The chaos in the US is affecting open source software and its developers
It was only a matter of time before the illegal, erratic, inhumane, and cruel behaviours and policies of the second Trump regime were going to affect the open source world in a possibly very visible way. Christian Hergert, longtime GNOME and Linux contributor, employed by Red Hat, wanted t
The chaos in the US is affecting open source software and its developers
It was only a matter of time before the illegal, erratic, inhumane, and cruel behaviours and policies of the second Trump regime were going to affect the open source world in a possibly very visible way. Christian Hergert, longtime GNOME and Linux contributor, employed by Red Hat, wanted t
It is refreshing to read a political polemic which contains useful actions the reader can take. Too many books about the social problems with technology end up being a diagnosis with no cure.
Paloma Oliveira's new book (with technical review by my friend Dawn Foster) is a deep dive into how we can all make Open Source more inclusive and equitable.
Unlike most tech books, it doesn't follow the usual pattern of restricting itself to the US hegemony. It is very focussed on the EU and the needs of people around the world. It is clear in identifying many of the problems which arise when people say they just want to focus on tech, not politics:
When projects focus purely on technical excellence without considering accessibility, they create implicit barriers. Documentation written only in English, community discussions held during North American business hours, or development environments that require high-end hardware all reflect choices that determine who can participate—though these choices often remain unexamined.
This is profoundly important. The book isn't afraid to be challenging. It links the way companies extract value from the commons to the way colonisers extracted value from the lands they "discovered".
There are a few missteps which I didn't care for. While it starts as very casually written, it quickly finds itself getting into the weeds of political philosophy. I think that's a necessary evil. But I don't know how easily people will be convinced by passages like:
Bratton notes secessionist withdrawal in traditional territories and consolidation domains in stacked hemispheric, the continuing expansions of nebular sovereignties, and the reform of conventional States into regional platforms.
Similarly, there are a few "just-so" stories which are fictional parables. I think they would have been more convincing as actual case-studies.
I did find myself skipping some of the background in order to get to the parts I found more interesting. The chapter on "Political Rhetoric and Institution Validation" felt a bit out of place and I didn't get much from it.
But, after all that theory, there is a lot of practical advice. From how to structure your README to how to communicate change to your community. Even better, all the templates and resources are on GitHub.
It is thoroughly referenced and gave me lots of new rabbit-holes to follow Rather pleasingly, it cites my 2020 blog post "Please Stop Inventing New Software Licences" as an example of the ways in which corporates often try to stifle open source.
If you want to help Open Source succeed, you owe it to yourself to grab a copy of this book.
#BookReview #equality #justice #OpenSource #technologyDo any moots know someone who we might be able to consult about restructuring a mid-size FOSS project? Essentially to migrate from a BDFL model to a more flat-structured democratic organisation.
We are discussing how to restructure #postmarketOS so that it can continue to scale up and be a truly community-run project.
We have some idea of how co-ops like Igalia do this, but we have a lot of differences (like being largely volunteer run and having very different goals) which leave us with a lot of unknowns.
To give an example of the kind of structure we're thinking of (by no means final, there hasn't been any broad agreement on a new structure yet):
We have the relevant pieces in place to form an assembly (everyone listed on https://postmarketos.org/team/ ) which could then democratically form teams and delegate responsibilities to them (e.g. finance/budget, technical policy-making, maintainers for various OS components).
The assembly would then also be responsible for deciding on focus areas and long term goals for the project (e.g. improving reliability, building a production-ready immutable version of the distro)
We could then form working groups to enable cross-team collaboration to move towards our specific goals.
Currently we lack a lot of understanding of the potential implications of something like this, how we can ensure the project doesn't get hijacked, that we don't drift too far from our mission statement, etc etc...
If you have a background in sociology and/or relevant experience from other projects then I would love to reach out and be able to discuss this in more detail!
Mozilla is adding a toggle to disable all generative "AI" features in Firefox. It shows that organized pushback is actually making a difference.
One battle won. Now let's make it crystal clear. We want tools, not forced LLMs. Keep the pressure on until "AI" is no longer an option.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/02/firefox-will-soon-let-you-block-all-of-its-generative-ai-features/
#Firefox #Mozilla #NoAI #FOSS #OpenSource #Privacy #TerminalTilt
Mozilla is adding a toggle to disable all generative "AI" features in Firefox. It shows that organized pushback is actually making a difference.
One battle won. Now let's make it crystal clear. We want tools, not forced LLMs. Keep the pressure on until "AI" is no longer an option.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/02/firefox-will-soon-let-you-block-all-of-its-generative-ai-features/
#Firefox #Mozilla #NoAI #FOSS #OpenSource #Privacy #TerminalTilt
