Hi Daniel, [disclaimer: although I'm using my @fosdem.org email address, please note that the below is my personal opinion and I'm not speaking for any part of FOSDEM in an official capacity] On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 07:32:58PM +0100, Daniel Pocock wrote:
On 11/01/2021 18:59, pjotr.public445@thebird.nl wrote:
This list is for organising FOSDEM 2021. While I sympathise with some of the ideas and sentiments, I don't think it should be discussed on this mailing list. Maybe the organizers can set up a FOSDEM policy mailing list for this type of discussion, people take it there, and we stop the thread where it is now on this list?
In recent times, there has been a lot of talk about people who were enablers for Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and other undesirables.
FOSDEM can't be an enabler for Google and their sock puppets any more.
FOSDEM isn't an enabler of anyone. Our sponsorship policy is very clear on what FOSDEM sponsorship does for a sponsor: - We accept your money - In return, we mention the name and/or logo of your company in a few places (where exactly depends on how much money you give us) - You have no other influence over us. Specifically, sponsors have no influence over the schedule (the content team is wholly separate from and independent of the sponsorship team) or over who does or does not get a stand (the decision which stands to accept is wholly based on merits and on whether it is about free software, not whether someone is a sponsor). To suggest otherwise is not based in facts and has no place on this mailinglist. A few years ago, someone put up banners at FOSDEM that decried the behavior of several companies, including Google and other companies that are also FOSDEM sponsors. FOSDEM staff did not take those banners away; the suggestion of doing so did not even come up. I believe that this example shows clearly that sponsorhip has no influence over FOSDEM.
Google is to the CIA what Blackwater are to the police. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=blackwater+pardon&t=ffab&ia=web
FOSDEM is neither police nor CIA, so I fail to see how this is relevant.
FSFE now gets 20% of their budget from Google. This means that several booths at FOSDEM, including the FSFE booth, are part of a giant Google echo chamber. That is a massive fraud and deception upon the FOSDEM audience.
FOSDEM is not the FSFE. As for the FSFE's booth, where people get their sponsorship from does not influence our decision on whether or not to decide they get a stand. [...]
Look at the way Google kicked out Timnit Gebru before Christmas. Truly evil. Copy that move from the Google playbook: Kick Google and their sock puppets out of FOSDEM.
On a personal level, I agree with you that some of the more recent actions which Google has been taking (such as firing Timnit) are questionable, at best -- and possibly quite evil at worst. However, at times like these I am reminded of a talk RMS gave at an early FOSDEM, where he pointed out that large corporations are usually many-headed beasts. One business unit of the large corporation may be evil, while at the same time another group within the very same corporation may be cooperating with the Free and Open Source movement as a model citizen. This is true for Google too, who develops a large amount of Free Software themselves (Kubernetes & Chromium are two examples; they also sent a not-insignificant amount of patches to the Linux kernel) As such, I don't think using a number of examples of how a company is a bad citizen while at the same time ignoring all the examples of how that same company is a good citizen, is in any way or shape helpful to the FOSDEM community. Google wishes to help FOSDEM in a financial manner. We should thank them for that, because without our sponsors FOSDEM simply wouldn't exist. And while I will agree with no reservations that there are certain ways in which I'd like Google to change its culture, I don't think discussing that is in any way or shape on topic for this mailinglist. Also, note that in "sponsors" I include all the attendees that buy a T-shirt at the info desk (or online, as the case may be); in fact the sum of attendee donations is probably larger than the money donated by most of our other sponsors. Thanks for your understanding. -- To the thief who stole my anti-depressants: I hope you're happy -- seen somewhere on the Internet on a photo of a billboard