Speech opportunity. [LWN.net]

Speech opportunity.

Posted Jan 28, 2025 18:35 UTC (Tue) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
Parent article: FOSDEM keynote causes concerns

> "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.

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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.