down and certainly not "reduce your workload"

Now you don't want completely opaque decisions process either, especially for an open-source conference. There is a fine line and some level of trust is required. If that trust fails after repeated attempts to provide gentle feedback, then "cancel" and fork and do your own conference/project. Happens all the time.

> That does not mean the organizers should be immune to criticism or free from calls for improvement, but perspective—and one hopes kindness—is in order.

Hopefully!

Counting attendees

Posted Jan 30, 2025 10:35 UTC (Thu) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link] (2 responses)

>unclear how many people attend FOSDEM [..there is no..] other way of counting attendees

No way? Count MAC addresses? Passively listen to 802.11 or mobile networks and count station IDs? [If you are completely off line, I guess that's your prerogative, but it probably comes to an insignificant number in the end.]

Counting attendees

Posted Jan 30, 2025 10:51 UTC (Thu) by geert (subscriber, #98403) [Link]

(a.o.) MAC address statistics are typically shown in the closing keynote. Random and changing addresses are very popular.

Counting attendees

Posted Jan 30, 2025 11:10 UTC (Thu) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]

So how many people even know how to turn off their address randomization so that they *can* be counted reliably? And how many have two devices, or three, vs. how many leave them at home because they don't want their phones to get hacked?

Post the talk notes beforehand

Posted Jan 30, 2025 15:08 UTC (Thu) by leigh (guest, #175596) [Link]

There’s a lot of assumptions being made about the content of his talk based on the title. While I’m in agreement with those who are skeptical and don’t think it would’ve necessarily been appropriate to have him speak, perhaps the discussion could’ve been better informed (and less inflammatory) if he’d ’open sourced’ his talk before he gave it, giving everyone an opportunity to see what he had to say.

Keynotes

Posted Feb 1, 2025 15:08 UTC (Sat) by jsakkine (guest, #80603) [Link]

2025 will be The Year of Keynotes ;-)

When the comedy writes itself.