hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3553.txt

Episode: 3553
Title: HPR3553: Freedom of speech in open source
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3553/hpr3553.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 01:20:47

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3553 for Wednesday, the 16th of March 2022.
Today's show is entitled Freedom of Speech in Open Source, and as part of the series
Freedom is not free, it is the tenth show of some guy on the internet and is about 24
minutes long and carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, is it free speech if you have to leave?
Hello ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I'm your host, some guy on the internet.
Today I want to talk to you about Freedom of Speech, more specifically free speech in
Open Source, our communities, our blogs, our websites, our chat environments, whether
it be element, mastodon, discord, wherever.
I think it's important for everyone in the community to have free speech, so that you
can express yourselves and hopefully try and either better free software or just better
the community surrounding free software.
Personally, I'm a fan of constructive criticism, however I do believe we offer a bit
too much in that area and not so much in the area of a tangible financial investment.
In other words, you'll run this software, talk mad trash about it when something isn't
to your liking and then fail to donate to all the people who put in the time and effort
in creating it.
Now, I'm also aware that we don't have the best structure for getting money around to
all the different projects that are involved, say for instance, a distro.
You may love a distro like Linux Mint, for instance, that's the one that I love, but
I don't know how to donate to every single package that is involved in the universe of Linux
Mint.
I have no way of doing that and by the time I figure out a way, how many links am I going
to have to go through just to make sure that the money gets where it's supposed to be.
Now I can donate to Linux Mint themselves and then I could also look at Ubuntu, the
base for Linux Mint that isn't as you're using the LMDE, the Linux Mint devian edition,
then you look toward devian for that base if that's the one you're using.
But you get the point, trying to donate is harder than you think when you want to support
the people who provide all the software that you like.
So rather you're on a form, you're in a chat environment, you're on YouTube making content
or hacker public radio making content, speaking of free and open source software.
What exactly can we do to better the environment?
I'm thinking we want more and more people to adopt free software, but how do you get that
when the environment is as it is now?
A really good example of that would be, I'm just going to use everything that I encounter.
I'm only speaking about my own experiences here.
You go to a Ubuntu forum, I kind of expect things to work a certain way there, it feels
a little bit more mature there like things are going to work out and one way or another
people will either directly help me or point me in the direction of some sort of article
or some documentation that I can follow to get help.
Same thing with the door, I feel like there's enough documentation floating around and people
can generally have a decent conversation and help you out.
But then there are other communities, mainly one, the arch community where you're probably
going to get cursed at and people are going to be a bunch of little smart Alex about this
and they're going to have their comments that are not exactly helpful.
How does this behavior make the open source environment better for new adopters?
Let me elaborate just a little bit more on that, so you get the Steam Deck which we
know will be running arch with KDE and new people to that environment, you know, Windows
users who just want a handheld deck and play games in a bigger screen, you know all the
specs of the Steam Deck, but the problem is the moment there's an issue and they've got
to get help, sure Valve will try to help with a lot of it but there's going to be a
lot of community members there as well.
It's not going to be just Valve, they're going to be a lot of people from the arch community
and you know what's going to happen.
All right, Arch has a curse word in their model, RTFM.
So you know there's going to be all sorts of videos and things coming out when people
showing off all the cool things you can do with Valve's Steam Deck, adding all the different
peripherals, excuse me, all the different peripherals to it and just showing off the wonders
of Linux.
The problem is that community is going to demonstrate that side we don't really want to push new
users into and I got a feeling that's who's, you know, a lot of people behind this aren't
buying it because they desperately want to run Linux on a device, they just want to
play some games.
They're going to run into what I believe to be the grittiest part of our community.
So what is all that have to do with free speech you might ask?
Well, eventually Valve's going to have to take action when all of this talk hits the
forms.
When people get out there and start saying, Hey, I bought this Steam Deck but when I tried
to get help, when I tried to talk to people about how to do that thing, I saw on a YouTube
video because the guy didn't really go into detail.
He just said that he did it and it was awesome.
So I tried to do the exact same thing and I went on the Valve forms.
No one had posted any sort of tutorial documentation yet.
So I started asking around what happened.
I got cursed that and made the field stupid just because I was just asking questions and
you know, this isn't nice.
I don't want to buy.
I'm upset that I bought the Steam Deck now because now I feel stupid just for trying to
use the thing.
So now Valve has to step in after we're and they got to police the community.
They got to start kicking people off the platform like banning them or silencing them
or whatever because obviously you do not want that to be the face of the product.
You know, we can't answer everything.
We want the community to interact with each other.
But the moment you start being an arch user, we got to get you out of here.
We got to throw you out because that's not the way it works.
And then there you go.
Now you got that free speech issue.
You'll have people arguing, hey, I have the right to say whatever I want to say.
The only reality to it is, well, you can say whatever you want.
You just can't say it here.
You know, you have freedom of speech, not freedom of audience and not freedom of an auditorium.
So this space is not the space for you to come and call everybody stupid and read the
blank manual.
That's not the way we operate here.
And that's where you're going to get your problem.
And there's going to be this Valve attack where Valve's limiting free speech to not letting
people say the things they need to say and you're not going to get all the details.
It's always happening that way.
Like say, for instance, well, I'm not going to bring up other projects because I wasn't
there when those projects had their free speech issues.
But I've heard a lot about the other, let's just say desktop environments.
You should know the one that I'm talking about and how a very vocal minority of the community
has made a particular desktop environment go away.
So not to pick on Valve here or anything.
I'm not saying anything bad about them, but if Valve were to be faced with an issue within
the community from users where they feel that just getting rid of these people is the
thing to do so that everyone could interact with each other in a more respectful manner.
Exactly how do you think that's going to be broadcast?
Think about it in a slow new cycle.
When all these Linux podcasters need some kind of content to get out there, what do you
think's going to happen?
I want to remind you guys of an issue a while back called the boot hole.
You guys remember that when 20 crap, which one was it?
Was it 2004?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I think it was a Ubuntu 2004.
When that got released, there was this vulnerability that happened.
I want you to stop and think about, I believe it was Martin Wimpress was the head of the Ubuntu
desktop at canonical at the time.
Shout out to Martin Wimpress in the Ubuntu Motte Project, fantastic project.
He was so excited about the Yaru theme and how beautiful Ubuntu was and just, I mean,
it was a wonderful release.
It still is a wonderful release in this beautiful, but think about what happened shortly after
that release.
I was about to say immediately, but it wouldn't immediately shortly after that release when
everybody's got this wonderful product that they're all enjoying.
You got this one thing that came out during a slow news cycle because think about it.
Ubuntu is very stable.
You're not going to have a whole lot of issues with it.
So therefore, it's not really much to talk about.
It's not that exciting in a news cycle.
Hey, we got another stable release that just works.
You're not going to have that much to talk about it, but what happened?
That whole boot hole thing that happened shortly afterward?
Think about how much coverage that got.
I'm not a very technical person, but I'm going to tell you this.
It was not that big of a deal that they, I think they put way too much press coverage
in it.
But imagine that again, but with Valve, right, where you got this issue that has occurred
on the forms of Valve's taking care of it.
It's a slow news cycle, not very much to talk about.
Imagine all these podcasters finally able to grab onto a bit of content and just blow
that way out of proportion, just like the boot hole.
Do you think there's going to be enough advocates within the free software community to come
forward and say, hey, look, sometimes we've got to do this.
Sometimes we've got to tell people you can say whatever you like just outside that door.
You know what I mean?
You can sure you can have all of those, oh, sorry, I just have to make.
You can have all of those opinions just outside, you know, if you're going to behave in
that manner, you'll have to do it out there.
And we don't necessarily back a valve, but we back everyone that is respectful and just
want to engage in a positive manner.
I'd also like to point you in the direction of Manjaro.
I accidentally was calling him Manjaro before, but as Manjaro, they have a wonderful
product.
I've tested it out, but I've never ran it as a daily driver.
Think about the kind of discussions you hear about Manjaro.
I have people, well, I don't have them.
I don't know them, but I have read and even heard in discussions on other podcasts where
people literally question is Manjaro arch.
I mean, what else are they using the app package manager or using DNF?
You know, have they advertised as being a fork of soup or something?
I'm trying to figure out what else can they be if they're not arch, but you know why they
do that.
You know why there's, you know, questioning the validity of Manjaro, they're truly
arch.
You get what I mean.
So they're saying that as a way to sort of dampen the success of it.
But I see me personally as some guy on the internet.
So obviously you should trust me with that kind of a name.
You know, I see Manjaro as being a very sophisticated and responsible, like a mature product, you
know, sort of like I would see Fedora or Ubuntu or Debbie and even, you know, I see them as
something I can actually recommend to others.
Now I'm going to admit I have not hung out in the forms there much, so I can't really
tell you if they're a part of that whole RTFM crowd or whatever, you know, cursing at people
because they don't know what what's happening.
I don't know all of that, but I do feel like Manjaro is taking things serious and they're
actually moving that platform forward without all a bunch of swearing and negative nonsense.
So say for instance, what if Manjaro were to have to take action against, you know, large
groups of people?
Recently, it wasn't that long ago where they took a browser, it's a proprietary browser.
I can't remember which one it was.
Was it Vivaldi or something?
They took a proprietary browser and made it the default browser on one of their releases.
And you remember the coverage that I got?
I personally only experienced a few content creators, you know, podcasters who spoke of
it in a light of saying that, hey, this is just a way to bring funding in.
But on the forms, yeah, there was more of the trash talk, you know, they're not really
arching, arch will never do this and blah, blah, blah, blah, proprietary, bad, open good,
the normal stuff you'll hear out there.
And it's like, see, this is the kind of thing that I think we really need to take time
and kind of just cut all of that down, create an environment that is more welcoming, not
just to anybody who agrees with us, but also the people who, well, you know, proprietary
vendors, you know, come on in, you know, yeah, bring your software, let people know that
it's here.
It's available and they can use it however they want, no matter whether it be a snap,
a flat pack and app image, their RPM, you name it, whatever it is, bring it on in, we're
going to welcome you, we're going to treat you like a first class citizen because it's
an echo chamber, otherwise, right, where everybody just agrees with everyone else, because
if you don't, you're going to be cursed at and thrown out of the community if you don't.
Yeah, another thing I want to bring up here, I was listening to a podcast by Joe Resenton,
he does the late night Linux and he recently renamed the, it was another show late night
Linux extras, it got renamed to something else, but I think it was the after hours or something
like that.
Either way, he did an interview with the guy from OMG Ubuntu and it was something that
guy kept saying that, you know, he kept saying like he has a preference, but not an opinion.
In other words, he didn't want to say anything that would draw negative attention and I believe
he actually spoke to that in the podcast, but think about what the community has to be
like for that to be your response, right?
It's almost like, okay, I don't want to tell you what I really think because I know what's
going to happen if I do, if I tell you that I really enjoy using a Mac and I really enjoy
Apple software and iPhones and I watches and all of that Apple ecosystem stuff.
And honestly, I just like being in Linux for the technical talk, and I really to run
and operate it, the guy would get eliminated.
Think about the people who, what was that, it was a conference, it was some, I think it
was the Linux organization or something like that where they were seen using Macs and
people were just tearing them to shreds, they're, how can you be the head of the Linux organization
and you know, the Linux foundation, whatever the hell it's called, how can you be the head
of it and you have a Mac, it's like, come on man, why do you have to attack the guy just
because he uses what he wants to use?
This is, this is why it's so hard to even recommend new people join this because it's
a beautiful, wonderful place and most of the people here are quite, they're just getting
their work done until they have a problem and then, you know, they'll come for help, but
you got to have vocal segment and that that one segment is incredibly toxic when it wants
to be, you know, not all the time.
Sometimes you know, they make some very good arguments and we really appreciate them, but
damn, do they have to attack so much?
Like seriously, everything that is not exactly the way they want it to be, you just get smashed
over the head and I don't, I don't think that's a healthy way to be.
I think we really ought to set up some nice barriers and say, hey, I appreciate you for
being here and I appreciate you for being passionate about the community and the project,
but seriously, if you do that again, you got to go.
All right, one more example before we get out of here, but I know you guys are going
to remember this.
It was a guy, I believe his name was Morack Squires.
He had that project with like the color JS or whatever.
It's a project that's used by millions.
I mean, just tons and tons of companies use his project as a dependency or something like,
I'm not a developer, so please don't, you know, lob grenades at me because I don't
get it correctly at first time.
But either way, this guy has this project.
He wasn't getting the money.
He believed he deserved for the project.
Now he created an open source project knowing that once it's open source, there's no obligation
to pay you.
They have the source code.
They can do whatever they want with it.
He did this and he, I guess he, I guess he just didn't know how big it was going to be.
All these multi million dollar companies using his project, well, he was basically, you
know, saying, hey, you know, all you big companies out there using this project, could you please
just donate?
Could you give something to me?
I'm not exactly sure if he was set up properly for these companies to do this, because you
know, there's also the tax implications whenever you make donations or whatever.
Maybe he has to be set up as a company himself for them to, you know, have the proper
invoices and things for tax reasons to pay him.
Maybe they would rather have employed him, you know, or contracted him, you know, something
that would allow them to pay him and he can continue to make the project.
But then there's all the licensing and things like that.
So whatever the case is, he didn't get the money.
He thought was necessary and I'm only saying he, because I don't know if this is a male
or female.
I think it's a guy.
I didn't have high power over that goes, but yeah, the guy didn't get the money.
He sabotaged his own project.
It wasn't, um, it wasn't malicious like deleted your, your worker and anything like that
where you lost data.
But it was something annoying that he did to his own project that got the, I'm sorry.
We got the attention of Millie and Sony did this because it literally just ruined everybody's
day.
So obviously these companies and everybody got together say, Hey, dude, what are you doing?
You know, obviously you did this intentionally.
What are you doing?
The big companies that, uh, I guess employee IT teams, they pretty much just went and I'm
pretty sure they cloned the repo so they were just able to use Git, roll back and do
what they had to do, but if you're a smaller developer trying to just use this as a dependency
for your own project, that problem, basically that guy's name became dirt overnight.
And uh, he got, he got suspended on GitHub for doing that.
And I mean, if you stop to think about it, that's his readable speech.
He's tried talking to people, I guess on Twitter, whatever that, you know, I don't use Twitter,
I don't even care about it.
But he tried talking to people apparently and tried to get them to say, Hey, look, man,
multi a million dollar people over there, why don't you go ahead and throw a few dollars
in my way.
It's not going to hurt you.
And apparently they did not answer him in a way that he found acceptable.
So the guy just, you know, throw, throw a wrench in the clock works of his own project
ruining everybody else's day.
So they banned him for doing that.
Now stop and think about that.
The coverage for that story was a little bit more sympathetic, right?
You know, it got us discussing funding open source projects rather than, man, what did
A whole thing?
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, look, the idea of doing that is just super funny.
It seems like the ultimate prank.
I don't know if you guys have ever been in gaming or at all, but there was just very popular
MMO where they had all these different clans and stuff like that.
And well, some guy took over one of the largest clans in the game and it made the headlines
for a while.
He took over the clan as a prank.
Once he became the head of the clan, he basically sabotaged it.
And that's what this felt like to me.
Here's this guy getting everybody on board his project.
It's a wonderful project.
And then out of the blue, he goes, you know what, I don't think you're appreciating me
enough.
I'm going to throw a wrench in this and see what happens.
And I wondered did he expect the backlash that came his way?
Sure some of the podcasters may have brought up all the parts that everybody else wasn't
thinking about, you know, like, hey, this guy needs to keep the lights on.
He needs to put food on the table.
His project is the foundation for so many other projects, you know, throw them a bone.
That's what some of them were saying.
But I'm pretty sure all the multi-million dollar companies and the people who have ultimate
say so on rather not this thing gets released elsewhere, including GitHub.
Oh, yeah, they just didn't want to hear a word on this guy.
Just throw this guy overboard, all right, just get rid of him.
So yeah, his name's dirt now, oh, I already said his name.
I probably shouldn't say his name here, but it's public.
It's everywhere.
I'll leave a link down there if you guys want to read on that.
But that's all I got to say for today, man.
That's the end of the episode.
I'm just chatting with you.
What do you guys think about open source and freedom of speech?
How ever it comes, rather be somebody just, you know, ruining their own project to make
sure that everyone else understands them.
Or rather it be a project banning a bunch of people off the forms just to try and clean
up the atmosphere a bit.
Or rather it's just, hey, from the point of view of the people saying all the RTFMs in
the comment section, what do you guys think about it?
Do a show because we need more shows.
You know, let let Ken Fowl and hit you with his shard and go, do a show, do a show.
And apparently Dave Morris isn't there to tell you the release of the area of the week.
I think they said you can release some quite regularly for this point because we kind
of need more shows.
So definitely do a show.
I'd also like to see some comments as well because comments are great, but shows are
better.
And I'll see you in the next one.
Take care.
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