Notices by LunaTerra - GNU/Girl (lunaterra@cyberia.social)

Free Software is only one tactic, and left on it's own, as we've seen, it is a defensive one. It does not do more than create a refuge to retreat further into, and become subsumed by the wider society wielding the proprietary technologies and computing silos of the mega corporations. Organize, sabotage, and work for a political alternative to push back using a diversity of tactics. Wouldn't it be cool if we could strangle Amazon by offering a free version of AWS? What if only coops could use it? What if people refused to work for employers who work in surveillance, advertising, and defense?

Free Software cannot design away the problems of the society it exists within. There need to be changes to society to liberate computing for the masses instead of the technologically competent few. Free Society. Free Software.

The left has a tendency to evaluate theories in terms of their thinkers in order to weigh their "legitimacy". This is a very unhelpful practice, it would be better to disregard the origins of ideas and pick and choose what is currently useful. I think the views of "no heroes" and "ideas, like a supermarket, are only fit for looting" are appropriate in this regard. The leftist theory-nerd tendency to bring "problematic" stuff up about past and current figures is only a symptom of their desire for heroes/villains (which they see as being subject to vetting to fit into their respective categories).

Here are some examples of what I mean:

When liberals, observing that Trump wants to pull-out the military from Syria, or get the U.S. out of NATO, uncritically react by siding with the American military's imperialist policy.

When some people consider Audre Lord "problematic" or "cancel" her because of her views of the BDSM community of her time (which frequently used raceplay) and use that as an excuse to ignore her feminist ideas.

You likely don't like Trump, but like Audre Lord, but the point is that IT DOESN'T MATTER.

Don't trust "open source" projects with Contributor License Agreements, they are effectively not open source/free software at all and cannot be trusted or forked in productive ways that eliminate corporate control. (glares at Microsoft with VSCode and Azure)