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2025-01-16-No-Billionares-at-FOSDEM-please.md (5076B)

    

  1. ---
  2. title: No billionaires at FOSDEM
  3. date: 2025-01-16
  4. ---
  6. *Update: Dorsey's talk was cancelled! [See the update here](/2025/01/23/2025-01-23-Transparency-and-governance-FOSDEM.html).*
  8. Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter, ousted board member of BlueSky, and grifter
  9. extraordinaire to the tune of a $5.6B net worth, is [giving a keynote at
  10. FOSDEM][0].
  12. [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/
  14. The FOSDEM keynote stage is one of the biggest platforms in the free software
  15. community. Janson is the biggest venue in the event -- its huge auditorium
  16. can accommodate over 1,500 of FOSDEM's 8,000 odd attendees, and it is live
  17. streamed to a worldwide audience as the face of one of the free and open source
  18. software community's biggest events of the year. We've platformed Red Hat, the
  19. NLNet Foundation, NASA, numerous illustrious community leaders, and many smaller
  20. projects that embody our values and spirit at this location to talk about their
  21. work or important challenges our community faces.
  23. Some of these challenges, as a matter of fact, are Jack Dorsey's fault. In 2023
  24. this stage [hosted Hachyderm's Kris Nóva][1] to discuss an exodus of Twitter
  25. refugees to the fediverse. After Dorsey sold Twitter to Elon Musk, selling the
  26. platform out to the far right for a crisp billion-with-a-"B" dollar payout, the
  27. FOSS community shouldered the burden -- both with our labor and our wallets --
  28. of a massive exodus onto our volunteer-operated servers, especially from victims
  29. fleeing the hate speech and harassment left in the wake of the sale. Two years
  30. later one of the principal architects of, and beneficiaries of, that disaster
  31. will step onto the same stage. Even if our community hadn't been directly harmed
  32. by Dorsey's actions, I don't think that we owe this honor to someone who took a
  33. billion dollars to ruin their project, ostracize their users, and destroy the
  34. livelihoods of almost everyone who worked on it.
  36. [1]: https://archive.fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/hachyderm/
  37. [2]: https://nlnet.nl/
  38. [3]: https://www.sovereign.tech/
  40. Dorsey is presumably being platformed in Janson because his blockchain bullshit
  41. company is a [main sponsor of FOSDEM][sponsors] this year. Dorsey and his
  42. colleagues want to get us up to speed on what Block is working on these days.
  43. Allow me to give you a preview: in addition to posting $5B in revenue and a 21%
  44. increase in YoY profit in 2024, Jack Dorsey laid off 1,000 employees, ordering
  45. them not to publicly discuss board member Jay-Z's contemporary sexual assault
  46. allegations on their way out, and announced a new bitcoin mining ASIC in
  47. collaboration with Core Scientific, who presumably installed them into [their
  48. new 100MW Muskogee, OK bitcoin mining installation][4], proudly served by the
  49. [Muskogee Generating Station][5] fossil fuel power plant and its [11 million
  50. tons][7] of annual CO<sub>2</sub> emissions and [an estimated 62 excess
  51. deaths][6] in the local area due to pollution associated with the power plant.
  52. Nice.
  54. [sponsors]: https://fosdem.org/2025/about/sponsors/
  56. [4]: https://investors.corescientific.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/99/core-scientific-and-port-muskogee-break-ground-on-100-mw-hpc-data-center
  57. [5]: https://www.gem.wiki/Muskogee_Generating_Station
  58. [6]: https://www.gem.wiki/Muskogee_Generating_Station#Death_and_disease_attributable_to_fine_particle_pollution_from_Muskogee_Generating_Station
  59. [7]: https://www.gem.wiki/Muskogee_Generating_Station#Emissions_Data
  61. In my view, billionaires are not welcome at FOSDEM. If billionaires want to
  62. participate in FOSS, I'm going to ask them to refrain from using our platforms
  63. to talk about their AI/blockchain/bitcoin/climate-disaster-as-a-service grifty
  64. business ventures, and instead buy our respect by, say, donating 250 million
  65. dollars to [NLNet][2] or the [Sovereign Tech Fund][3]. That figure, as a
  66. percentage of Dorsey's wealth, is proportional to the amount of money I donate
  67. to FOSS every year, by the way. That kind of money would keep the FOSS community
  68. running for decades.
  70. I do not want to platform Jack Dorsey on this stage. To that end, I am
  71. organizing a sit-in, in which I and anyone who will join me are going to sit
  72. ourselves down on the Janson stage during his allocated time slot and peacefully
  73. prevent the talk from proceeding as scheduled. We will be meeting at 11:45 AM
  74. outside of Janson, 15 minutes prior to Dorsey's scheduled time slot. Once the
  75. stage is free from the previous speaker, we will sit on the stage until 12:30
  76. PM. Bring a good book. If you want to help organize this sit-in, or just let me
  77. know that you intend to participate, please contact me via
  78. [email](mailto:sir@cmpwn.com); I'll set up a mailing list if there's enough
  79. interest in organizing things like printing out pamphlets to this effect, or
  80. even preparing an alternative talk to "schedule" in his slot.
  82. ---
  84. [Follow-up: FOSDEM '25 protest](https://drewdevault.com/2025/01/20/2025-01-20-FOSDEM-protest.html)