@fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk
Post #2392316
2026-03-21 09:13 UTC
@Khrys@mamot.fr we like to think of FOSS as some sort of anarchist collective°. it never has been.
it's run by a series of people with absolute power, for the most part. the benefit is that it's a lot of tiny dictators rather than a few big ones; that in theory anyone can become one, you don't need to be rich; and that these dictators tend to have technical knowledge.
but they can still be arseholes.
° i mean, we might not CALL it that.
Replies (2)
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@lori@cambrian.social 2026-03-21 14:09
@Khrys@mamot.fr @fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk I've long been saying that, instead of debating the relative merits of open source software and free software, we should have been demanding noncommercial software. Now it may be too late. FOSS is no anarchist collective, but arguably hacking is. Unfortunately too many of the hacker era hackers were ancaps and could be hired to do the dirty work of the powerful. But now that computing freedom is by definition illegal, maybe a new generation of hackers will arise. One can only hope.
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@0x0@hachyderm.io 2026-03-22 11:02
@fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk I'm glad most tend to be BDFLs. @Khrys@mamot.fr