Drew DeVault has officially lost it [LWN.net]

Drew DeVault has officially lost it

Posted Jan 29, 2025 0:21 UTC (Wed) by notriddle (subscriber, #130608)
In reply to: Drew DeVault has officially lost it by cen
Parent article: FOSDEM keynote causes concerns

"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 9:43 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.