commit: b94acac23b356dfd5253078499c5c6e9f0c93348
parent c3daa2c10b7ee813f989d21d89cb6072029e0e02
Author: Drew DeVault <sir@cmpwn.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2025 14:24:25 +0100
No billionares at FOSDEM
Diffstat:
3 files changed, 80 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/content/blog/2025-01-16-No-Billionares-at-FOSDEM-please.md b/content/blog/2025-01-16-No-Billionares-at-FOSDEM-please.md
@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
+---
+title: No billionares at FOSDEM
+date: 2025-01-16
+---
+
+Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter, ousted board member of BlueSky, and grifter
+extraordinaire to the tune of a $5.6B net worth, is [giving a keynote at
+FOSDEM][0].
+
+[0]: https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4507-infusing-open-source-culture-into-company-dna-a-conversation-with-jack-dorsey-and-manik-surtani-block-s-head-of-open-source/
+
+The FOSDEM keynote stage is one of the biggest platforms in the free software
+community. Janson is the biggest venue in the event -- its huge auditorium
+can accommodate over 1,500 of FOSDEM's 8,000 odd attendees, and it is live
+streamed to a worldwide audience as the face of one of the free and open source
+software community's biggest events of the year. We've platformed Red Hat, the
+NLNet Foundation, NASA, numerous illustrious community leaders, and many smaller
+projects that embody our values and spirit at this location to talk about their
+work or important challenges our community faces.
+
+Some of these challenges, as a matter of fact, are Jack Dorsey's fault. In 2023
+this stage [hosted Hachyderm's Kris Nóva][1] to discuss an exodus of Twitter
+refugees to the fediverse. After Dorsey sold Twitter to Elon Musk, selling the
+platform out to the far right for a crisp billion-with-a-"B" dollar payout, the
+FOSS community shouldered the burden -- both with our labor and our wallets --
+of a massive exodus onto our volunteer-operated servers, especially from victims
+fleeing the hate speech and harassment left in the wake of the sale. Two years
+later one of the principal architects of, and beneficiaries of, that disaster
+will step onto the same stage. Even if our community hadn't been directly harmed
+by Dorsey's actions, I don't think that we owe this honor to someone who took a
+billion dollars to ruin their project, ostracize their users, and destroy the
+livelihoods of almost everyone who worked on it.
+
+[1]: https://archive.fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/hachyderm/
+[2]: https://nlnet.nl/
+[3]: https://www.sovereign.tech/
+
+Dorsey is presumably being platformed in Janson because his blockchain bullshit
+company is a [main sponsor of FOSDEM][sponsors] this year. Dorsey and his
+colleagues want to get us up to speed on what Block is working on these days.
+Allow me to give you a preview: in addition to posting $5B in revenue and a 21%
+increase in YoY profit in 2024, Jack Dorsey laid off 1,000 employees, ordering
+them not to publicly discuss board member Jay-Z's contemporary sexual assault
+allegations on their way out, and announced a new bitcoin mining ASIC in
+collaboration with Core Scientific, who presumably installed them into [their
+new 100MW Muskogee, OK bitcoin mining installation][4], proudly served by the
+[Muskogee Generating Station][5] fossil fuel power plant and its [11 million
+tons][7] of annual CO<sup>2</sup> emissions and [an estimated 62 excess
+deaths][6] in the local area due to pollution associated with the power plant.
+Nice.
+
+[sponsors]: https://fosdem.org/2025/about/sponsors/
+
+[4]: https://investors.corescientific.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/99/core-scientific-and-port-muskogee-break-ground-on-100-mw-hpc-data-center
+[5]: https://www.gem.wiki/Muskogee_Generating_Station
+[6]: https://www.gem.wiki/Muskogee_Generating_Station#Death_and_disease_attributable_to_fine_particle_pollution_from_Muskogee_Generating_Station
+[7]: https://www.gem.wiki/Muskogee_Generating_Station#Emissions_Data
+
+In my view, billionaires are not welcome at FOSDEM. If billionaires want to
+participate in FOSS, I'm going to ask them to refrain from using our platforms
+to talk about their AI/blockchain/bitcoin/climate-disaster-as-a-service grifty
+business ventures, and instead buy our respect by, say, donating 250 million
+dollars to [NLNet][2] or the [Sovereign Tech Fund][3]. That figure, as a
+percentage of Dorsey's wealth, is proportional to the amount of money I donate
+to FOSS every year, by the way. That kind of money would keep the FOSS community
+running for decades.
+
+I do not want to platform Jack Dorsey on this stage. To that end, I am
+organizing a sit-in, in which I and anyone who will join me are going to sit
+ourselves down on the Janson stage during his allocated time slot and peacefully
+prevent the talk from proceeding as scheduled. We will be meeting at 11:45 PM
+outside of Janson, 15 minutes prior to Dorsey's scheduled time slot. Once the
+stage is free from the previous speaker, we will sit on the stage until 12:30
+PM. Bring a good book. If you want to help organize this sit-in, or just let me
+know that you intend to participate, please contact me via
+[email](mailto:sir@cmpwn.com); I'll set up a mailing list if there's enough
+interest in organizing things like printing out pamphlets to this effect, or
+even preparing an alternative talk to "schedule" in his slot.
diff --git a/layouts/blog/section.html b/layouts/blog/section.html
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
<html lang="en">
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<title>{{.Title}}</title>
-{{ $style := resources.Get "main.scss" | resources.ToCSS | resources.Minify | resources.Fingerprint }}
+{{ $style := resources.Get "main.scss" | css.Sass | resources.Minify | resources.Fingerprint }}
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ $style.RelPermalink }}">
<main>
diff --git a/layouts/partials/head.html b/layouts/partials/head.html
@@ -9,6 +9,6 @@
<title>{{$.Title}}</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="https://drewdevault.com/blog/index.xml">
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/avatar.png">
- {{ $style := resources.Get "main.scss" | resources.ToCSS | resources.Minify | resources.Fingerprint }}
+ {{ $style := resources.Get "main.scss" | css.Sass | resources.Minify | resources.Fingerprint }}
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ $style.RelPermalink }}">
</head>
