Re: Debian's Presence on Twitter (X)

On Wed, 22 Jan 2025 at 17:29, Roberto A. Foglietta
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 22 Jan 2025 at 17:22, Yashraj <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > Greetings,
> >
> > This discussion has been in the back of my mind since I decided to
> > delete my personal accounts on some proprietary platforms,
>
>
> https://robang74.github.io/chatgpt-answered-prompts/html/diritti-digitali-e-separazione-dei-dati-dai-social-EN.html#introduction
>
>

Supposing that feelings, opinions and self-harming ideas are not
essential for dealing with reality - facts remain as the last way to
go. Here we are then.

Why might the idea behind the above proposal make a greater difference
than Mastodon? In literature it is known as "separation between data
and their presentation".

Once upon a time, among hackers or scientists, I should not have
remembered this pillar of knowledge and fundamental principle of a
successful approach to IT science.

This thread could end here. IMHO. But you might not agree, then
continue to read and enjoy it. Otherwise, invest your time in a more
practical and useful activity.

= = =

HISTORICAL PREMISE

However, to mature a functional understanding of facts and hence a
plan with a schedule to achieve those goals that are part of the
Debian agenda (replace Debian with any other entity and it is the
same) - consensus or democracy are NOT options. Why? Democracy has no
any value in science and Open Source takes its initial boost from MIT
and BSD by the scientific principle for which knowledge (and
information) should be shared and in information technology - software
with a possible commercial value - being available also for doing
business because of "public money, public code". Instead, the software
libre movement took its initial boost because one of these university
researchers tried to print an essay and failed because of a
proprietary driver. Asking for the code and facing a hard "no-way" as
answer, he ended up in writing a licence that took the name of GPL and
its v2 is the one adopted by the Linux Kernel. Just to remind
something that it seems some people forgot. These two last examples
are enough to exclude that "consensus" can be a value because RMS
would have easily asked its university to buy another printer and
Linus Towards, following the suggestion of his teacher, would not even
have started to write Linux. Without any surprise, both democracy and
consensus are driven by opinions and feelings and both end up being
leveraged by politics whilce science always tries to stay away from
that "kind" of human activities.

HISTORICAL INCLUSIVENESS

Both Open Source and Software Libre were inclusive by their own nature
because - at that time there were just genders and not confusion at
all about that - in sharing information, no woman could have been
prevented from educating herself. Hedy Lamarr, Ada Lovelace, Marie
Curie, Mileva Marić, etc. etc. - for some of them, it is hard to
recognise them as "hacker" because this label soon gets into a kind of
stereotype which has a little to do with the real meaning (a
scientist, with practical skill and a self-referencing attitude). So,
if someone tells you that statistics are showing a historical lack of
women participation in science or information technology, it is
because usually women are not competing for being recognised or when
they do, they become Hollywood stars like Lamarr. Nowadays, you may
say that everything has changed and they could. Yes, if fact in my
opinion nowadays there are more hacker biologically female than male
and in trying to contradicts this claim with data and statistics, I
should remember you that real-women are not used to surround
themselves by "snowflakes" unless in they are in a pre-schooling age
and that it is about kinder gardening. Are you feeling offended? Good,
and more is better. Reality is brutal, always it has been. We are the
product of 4 billion years of evolution and we still have the feeling
of being unsafe in this world? Welcome to the club of DNA-based living
creatures on the planet Earth.

BEING INCLUSIVE

Nowadays, a solid and practical manner to be inclusive is - for
example - providing the women of Iran a relatively cheap and easy way
to provide themselves with a Debian old laptop running possibly a way
to access to world knowledge by a VPN in the hope that despite have
been married at 12 yo with a relatively older man, they still manage
to educate themselves and hopefully their daughters as well. This is
the kind of inclusivity that really matters, everything else is a job
for social services. Or said in another way: in a world in which women
are not free to read a book or walk around as they please, your right
to use lipstick or wear a skirt is just a caprice of those who
received a barby instead of a ken or viceversa at Christmas time.
Brutal, but real - and - sincerely I am not willing to waste a minute
of my lifetime about that.

WHATEVER, IT WOULD BE

Ubuntu is currently the most popular GNU/Linux distribution, and
claiming that Ubuntu is based on Debian does not change this fact. It
might be a good thing, after all. In such a way Debian is not going to
deal with marketing or politics and therefore Debian can proceed more
focused on its own agenda. Under this such PoV, it could be a very
valuable trade-off - **OR** - it could be the result of a bare simple
consideration: hackers - despite being rebels in some ways - prefer to
be paid to work for a company mostly aligned with their values rather
being driven by consensus or put in the position of need to consider -
whatever it rains - about opinion and feelings from random people.
Might this help you, to remember WHY we have been here and how we
managed to be here.

= = =

Best regards, R-