Post 2783990 by davidak@chaos.social
(DIR) More posts by davidak@chaos.social
(DIR) Post #2772224 by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2019-01-08T15:45:59Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
Adding @conservancy and “Copyleft Conference” to my personal list of surveillance capitalism whitewashers sponsored by Google and its ilk.It’s not fucking rocket science, people. If you’re sponsored by the wolf, it’s highly unlikely that you’re working in the interests of the sheep.#SurveillanceCapitalism
(DIR) Post #2783990 by davidak@chaos.social
2019-01-08T19:53:12Z
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@aral @conservancy do you assume any action of whitewashing or retained action they should do? would you suggest (anyone) not to take google money (even if it's unconditional)?
(DIR) Post #2783991 by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2019-01-08T22:47:02Z
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@davidak @conservancy There’s so such thing as unconditional money: at the very least you legitimise them if your org has legitimacy in human rights/privacy/etc.Just replace Google with Palantir or Exxon Mobil or Halliburton or The Saudi Royal Family and see if alters how you feel about the core issue.
(DIR) Post #2783992 by bob@soc.freedombone.net
2019-01-08T23:37:29.559023Z
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@aral @conservancy @davidak I think that I understand the history of why Google sponsors various free software related events. A decade ago the company was seen as a big success for free software and open standards ("the most magnificent creature in the [software] ecosystem" - Eben Moglen) but especially in the last five years many things have changed.I generally support Conservancy, but these days having Google sponsor your event is at a minimum a poor public relations choice. It'll be too late to back out now, but if the conference continues beyond this year the sponsors decisions should be revisited.The reason why these big companies sponsor such events is primarily for recruiting and secondarily for brand recognition. Google's actual interest in copyleft at this point seems questionable. As far as I can tell they're on a path towards removing copyleft from Android.I think we're actually at a rather critical time in which while Free Software and copyleft appears to be doing well its future is far from assured. The entire computing industry has been going beyond the personal computing era into a new dystopian phase of "warehouse computing" centralized on a global scale. With the rise of The Cloud there has been a lot of consolidation, and we seem to be heading back towards the mainframe paradigm. Can the user still retain meaningful control in a situation where any computing of importance happens in a warehouse owned by a megacorporation?
(DIR) Post #2797858 by pho4cexa@tiny.tilde.website
2019-01-09T00:32:57Z
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it would take a hell of a lot worse than this to convince me to stop supporting @conservancy because they're an rare and incredibly important organization working in the interests of individuals and the community, and copyleft itself is a topic that needs more prominencebut @aral makes a good point: if Google gives your conference $5k, does that mean talk proposals that intend to lambast their AGPL ban (or anything else) might be rejected, when they otherwise would not be?
(DIR) Post #2797861 by keithzg@mastodon.club
2019-01-09T00:48:26Z
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@pho4cexa @aral @conservancy In a vacuum, that's a valid theoretical concern.But for this particular instance, I mean really any organization or conference with Bradley Kuhn in a prominent role, I'm not exactly going to be too worried about pro-AGPL talks or the like being tossed aside ;)
(DIR) Post #2797862 by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2019-01-09T08:24:55Z
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@keithzg @conservancy @pho4cexa Looks like they also partner with Google: “Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a great example to show the value a non-profit home brings to Free Software projects. GSoC is likely the largest philanthropic program in the Open Source and Free Software community today.”https://opensource.googleblog.com/2014/09/software-freedom-conservancy-and-google.htmlGood luck to us getting policymakers to regulate Google if that’s the case. They sound amazing! Not a surveillance capitalist at all.
(DIR) Post #2797863 by dtluna@leftlibertarian.club
2019-01-09T10:47:28.671309Z
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@aral @pho4cexa @conservancy @keithzg Big business loves regulations.
(DIR) Post #2804823 by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2019-01-09T13:06:42Z
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@dtluna @conservancy @pho4cexa @keithzg Big business loves regulations it can control via institutional corruption; it hates being regulated against its will. Eric Schmidt to me a few years ago: “I wake up every morning and fight regulation – it’s what I do, it’s my job.”
(DIR) Post #2804824 by ITwrx@blurts.net
2019-01-09T15:55:38.570116Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@aral @keithzg @pho4cexa @conservancy @dtluna i think all these Free Software, developer, etc. conferences need to stop trying to play the "Big Conference" game. We have to be smarter about everything. The long term effects of the decisions made now will be significant. Why try to rent some expensive space where the speakers have no time for questions, attendees have to have their rights violated and their wallets drained to travel and conference organizers feel the need to accept money from govs/corps that have different interests? Why not organize, market/promote (all year in advance as needed?) to have have simultaneous local meetups at whatever venues/locations people want to use in their area (private land, parks, outdoor theatres, whatever), sponsored or not (with that decision made locally), that are patched into the live stream or just let everyone record their own simultaneous meetups and upload the videos to peertube or something under the same account/tag? this would allow more freedom in how the sub conferences were held, save money, and reach more people. Have standards/recommendations for video and audio recording so that everyone's videos are actually watchable. Incorporate the fediverse into the conferences: that sort of thing. It's sometimes demoralizing to see the current state of conferences, even though strides have been made in video/audio quality, and the fact that videos are recorded and released at all is great. Now we just need to take the next few steps to "leap frog" the rigged status quo.
(DIR) Post #2807059 by conservancy@mastodon.technology
2019-01-09T16:37:54Z
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We are not shying away from talking about the AGPL at Copyleft Conf. We also aren't selling talk slots or offering any kind of veto power to sponsors. https://2019.copyleftconf.org/schedule/presentation/2/ @pho4cexa @aral
(DIR) Post #2807060 by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2019-01-09T17:55:57Z
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@conservancy @pho4cexa No, you are just legitimising one of the world’s largest surveillance capitalists who also doesn’t allow the subject of your conference to be used at their company.Me: Google is a surveillance capitalist and is a threat to our human rights and democracy, we must regulate it.Policymaker: Aral, you silly man, you must be utterly confused. Google is a great company: Look, even Software Freedom Conservancy is happy to be sponsored by them.
(DIR) Post #2807061 by dielan@shitposter.club
2019-01-09T18:07:58.259495Z
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@aral @pho4cexa @conservancy this is a great thread. I think companies like Google are incentivized to invest in open source stuff and conferences because that's what their customers run on their cloud offering, which is a big moneymaker for them people don't think about since its google and they were already rich.I still agree though, Google sponsorship is highly suspect