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Have you submitted a talk to the Open Source Design devroom at @fosdem yet? 
CfP closing in 10 days!
https://opensourcedesign.net/2023/11/14/fosdem-cfp-2024
@aral @opensourcedesign @simulo @fosdem honest question: I don't like big techs either. In the absence of any other source of funding, how do you suggest open source/free projects and events sustain themselves?
@melissawm @opensourcedesign @simulo @fosdem I reject the premise of the question. There are other sources of funding. But #FOSDEM isn’t about #foss. It should really be called OSDEM. Then I wouldn’t have any reason to criticise because we already know “open source” is about business and Google being the main sponsor is just par for the course for open source. But when you bring “freedom” into it… well, I expect higher standards, at least.
@aral @opensourcedesign @simulo @fosdem can you point to any other sources of funding? For events, I'm not aware of anything other than grants from tech philanthropists or big techs. Never seen anything else...
@melissawm @opensourcedesign @simulo @fosdem You can (a) stay within your means and charge for entry like we did with the international conference we organised when we were just getting started, for example (https://ind.ie/archive/summit/) (b) get sponsorship form organisations that aren’t surveillance capitalists. Amazingly, they do exist.
@melissawm @opensourcedesign @simulo @fosdem I was going to say people would never stand for a climate change event being sponsored by ExxonMobil, for example, but we’re seeing even worse with #COP28 so maybe this is just the stage of capitalism we’re in and everything is bullshit and I’m just being silly.
@aral @opensourcedesign @simulo @fosdem not silly, but I have to say while I'd love to see a sustainable future without them, right now it feels like being stuck with their money. It's OK if you have other means, not everybody is that lucky unfortunately
@melissawm @opensourcedesign @simulo @fosdem It’s not about luck, it’s about principles.
A climate conference that has Shell as its cornerstone sponsor isn’t unlucky, it’s institutionally corrupt.
@aral or it doesn't happen, and none of these things get discussed (which is what's going on in Brazil and I bet a lot of the global South)
FISL died for many reasons, and money was one of them.
@melissawm But what exactly is being discussed? Only those things that people who are fine with having Google as the cornerstone sponsor are willing to discuss. Not the things that people who are not fine with it would be discussing because they will not be there and allow their legitimacy to be used to whitewash a surveillance capitalist.