Re: ML moderation (was: security alerts in busybox)

On Sun, 26 Apr 2026 18:51:27 +0000
Laurent Bercot via busybox <[email protected]> wrote:

> >Please, let me know when the "exporting democracy to others with
> >enforceable means" starts.
> 
>   Roberto, I'm going to make one attempt at getting through to you in
> good faith and without animosity. And then I will stop talking, because
> one of us polluting the ML with off-topic noise is already more than
> enough.
> 
>   No matter what you seem to believe, free software is not "just the code
> and nothing else matters".
>   If it worked that way, everyone would be coding their stuff at home and
> nobody but themselves would ever look at what they've done.
>   Yes, you are free to do that, and nobody is denying you that; it is,
> by and large, what Eric S. Raymond does. It is more or less the
> libertarian ideal applied to software, and if that is what you're after,
> it's all good. But ESR, who seems to be one of your models, publishes
> his software, and blogs about his ideas, on *his own site*, and has a
> few dedicated followers. He follows the libertarian ideal of not
> infringing on others' liberty, and does his own thing without squatting
> public space in order to advertise it.
>   You could do the same. You have advertised your project in an adjacent
> community; now it's known; following the logic, you could set up your
> own ML, or your own communication channels, and then interact with 
> people
> who have chosen to follow your project.
> 
>   But that is not what you're doing. What you're doing is interacting 
> with
> the busybox community, taking up a lot of space, talking loudly, and 
> when
> someones asks you to tone it down, you retreat behind "It's free 
> software,
> you don't have to use my stuff, you don't have to interact with me, 
> nobody
> has any obligations".
> 
>   Except we *do* have obligations. Free software is not just about code,
> it is also about *community*. In order to share software in an efficient
> manner, we need to foster communities around that software. And as soon
> as there's a community, as soon as there is something social, there are
> rules. You may not like it, I may not like it, but there are. There is a
> social contract, just like there is in the outside world. Outside, the
> social contract is made explicit by various laws (whether or not laws
> materialize an acceptable social contract is beside the point); in free
> software communities, and small communities generally, there is more 
> good
> will, so the social contract is often implicit, but it does exist.
> Sometimes it is made explicit by codes of conduct, contributor
> agreements, and similar things, which you might see as unnecessary, but
> they exist for a reason: their existence means that somewhere, sometime,
> someone has broken the social contract and the community has deemed it
> necessary to write it down as a first step to ensuring it does not 
> happen
> again.
> 
>   The rules generally boil down to one very simple thing:
>   "Don't be an asshole."
>   Which roughly means:
> 
>   - You are part of a community of individuals who share an interest in
> a piece of software
>   - We are all here to talk about that software, and since we all lead
> busy lives, with lots of things that demand our attention, and little
> time, we would like this place to stay reasonably on-topic
>   - We are humans who enjoy positive, warm feelings and feel bad when
> someone is shouting at us or insulting us, or is being overly
> argumentative for no apparent reason, and we should not have to "grow
> a thicker skin", we would rather everyone grow manners
>   - We expect everyone in the community to understand this and self-
> regulate to keep this place welcoming, a place where it is pleasant to
> interact with other members and talk about the software and avoid 
> wasting
> everybody's time
>   - Do not go against these interests of the community
> 
>   It is not about dictatorship, quite the contrary. It is about communal
> interest.
> 
>   And you *are* violating these implicit rules. You are behaving in a way
> that makes it difficult for others to use this mailing-list for its
> intended purposes. Despite what you may believe, your presence and
> interventions, for the last few months, have not been helping the
> community of people who, like you, are interested in using busybox and
> making it better. They have been *detrimental* to it.

Hi Laurent and all,

To be honest and without wanting to be the defender of Mr. Foglietta
who indeed has a little caustic writing style, but at least in this thread as far 
as i recall was not the first throwing around F-words and A-words ,
the community interested in using busybox is well represented by
the current state of its infrastructure (website, git repository etc).
I really wonder how it is possible that a so widespread used project
(if it still is), running in billions of devices, could be in such a poor
condition. The website not updated, web git broken (disabled?),
no communication at all about what is going on, patches  laying 
around on the ML for months and months, gently pinged multiple times.
Where is the community taking care of their common project,
where are the community members stepping up, where
the businesses making money of it, where the bigger projects
using it in their distros?
What I see happen rather often instead is that patches are
posted on the list and are commented upon by people with no real
intention to review them and (apparently) with no committing (to git)
powers in a "social media like" auto reverberating process
that ends sooner or later in arguing on off-topics and in the
worst case in reciprocal insults.

>   In other words: you seem to think this is a free-for-all, and that you
> are in your own right to post so much about barely relevant stuff and
> occupy so much space, to be contemptuous of other contributors and to
> veer into off-topic rants every time someone says something. But this is
> not true. Even though they aren't written, there are laws. Most people
> are, more or less consciously, aware of them, and are able to self-
> regulate. You have been asked to self-regulate, and you have refused to
> hear. You think your perception of what is reasonable is more correct
> than what everyone else has told you. I'm sorry, but your perception is
> wrong, and you are *not* being reasonable.
> 
>   So, yes, I am calling the police. Not because I like authoritarian
> regimes, but because I want this community to thrive, and right now, you
> are an obstacle to that. This is nothing personal against you, but the
> community takes precedence over you. And as I said, without moderation,
> other people will also fail to self-regulate sooner or later - you are,
> believe it or not, not that special.

I too would love this community to thrive, as it was the place where
I learned that little C coding skills I have (almost forgotten now) 
that improved my life in many ways,  but invoking the community
only to censor the behavior of somebody is not enough.
Mr. Foglietta  (non me ne voglia!)  is not the cause of the decadence
of this project, he could be the effect tough.
I start to believe  that some kind of disruption is needed to
restart it with new energy, maybe we've become too comfortable
and want not to be disturbed in our "microcosmos".
This is happening in other projects too for example
the xorg -> xlibre fork, at its beginning the "forker"
was thrown out about his behavior and laughed at,
but right now I'm running my desktop on xlibre and
if it is not better than xorg for sure it is not worse 
(maybe a little faster if it is not a placebo effect).
So in the hope it helps for the future I wish all the best
to Roberto and his robang-busybox fork, time will tell
if he is the right man for the job or just another small gear
in the larger mechanism of history.

>   If you can hear me, understand I'm talking in good faith, and actually
> engage with what I'm saying, cheers and thank you.
>   If not, oh well, I tried.
> 

So did I.  I apologize to all mailing list members
for this rather lenghty off-off-off topic post.

Ciao and good night,
Tito

> --
>   Laurent
> 
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