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I have long advocated a middle-ground here:
**Whenever you compromise your values, APOLOGIZE for it**
Instead of insisting on absolute purity, we can accept that real-world trade-offs happen. But don't present it as normal business, ASK to be excused and explain the situation.
In this case, SFC etc. should have some qualifier every place they reference the Google or Microsoft sponsorships. Something like an *acknowledgement* that this is a compromise and link to a statement.
They can't say that.
It's like saying: sorry, we are organizing a conference on #copyleft with the worst enemy of copyleft out there, but hey this is not #marketing, this is serious stuff and you can trust we will be serious about exploring all the ways we can change copyleft to maximize #FreeSoftware, even if they don't want we to.
They can totally say something like: "We acknowledge that many practices of these companies go against the goals of Copyleft, and we recognize the concerns people have about the conflicts in our accepting their support as sponsors of our conference." and link to a longer statement about why they still felt the compromise was still the right decision.
I'm not asking anyone to deny anything. It's totally feasible to *admit* and *explain* when we make compromises.
@wolftune @Shamar @cwebber@octodon.social This assumes that we take it at face value that Google, etc., are benevolent entities that would keep sponsoring these conferences/orgs even if they criticised them. That’s definitely how they want to be seen but my experience says otherwise. When (sponsor) Google had to follow my keynote at NextM, their representative was fuming and told the organisers to change the line up for the next event… https://mobile.twitter.com/aral/status/976738619527397379
@wolftune @Shamar @cwebber@octodon.social … New America fired Barry Lynn when his Open Markets criticised (New America sponsor) Google on antitrust grounds. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/us/politics/anne-marie-slaughter-new-america-google.html
More personally, Linda and I resigned from the Code Club board when we were told not to criticise (sponsor) Google: https://pando.com/2014/08/27/code-club-cofounder-resigns-after-being-ordered-not-to-criticize-google/
It’s all well and good to assume that these companies are benevolent and that their.m money comes without strings but it’s just not true.
The massive centralization around Google and Facebook and their influence not just on software developers and web standards but the whole of society is something worth discussing and criticizing.