@Wolf480pl @bob @wodan @danielinux @fosdem
I'm not sure we can have both.
In this @aral is totally right: in the very moment you take their money (either directly or through their developers' time and code) you legitimate them.
@Shamar @Wolf480pl@niu.moe @bob @wodan@x0r.be @fosdem @aral
FOSDEM is a platform, not an enemy. Boycotting FOSDEM is leaving it to the openwashing machine. Instead, you could use it to bring these issues to a broader public including developers who have been hired by these companies, and fail to see the big picture.
@danielinux @Wolf480pl @bob @wodan
@fosdem is a platform.
A #marketing platform.
It is as neutral as marketing is.
Are all voices equally heard on that platform? I guess they are not.
So I agree with @aral that while neutrality is neutral in theory, in practice it's not.
By attending to FOSDEM you have near zero chance to really challenge Google or Mozilla, while they can simply censor you by ignoring you.
Exploiting this asymmetry they exploit your presence to foster their propaganda.
@Shamar @Wolf480pl@niu.moe @bob @wodan@x0r.be @fosdem @aral
@Shamar how can you say that voices are not equally heard? Sponsoring FOSDEM gives the sponsor no possibility to interfere with the program. Devrooms have their own schedules that FOSDEM itself cannot veto. Talks like:
https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/contributopia/
happen more and more often.
Talk to developers. Interact. Exchange ideas. Most people are as critical as you are, and you can meet people spending effort to develop free and decentralized alternatives to GAFAM
Actually a talk on this would be interesting. The schedules are published and so you could create statistics on what percentage of speakers were employed by a silo company at the time.
That would then help to raise questions such as whether there should be a limit on the number of Google speakers at a conference, how much influence those companies really have and things like that.
@bob @fosdem @aral @wodan @Wolf480pl @danielinux
The problem in this is that the number of Google speakers is way lower than the number of Google influenced speaker.
Depending on the amount of money your project get from Google (or anybody else) you might be more or less prone to support their interests.
See #Mozilla, as an example.
@danielinux @Wolf480pl @bob @wodan @aral
Well you could do a simple experiment next time you go: count attenders to talks from GAFAM employees + sponsored projects + Mozilla's ones and compare that to the number of attenders to talks from groups and developers that are totally independent from them.
I've never been at @fosdem so I don't really know if their aggregated impact on the FOSDEM narration is statistically relevant. But I guess so.
Am I wrong?
(honest question...)