Speech opportunity. [LWN.net]

Speech opportunity.

Posted Jan 28, 2025 21:17 UTC (Tue) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
In reply to: Speech opportunity. by kleptog
Parent article: FOSDEM keynote causes concerns

(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.

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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".