Notices by Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 86

@marijn totally agree with what you're saying here. One thing that came up in discussions on a #NZOSS mailing list was that many business people want to pay a fair amount to support the long-term viability of free code projects, but business accounting makes it difficult for them. If they can itemize the spending as a business expense, rather than a charitable donation, or worse just giving money away, that makes it much easier.

Uncomfortable as I am with military metaphors (which are all too common in activist circles), things like gOogleDocs are not the 'tools of the enemy', but their weapons. Choosing to use them is more like shooting ourselves with the guns of the enemy, than it is like using their tools. Their tools of the enemy are all the things we *don't* have access to, like the source code of the goOgle search algorithms, or the user data they use to train their machine translation algorithms.

@alcinnz it also gives muckrakers like #YashaLevin ammunition to use against EFF (for reasons I'm still trying to figure out):
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine
@aral @Shamar

@alcinnz It's one thing for the #EFF to form a united front with our corporate exploiters to defend #NetNeutrality against the cable oligopoly, or to fight #DRM #Crippleware pushed by the #MPAA, or some other issue where our interests are actually aligned. That's just good strategy (never fight a war on two fronts). But I have to agree with @aral and @Shamar on them having corporate-sponsored fellowships. We're seen what that kind of sell-out has done to #Mozilla, #Linux Foundation, and others

@bjoern also, everything I read about the acquisition said that GH had run out of money, and was struggling to attract any more investment. In other words, their theory that keeping the last mile non-free would help their business attract enough paying customers to cover their costs, was wrong. For all we know, there might have been more people who would have given them money if all their code was free, or at least enough of it to self-host. #GitLab seem to be keeping the lights on ...
@clacke

@selea huh? How does this relate?

@clacke @bjoern given that what you're selling is, in reality, your users, I think what GH did is in the same ethical domain as selling people into slavery. It was an utter betrayal of thousands of open source projects that trusted them as a vendor-neutral host.

@clacke @bjoern I doubt I would have taken money from MS. If I didn't want to keep running the service, I would have announced that to my users, told them what MS had offered me, and invited them to put together a #PlatformCooperative with a competing offer. If I did take MS money, at minimum, I definitely would have released the non-free elements of the GH stack under a free license, as a condition of any deal, so users have the option to self-host the tool they are familiar with.

Hey fediverse admins, have you made sure your instance is being counted by https://the-federation.info/ ? I love being able to respond with that stats site URL when people say "nobody uses federated social networks" elsewhere on the web :) It now counts nodes running any one of 36 server apps, across 9 federation protocols, including #OStatus, and #ActivityPub, reporting about 2 1/2 million users.

@dansup in hindsight, the great merger that formed GNUsocial is starting to look more like:
* Evan walking away to focus on pump.io
* Matt Lee walking away to focus on GNU FM, which GNU social was created to keep the whole social network palaver *out* of
* #OpenSocial continuing as a GNU project, thus the rename. If I'm right, it becomes a lot clearer why #Mastodon, #postActiv, and #Pleroma happened, and why the # of instances running them eclipsed GS fairly quickly.
@clacke @mmn

@Shrigglepuss "I'd like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as GNU is in fact, Windows/GNU, or as I've recently taken to calling it, Windows plus GNU. GNU is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning Windows system made useful by the Windows-style "desktop" UI and other vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by people who run computer shops."
- #Microsoft, circa 2040 ;-P

Also, GH use "MIT" for everything and died as an independent company, while these aforementioned companies who use #copyleft licenses are still afloat. Take note.

It just occurred to me that #GitHub ran out of money and had to sell themselves to MS. While companies like #Loomio, whose code is 100% free under #AGPL, and #Wire (A/GPL), are still in business. Doesn't that prove that the infamous "#OpenSource almost everything" creed of the GH founders is a failure, and you might as well free all your code? (looking at you #GitLab)
http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/11/22/open-source-everything.html

@humanetech I don't think MS have been won over on the benefits of #OpenSource development. If it was that, their acquisition announcement would have included liberating the last few non-free bits of GH. Not to mention their many other chunks of non-free software (Windows, Office etc). AFAICT MS is primarily a *user* of other peoples's #FreeCode, not a free code developer.

#TIL that while #OpenMoko Inc. might be dead, OpenMoko continues as an "open phone" project, with a volunteer community:
https://openmoko.org/

@dansup
> I would fork it because @mmn isn't responsive to issues or MRs.

Which is another reason (aside from small # of instances left) that people are saying GNUsocial is dead, and why
@maiyannah forked it to create #postActiv. Just out of curiosity, does #PixelFed share any code with GNUsocial, or did you start from scratch?
@clacke @mmn

@humanetech sure. But I was asking more specifically what we can infer from the decision by MS to buy a centralized chat platform for their newly acquired code forge, which had only just sold its own one? For example, what might this mean for existing integrations between GH and other chat platforms like #Gitter? Will these be degraded over time, to push GH users onto Spectrum? Also, why did MS buy a tiny beta product like Spectrum, and not buy or partner with Slack?

@dansup would be good to see the AP support finally rolled out though. Also, it would be great if all the folks still running #GNUsocial would make sure they are being represented in the stats. Having only 5 nodes listed on https://the-federation.info/ , for example, doesn't give an impression of a project in the prime of health ;)
@clacke

@certifiedperson a lot of people are starting to talk about how to make our activism more compassionate, and less aggressive and bloody-minded:
http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2013/04/10-key-points-becoming-more-compassionate-activist

I wrote a piece somewhat inspired by the excellent pieces #FrancesLee has written on this topic:.
https://libcom.org/forums/feedback-content/universal-friendship-radical-goal-09012019