Or, FOSSbros make me cry

Look, I like open source, and the general FOSS philosophy. But cmon man, the way FOSS is represented it makes me think the FSF is a front for Microsoft to make FOSS look like a joke and people are way too happy to be the caricatures.

And who am I to say this? Look up who contributed the bulk of the translations into Romanian for Sileo or FluffyChat and don’t look up how much time I spend hanging around privacy and security spaces on matrix.

Also this will all probably be incomprehensible to anyone who isn’t into tech. Sorry.

Why are techbros?? (Abridged Edition)

I am wont to complain about The Techbros™️ and in fact wrote a whole post about that but the long story short is that there’s a STEM supremacy attitude and very lacking soft skills and social science in the whole tech space. FOSS is absolutely not exempt from this (apart from the cool corner where it’s like 90% transfem hackers but I digress). The FOSS flavour of techbros are particularly annoying in that they’re quasi-religious about idolising a particular dude¹ as a god of sorts, dunking on big tech for stupid reasons, and making massive assumptions about people who are not adherents to their FOSS religion². Which is very funny considering that FOSS is literally a political ideology and set of moral judgements about software and freedom yet they suffer from the perennial techbro lack of bitches humanities knowledge.

The other angle that really shines among FOSSbros is that, like due to the aforementioned lack of humanities knowledge, they refuse to recognise that FOSS is pretty hostile to disabled people – the best experience with a screen reader is absolutely not on any linux distro, it’s squarely in the scary evil big tech OSes; no one seems to want to a11y it up in the FOSS house. On top of this, FOSSbros decry the efforts of Canonical and RedHat to make less jarring and more usable software because it’s not exactly to their exact precise scientifically objective specifications. Well guess what, GNOME is actually nice (on a laptop). There, I said it. Now all the FOSSbros will cry because someone likes GNOME :^)

BACKDOORS!!!!1!!1

Now let’s get into why I think the FSF is a front for Microsoft.

Just spend 5 minutes reading this page on gnu.org. Let it sink in, swish it around in your mind like wine.

In case you’re not technically inclined enough to come to this conclusion yourself, what the author of that section of the GNU site (probably Stallman let’s be real) has done is mix a couple truths with a metric fuckton of lies, speculation, and misinformation predicated on the idea that proprietary software can never do something right nor can the incentives of big tech ever align serendipitously to benefit end users. Normally this applies to Apple and their privacy marketing³ being aligned with things that end users might want, but Microsoft can sometimes have goals that align with what end users want when it’s what big businesses want (see: turning off basically all telemetry using an official MS guide because some businesses have Business Secrets they don’t want MS to see).

Another very frustrating case of this was in response to Kaspersky’s talk about Operation Triangulation⁴ where everyone and their dog on noted techbro congregation HackerNews were calling the key part of the exploit chain a backdoor. Just ignore people who know what they’re talking about saying it probably isn’t and why. Must hate on proprietary at all costs!!!

To bring it back around to my theory on the FSF being an MS front to make FOSS look bad, one of the biggest points in favour of my theory is that they brought back RICHARD STALLMAN despite an outcry from the more level-headed people in FOSS via an open letter. Naturally, FOSSbros organised their own open letter to let women and minorities know they aren’t welcome, but a noted creep and pedophilia defender is. Woo. You couldn’t plan this shit to make the community look worse.

Malleable Definitions

This deserves its own section. In the above-linked gnu.org page, there’s a fair few words that are used in a “you keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means” way. Let’s take a brief look at their greatest hits that make me facepalm so hard it could be used as a renewable energy source!

1. “Backdoors”. Yeah I mentioned one instance above but that one could be one in the abstract sense. This one is Not That. You ready? Windows Update. No notes.
2. “Censorship”. Installing what you want onto a device is not free speech last I checked, but the author of this page sure defines it as such. Saying that preventing application installs is censorship just looks like a joke, not to mention “iPhony/iBad” on that linked page. Literally a caricature. Making the argument that a user deserves the right to freedom can be done without going freeze peach about it. Doubly frustrating is that actual demonstrable censorship in a more accurate freedom of speech sense is linked literally elsewhere on the same website
3. “Spyware”. GNU’s page on surveillance is not as bad, it has some legitimate instances of surveillance and spyware, but oh god it links to this site. I’d like to direct you to basically any web browser page on that site where they unironically call autoupdaters something that makes a program spyware. THAT IS NOT SPYWARE!!!
4. “Security through Obscurity”. This isn’t explicitly an FSF/GNU thing per se, but it’s common enough from fans thereof to mention here. Basically, PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE IS NOT INHERENTLY RELYING ON SECURITY THROUGH FUCKING OBSCURITY. Oops, all caps. It might blow some people’s minds to find out that you can have proprietary software that relies on secure design rather than just not knowing how to navigate the maze as protection. What’s next, calling RSA keys security through obscurity because it’s only secure when you don’t share your private key? I’m sure at least one uninformed person has made that argument somewhere and I want to cry

And an honourable mention to calling UEFI a rootkit. No notes.

Where do we go from here?

Idk donate to Mozilla Foundation or something.

But jokes aside, being more nuanced and reasonable about proprietary software being fine or even sometimes a good tool for a particular job⁵ despite FOSS being an ideal to strive towards. And being open to diverse perspectives, because MS and Apple sure aren’t scared of women and minorities – why is FOSS? The FOSS community needs to take a step back, tell the FSF to grow the fuck up, and meet people where they’re at instead of being obnoxious zealots that people can’t take seriously. Criticise big tech, there’s plenty to criticise, but don’t just make shit up or misrepresent it because again, you’re gonna lose people – it’s certainly making me lose braincells at least.

The steward of FOSS should not be a creepy white man whose heyday was 40 years ago when he wrote the GNU coreutils and preaches strict apostasy from non-FOSS, it should be someone who understands that diversity is strength, that pragmatism gets you far especially when you’re fighting well-resourced enemies, that progress is won by picking fights you can win and building up from there. Basically, I want an Adam Bandt of FOSS. Is that too much to ask for?