Mirror Mirror
Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the fairest community of them all?
FOSDEM and Billionaire Fascists
Once upon a time in a land far away there was a FOSS Conference...
On Thursday the 16th of January Drew De Vault alerted the FOSS community that Jack Dorsey founder of Twitter, Bluesky (which he left as soon as they started doing limited Moderation) and Block (Blockchain company) was keynoting about Open Source culture and what it can bring to a company. [1]
This did not go down well in a community that prides itself on being an ethical community.
Yeah yeah, I hear some of you laughing.
The FOSDEM organisers scrambled to publish a post denying that Dorsey's company's sponsorship had anything to do with their accepting his submission for a Keynote.
Meanwhile one of the volunteers leaked the PreTalx voting session where only one of the reviewers scored it highly at a nine whereas the other reviewers gave the talk a very low score.
Oh no, they denied it. Talk slots cannot be bought. The sponsorship had nothing to do with it.
To be clear, in our 25 year history, we have always had the hard rule that sponsorship does not give you preferential treatment for talk selection; this policy has always applied, it applied in this particular case, and it will continue to apply in the future. Any claims that any talk was allowed for sponsorship reasons are false. [2]
Which may be true. Talk slots can indeed not be bought directly. But perhaps we need to take a look at some of the biases in our community. Perhaps we need to look at the soft power large sponsors have.
We need to look at the soft power and very real monetary power that an individual like Jack Dorsey has. Through Twitter, the idea of the town square became a de facto monopoly. When Twitter was sold to Elon Musk, he and the other shareholders earned an almost unimaginable amount of money from the sale.
His very story, his existence and his fellow alumni of the “Move Fast and Break Things” School of Technology, sits in the back of every Open Source technologist's mind. The idea of the startup, VCs and the money and power that comes with that.
For a conference that's meant to be about challenging the status quo of proprietary software, the organisers have missed the point. I think there's a disconnect between the organisers and some of the community.
Some of us, who were attracted to FOSS for explicitly ethical, and political reasons appear to have misunderstood what the movement was about.
We've woken from the dream. Reality seems rather harsh. We no longer believe in the fairy tale of FOSS.
Fairy Tales
In our community, we tell ourselves Fairy Tales.
That's not fair. As adults, we tell ourselves fairy tales all the time. We tell ourselves comforting lies about the way the world works.
As Terry Pratchett wrote in Hogfather :
” YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. “
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They're not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
In real life we allow ourselves to ignore the social injustice of the existence of Billionaires. The British King is a billionaire, Bill Gates is a billionaire, Taylor Swift is a billionaire. They not only have the power of Money. They have the power of influence, they can influence laws to ensure that they keep making money and retaining power.
There is no such thing as an ethical billionaire. They profit from our labour and our misery. They pay money to their accountants to reduce their tax burden and to lobbyists to ensure they don't get taxed at all. The money they amass gains them more power and influence. In the meantime our healthcare systems struggle and people who want higher education or well health amass un-payable amounts of debt. Billionaires are the result of the economic and political policy changes over the last forty years that Milton Friedman aimed for when he wrote the tyranny of the Status Quo.
But we allow it because we hope that one day we will get lucky, win the lottery, get that awesome idea, and get that sweet sweet VC investment money.
I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians.
Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.
— John Steinbeck, “A Primer on the 30s”
In FOSS we tell ourselves the comforting lie that what we do is ethical. Merely by writing code and releasing it under an Open Source Licence.
FOSDEM Criticism
I was surprised that anyone thought the community would be happy about Jack Dorsey talking at FOSDEM. He's not exactly a hobbyist hacker. He's more known for palling around with Jay-Z and claiming that teaching poor folks about Bitcoin is financial literacy [5]
I mean, Jack Dorsey speaking about “Infusing Open Source Culture into Company DNA” when not a single soul has ever heard of him in relation to Open Source before this talk title would have worked as a joke to me. — Daniel Stenberg [6]
But perhaps we should not be surprised. For the immunocompromised, for those with a disability, FOSDEM is a no-go area. Which is where we really should hold the mirror up to all of us in FOSS.
For a long time, FOSDEM resisted the idea of a code of conduct. It has no meaningful health policy. Plus as Anna e só noted when they were a keynote speaker very little accommodation for their disabilities was made available.
Oh, and addressing Jack Dorsey’s presence at FOSDEM: I invite you all to think about it as a symptom of something bigger happening at FOSDEM, not as an issue in and of itself. The mobility issues, the grim logistics of watching talks in person, the difficulty in connecting with others in crowded spaces, the “let it rip” attitude when talking about flu or COVID—those are a part of a whole that tells a story, and this is an invitation to think about how we can do better as a community in general. — Anna e só [7]
Garret Le Sage had some interesting points about other barriers to accessibility for everyone at FOSDEM.
is inaccessible for those with:
- mobility issues
- scent sensitivities (no policy against perfume, uses smelly soap in bathrooms); this affects around 30% of the population
- who need/want CC for videos
And refused:
- to have a code of conduct for years; have no real means of enforcing the one they have now
- to implement any kind of sickness mitigation (COVID, “FOSDEM Flu”, or other), including encouraging masks and ventilation
And promotes: – cryptocurrency
– billionaires#FOSDEM does do a lot of good too, bringing people together and promoting Free Software. And there are amazing people putting together the event every year — especially the tons of volunteers spending their time and effort to make this all happen.
But promoting the ideals of Free and Open Source Software is all the more reason they should really respect their audience, be inclusive, and try to be better.
(People critical of FOSDEM aren't attacking it; we all want it to be better.) — Garrett LeSage [8]
I don't like what I see in the mirror's reflection
Around Mastodon, I've seen criticism of this stance from folks on various tech-flavoured instances. Folks giving the temporarily embarrassed millionaire vibes or feeling judged because something they love and enjoy going to is getting such harsh criticism.
FOSDEM with its history of sponsorship is the reason why OFFDEM exists.
Why does it exist?
Some free software developers have been unhappy with the takeover of the community event by corporate sponsors from Silicon Valley’s surveillance capitalism. Since there was no way to reform the original gathering, we decided to fork FOSDEM. [9]
Consider going to OFFDEM. A lot is going on this year. [10]
FOSDEM has a long history of siding with the status quo. Those of us at the edges don't really count. Not in the organising committee and sadly it appears not in the wider community. We can't even get people to consider wearing masks in solidarity and advocating for clean air. [11]
So let's get to the real meat of the situation. FOSDEM is not the only conference or the only organisation with this problem. [12], [13], [14]
We see the issues in real life and online with various community controversies that crop up from time to time. FOSS is littered with the debris of abusers and our inability to look in the mirror and see that it starts with us.
Our complicity in the status quo. Our complicity in abuse because the abusers do good work. In tech we appear to have a serious problem with understanding consent and why opt-in even on our public posts is the moral thing to do.
We don't consider how the technology we create can harm others' human rights and their democracies. We don't want to acknowledge our complicity in this abuse.
We aren't prepared to sacrifice for our principles. But when there are a lot of folks facing hardship from layoffs and disability perhaps it's time to consider that one day you may be in that position looking for mutual aid.
You are never going to be a billionaire. Let go of that fairytale.
So what can FOSDEM do
Well as others have pointed out can the talk.
Yes, Jack Dorsey will make a fuss and probably get to go on lots of right-wing shows crying about the marketplace of free ideas and how his free speech is being harmed.
I keep reminding folks that you need to twin Article 19 of the UCHR with Article 20 which is freedom of association. Which is what some folks are asking for.
We want the freedom to not have a billionaire trying to grift our young ones into a wasteful planet-burning technology so that Dorsey can amass more money and more power. We want to go to a conference with clean air in an accessible venue.
If the sponsorship isn't tied to Jack Dorsey giving the talk, well then it should be easy enough, shouldn't it?
Another thing that FOSDEM can do is be more transparent in it's procedures and spell out explicitly what the sponsor money is spent on. Make it really easy to find.
What can I do?
Perhaps the best thing that the organisers of FOSDEM and the attendees can do is take a long hard look at the mirror that some of us are holding up to you.
Understand the harsh reflection on the comforting lies you told yourself about Free Software and Open Source Software. Understand the corruption within the community and within yourself. Look at the scars that our society from its origins in White Supremacy and Colonialism inflicts on us and minorities.
Understand your own ableism and consider who's missing. Try not to see my mild pleas for a safe spot in Europe that I can go to and present at as criticism of all of your life choices up to now. I'm not an outsider, I presented at FOSDEM in 2020 in the decentralisation and privacy room. I'm ill now. I miss people and giving them bosies if they are into that sort of thing. [15]
I can't currently travel safely to a big city in the wintertime or anytime really. I'm not alone in the isolation. Others are having to take serious life-changing risks because conferences are where they can make the connections to help their careers.
At the moment many of us in Tech risk sacrificing our health and our family's health for our careers. Because very few able-bodied people want to make the small sacrifice of boycott or even masking up. No one is prepared to advocate for us for our health and safety.
Because what's happening in the physical FOSS community is a microcosm of our wider society. If I can't convince folks who believe that FOSS is the ethical alternative to proprietary technology to mask and advocate for community health and safety. What chance do I have to convince the rest of society?
But perhaps the idea of Jack Dorsey talking at FOSDEM offends you. So here's a small, really inoffensive way that you can protest this.
Go to Drew's sit-in. A Sit-in is one of the most inoffensive forms of protest that we have. Drew's not even asking for yelling. Just sitting peacefully on the stage to prevent Jack Dorsey from going on the stage.
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 AM 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; 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. — Drew De Vault – No billionaires at FOSDEM
Billionaires who jet around the world grifting the fruits of our labour from us need some more friction in their lives.
Be that grit. Be ungovernable.
The first thing you need to do is take a long hard look in the mirror. Yes, it is a harsh reflection. It will hurt.
But our community and the people who are missing desperately need you to look. You can't change or improve the world if you won't see that you're part of the problem.
We will help you. But you need to wake up from the spell you're under.
Understand what you see in your reflection. Then we can start to work together.
[1] https://drewdevault.com/2025/01/16/2025-01-16-No-Billionares-at-FOSDEM-please.html
[3] https://fosdem.org/2025/news/2025-01-16-protests/
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/series/cost-of-the-crown
[5] https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/10/23162314/jay-z-jack-dorsey-bitcoin-academy-brooklyn-free-classes
[6] https://mastodon.social/@bagder/113843673151493774
[7] https://friend.camp/@anna/113844191308154319
[8] https://mastodon.xyz/@garrett/113842951885650493
[10]https://oxygen.offdem.net/t/no-billionnaires-at-fosdem/463
[11] https://www.onepict.com/20230124-cobbles.html
[12]https://www.onepict.com/20230123-cobbles.html
[13]https://www.onepict.com/20230703-cobbles.html