#introductions
Hi this is going to be an official account for FOSDEM.org in the future #patience-please #Free #Libre #Open-source
@fosdem Hi there, welcome to the fediverse.
Who are your sponsors this year? Will you have the world’s #1 surveillance capitalist (Google) as your primary sponsor again?
What’s FOSDEM’s official stance on surveillance capitalism? Are you ethically/morally opposed to the business model of tracking/profiling people to manipulate their behaviour for profit or do you support it (being neutral in this, as in any situation of injustice, takes the side of the oppressor).
Look forward to your answer.
@aral We are a conference and platform for and about free and open source software. As such we welcome all free and open source developers from all over the world, regardless of their affiliation. We use donations to make this event possible. We aren't selective about sponsors and sources of donations, for sponsors have no influence on the selection of the contents for the event.
@fosdem That “free” word you keep using refers to “freedom”.
”We aren’t selective about about sponsors and sources of donations” is tone-deaf, reckless, & simply not acceptable in 2018 for any group that seeks legitimacy in the ethics of what they do.
Palantir develops open source (https://palantir.github.io) and also helps ICE find & deport asylum seekers. By your (lack of) ethical standards, they would be welcome as a sponsor.
Please see https://fundingmatters.tech and review your stance on this.
@aral @jaywink @fosdem ...at the same intersectional spacr, Greenpeace + Exxon + indigenous/poc folks, to call attention Greenpeace's extreme and ongoing tonedeafness to the rights of indegenous folks and Greenpeace's own complicity in the environmental movement's straight neoliberal, colonial/imperalist and white supremacist/anti-black policies and self-serving "allyship" to the needs of indegenous and people of color...
@aral @fosdem Well, to be fair, FOSDEM is only the organizer. I'm pretty sure the FSF will call out the abuses of Google and Microsoft while at FOSDEM. And that is fine. I remember last year the talk by Framasoft. Man it was political. And that is fine.
But it's not the job of the people organizing to do the politics. Leave the discourse to the participants. FOSDEM just provides the venue. The money from sponsors makes the venue possible. It doesn't give the sponsors an edge on discussion.