Post by @riverpunk@defcon.social

2026-11-06 06:23 UTC

I wanna talk about the political movement of the Open Source community. If you spend enough time on fedi, you surely will have heard *plenty* of criticisms of what's going on in Open Source, and rightfully so. So I'm curious, what do we think the Open Source community *should be doing* in order to achieve important progressive and anti-authoritarian goals? What should the next generation of programmers be thinking of and working on in this space? A special rule: You're only allowed to say "don't X" if you have at least as many "do Y" recommendations. Preferably, I'd like to see more do's than don't's. Boosts welcome :cyber_boost_request: #tech #openSource #FOSS #progressive #programming #askFedi

Replies (2)

@PaulaToThePeople@climatejustice.social 2026-11-07 07:21

@riverpunk@defcon.social Don't use genAI, do write and understand code yourself. Don't do opt-out, do understand and respect the importance of consent. Don't misunderstand free speech, do ban nazis, nazi enablers and nazi appologists. Do care about inclusivity, diversity and accessibility. Do allow your users to give you non-technical feedback in non-nerd language via technology that doesn't go against their values. Do publish your code on federated open source gits, not Microslop AIHub. Do not get discouraged by criticism. You're doing important work. Do take it as a chance to grow. You don't have to be perfect, just willing to improve.

Open ##5496648
@iris_meredith@mastodon.social 2026-11-06 06:31

@riverpunk@defcon.social I'd really like them to work a hell of a lot more closely with domain experts, I think. Librarians, social workers, union activists, journalists... the people who are important in maintaining a robust civil society.

Open ##5513225