free software resistance

 the cost of computing freedom is eternal vigilance

### why-drew-devault-is-an-enemy-of-free-software *originally posted:* dec 2023 ive lost all respect for drew devault. if youre expecting a post full of anger and vitriol here, thats a reasonable expectation. the truth is that i had some respect for him to begin with- ive had only pleasant exchanges with him and he seems like a pretty reasonable person. usually. perhaps when you get to the root of who he is as a person, thats an accurate assessment. right now, that doesnt really matter and honestly isnt relevant- because devault is an enemy of free software. ill explain- and this isnt intended as a joke, im not issuing a ban here (though he is absolutely dead to me, and please note that i moved to another kernel after being tired of torvalds nonsense for years) but i wont promote anything devault does- because he is actually the problem. first of all, devault has compared people who have problems with wayland to anti-vaxxers. says devault: "it has a real cost you know, being a ---- to maintainers. its not good for our mental health. we're out here trying to make things better." okay, so devault has somehow contracted shuttleworthitis: "dont trust us? erm, we have root." THATS NOT HOW TRUST WORKS, DREW! developers have a LOT of power over our lives. and they are NOT doctors subject to the necessary rigourous peer review of medical journals, they are NOT- for the most part- tasked with the same DIRECT level of responsibility (an important distinction that can be muddied if you try, and they will) and their entitlement to our machines and everything we do with them is the antithesis of software freedom. i dont mean hes an enemy just because hes a big meanie- i mean hes an enemy because he has declared himself as being against our freedom. to anyone criticising wayland, his response is literally "---- you." right back atcha, kid! this is why i maybe joke- or maybe try to joke- about a SIXTH freedom, the freedom to talk about the software... leave it to open source to make it actually necessary to state this. the consent we gave to mark shuttleworth, trusting him with root as it were, is akin to the consent given for physical contact- its not a lifetime subscription to do whatever you want, its a MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING that when VIOLATED, it can be withdrawn. and especially when violated! but also, for any reason that pleases you. the reason wayland developers and their fans think you HAVE TO trust them, is they are working for a future where you dont get a choice- you MUST accept wayland, so you MUST trust them. thats a dangerous attitude- with the power to end free software, if we ALLOW it to do this unchecked. developers have POWER over your computing, and by having power over your computing, they have demonstrable power over your life. and i need to reiterate- most developers are neither held to such high standards as vaccines, nor are most applications (including wayland) as important or vital. its not just hyperbole, his argument is deeply dishonest. apparently, devault is a privileged individual. he seems to espouse and promote the belief that if wayland developers bulldoze through all your gnu/linux distributions with all the finesse of lennart poettering, you owe them your gratitude and understanding. heres a news flash: for all of devaults insistence that wayland detractors are conspiracy theorists and cherry pickers, there are OTHER developers, software testers and yes, even users who have legitimate problems CAUSED by wayland. but the companies pushing this stuff are used to people working for them and doing what theyre told- thats practically the definition of privilege. before this level of integration was being pushed by large corporations, if you told the leader of some project how to do their job and they had any good reason not to, youd be laughed at by swaths of the community. now its just accepted that "init system" authors will tell tmux how to hook daemons in a more platform-specific way just because, or that gnome will dictate how xfce does recently de facto standard interfaces on their own desktop. now big projects are bossed around by big companies, and small projects are pushed around by big projects. the very nature of software in bsd (and formerly, in gnu/linux) prevented this sort of thing- ive gone so far as to call it an unlisted de facto freedom- the freedom to remove the software, as coined by peter boughton. without this freedom, freedom 3 cannot be guaranteed by a license, only "offered" and "hoped" for. not to say that you can guarantee freedom 3 anyway, only that it should not be eroded or rescinded by monopolists. people including myself are moving to bsd to get away from these things. bsd developer theo de raadt calls the class of problem "vertical integration", which is a term that denotes monopoly entitlement on the part of large corporations- that already have effective monopolies they want to assert further. there used to be laws against this sort of thing, and at a minimum, there should be norms against it. when those laws existed, they solved a lot of corruption and abuse of consumers- the same people devault says "---- you" to. apparently he also says it to de raadt, and he says it to the board of the netbsd foundation, which is no monolith but includes people who say that wayland is "platformisation". dont like platformisation? ---- you, i guess? but this is still the antithesis of software freedom. its my computer drew, not yours. not ibms. this level of control by corporations is exactly what i moved to gnu/linux to get away from. but devaults argument is for non-freedom: NO, YOU CANT FORK! (you cant, do you think youre going to fork something like wayland? its designed to be a monolith and its designed to tell other projects what and how they have to do everything- x was... never like that). YOU CANT FORK, AND YOU HAVE TO LIKE IT! you will own nothing, you will have no say in the matter, and youll be happy. and please dont think im being unfair to lennart here. when you take over the bulk of distributions by hooking everything to your master control program, in exactly the way that openbsds rc.d avoided as a matter of design and principle, or unix philosophy at its best- the thing about monopolies is they DONT CARE about users. lennart WON AN INFAMOUS AWARD for literally, NOT CARING. power corrupts, and even if you do care about users to begin with, when you have the majority of control over the majority of users, suddenly they are meant to do YOUR bidding. you cant please everyone! but you CAN control everyone. so if these peasants arent happy? drew has the answer: "---- you." what privileged developers dont understand is, that sentiment is mutual. it STARTED with wayland not caring what users wanted, and it LED TO self-respecting users not caring what wayland wants. wayland doesnt care about that either, they just keep hooking everything into vertical integration and the linux kernel- good for marketshare! bad for users. i guess what devault really meant is ---- ME, too. i get it, but what you really meant is ---- my freedom. what he meant is that i dont deserve freedom 0, because i should give that up to developers who want to tell me what i have to do. but unlike anti-vaxxers, ive got legitimate people in important positions that agree with me on the problem. ive got people working on alternatives, which is an exercise of freedoms 0 through 3. whats devaults message to them? if you want to increase the already insane power imbalance between users and developers, then go with devault. and if you believe that users should define consent over what runs as root, or any other privilege level, go with free software instead. dont get mad at ME, mr. devault. you said it yourself. i want to thank you though, for letting us know the side youre on: obedience to our developer masters. no thanks! and if you see me with my hand over my drink when you walk near, its not YOU- its every developer who feels as entitled as you. a better metaphor for developers is not doctors, but bartenders. if you sit at the bar, you probably trust them to make you a drink or at least give you water, food or soda. ### but if they put things in that you dont want, or that make you sick, you arent required to drink it or do business there- i wont trust anyone who says you are. im not ready to call wayland roofie-ware, but unity lens was certainly a cocktail from hell. what devault doesnt understand is, that shuttleworth, microsoft poettering, and wayland are all backed by companies with a decades-long record of working AGAINST users, for their own profits and for CONTROL. the point of free software is truly to stand against such things. youd think someone who provides a github alternative would understand that. but i guess he isnt interested anymore. ---- that too, i guess? devault highlights the problem with open source, really- it isnt about freedom per se, its about using gestures of freedom to bait people into controlling, abusive relationships with bad developers that gaslight and control users. devault promotes software colonialism. dont worry, its better and all promises will be kept. i realised this about open source more than a decade ago, and ive been criticising it as the fake corporate version of free software, that sells out users- ever since. maybe someday devault will realise that he came out on the side of power, against users. until then, hes effectively just another shill in my opinion. i dont necessarily think thats what hes "really like". but thats what hes doing, and thats more than bad enough. hes using his platform to fight against your freedom, while blaming the victim and defending privilege. thats exactly what an enemy of free software is. developers that have this attitude are counterrevolutionary- from gnome selling out and pushing around competing desktops using gtk, which wasnt even a gnome project originally! to lennart, who was never the only problem, though hes one heck of a bad example- to wayland pushers, several debian project leaders, and even stallman doesnt understand the problem: > I've chosen not to have any preferences among those [fsdg-conforming] distros. the reason they dont understand is that instead of listening, they use vitriol against the people and the projects theyve done careless harm to. i wrote about the arrogance of some developers years ago, i still do. its still a problem. and devault is loudly, unapologetically part of the problem. hes wrong, and hes wrong in a way that will continue to play out- with one side defending users while the other sells them out to corporations- as part of the future of free software. just the same, i want to thank devault for capturing the true spirit of both non-free software and the "open source" scam to drag the world back to it, in only eight characters. devault has an incredible knack for summary. open source means "---- your freedom", or ---- your freedom with the license you rode in on. and yes, if you agree with even half of this, you should be doing what you can to get away from github- but i will never use devaults alternative. when a developer publicly blames you and anyone else for wanting control of that, they have outed themselves as someone who believes in companies controlling users. its hardly my fault if he didnt intend it that way. open source has a rich history of denouncing user freedom piecemeal, then later eroding user freedom in the software it offers. people who do that arent just selling you out. theyre promising to sell you out again in the future, and again as many times as youll let them. what you do with that trend and that warning obviously, is up to you. good developers give users more control- bad developers take it away, then demonise users for protesting it. you dont hear "just fork it if you dont like" as much as you used to, because theyre deliberately and predictably (we were given a 20-year head start) making software less forkable- you arent MEANT to have a choice here. and devault openly declared a problem with you for wanting one. i wish he was the first, but this is the problem called "open source". many years ago, when i was suckered into believing the mantra that open source was "like free software, only better!" i heard this sort of stuff from people all the time. when you pretend its about freedom, but you make it about giving that up for scraps from the table, youre not advocating progress- youre co-opting a revolution, youre helping people exploit users. the thing about open source is- from gnome to systemd to wayland- they first declare war against you. theyre very honest about it, gleefully telling you that what you rely on has its days numbered, at least on day one. once the invasion begins, they simply deny that theyre not on your side. they deny that it was an invasion. these are your new friends! take them or leave them. how many times does open source intend to teach me that lesson, and have me play along with this silly game? open source isnt honest. open source is a scam, and it deserves as much respect as multi-level-marketing. it plays just as dirty, it lies just as much- open source pretends anyone can get in, and people at the bottom routinely pay out of pocket to serve the people getting paid at the top. its still a problem that more developers arent getting paid, but in my opinion the biggest problem is that the people who paid out of their own pocket are having everything they worked for co-opted to bolster the power and monopoly of megacorporations. both of these issues- paying developers less and exploiting the work that volunteers do for the public- allow big vendors to convert the free software movement into a sweatshop software industry. but i guess mr. devault is fine with that, at least, hes clearly NOT fine with me talking about why its a problem. unfortunately, wayland is part of this problem. its not designed to be maintained WITHOUT a big corporation exploiting and dictating what volunteers do. thats a feature, but more to the point- its an antifeature. both for users, and for people who actually care about free software. as for mr. stallman, his problem is more unique, but it demonstrates everything wrong with free software today: the founders and leaders of the free software movement really want you to have control of your computing, but they cant denounce the actions of corporations which co-opt that control by subverting (yet still using) free licenses. thats not the fault of the licenses, its the fault of pretending that the license alone (or the fsdg alone) is sufficient- without vigilance. stallman STOOD DOWN in 2011, basically declaring that the fsdg was enough- our opponents continued to evolve. the takeover spent the next few years moving into position. i believe this was nothing more than a strategic failure- but it was the strategic failure of the free software movement. i believe free software, can- and must- reassert itself eventually. but the biggest problem was that free software was overly trusting of its enemies. "sure, we can control users even WITH your free licenses!" "oh no," free software insisted- "that isnt possible!" sure it is. all you have to do is make users do what you want, something that non-free corporations have excelled at for decades- and then tell them theyre just as free (maybe even more!) when they have demonstrably less choice and less that can be done to fix it than ever before. most people dont even care if theyre free, as long as theyre happy. stop being unhappy, please- youre upsetting the people who are content with scraps from the big table. eventually the people who are happy now will be just as upset as you are, when the companies they trust do to them what theyve already done to us. thats both devaults hypocrisy, as it is his naivete. the difference is that wayland critics see the problem now, like those who said before the iraq invasion that it would lead to a prolonged conflict and a power vacuum creating more sustained violence. what they predicted was exactly what happened. but they were still called unpatriotic, they were called traitors, and the people wanted war- or thought they wanted war. they were lied to about how easy it would be- and about how necessary it would be, and how many years it would take. and how unreasonable and even dangerous people were for critiquing the plan. i get it, youve already forgotten that devault conflates wayland with a vaccine and you think im ridiculous for comparing it to war. but then youd be missing the main point of the comparison, which is that many people routinely and arbitrarily denounce critics who have actual points, even when listening to the critics would save tens or hundreds of thousands of lives- so why would they listen to someone saying "this is going to suck for free software?" what devault is doing is asking if the status quo, the one where corporations control our software, will stand with him on this- but the status quo doesnt care about him, or you, or me- devaults simply willing to stand with it either way. the fact that these things arent new, and are kind of predictable, doesnt change what centrists want. it only changes their willingness to be reasonable and honest about the problems these "solutions" create. its so much easier to just blame the users. but blaming the user for not wanting to give up more control of their computing- for not wanting to put an increasing amount of it into the hands of bigger and bigger corporations and one-size-fits-all projects, has nothing to do with free software. what they want instead is invasion and occupation. sadly, mr. devault still speaks for the majority there. going against the big plan was never the surest way to make friends. but if all your friends are from open source, then all youve got for friends are enemies of your freedom- "friends" who will gaslight and control you. in the grand scheme of things, this is fake freedom. and fake friends. you should know by now that a big corporation is NEVER a friend. when do you think devault will know? license: 0-clause bsd ``` # 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 # # Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any # purpose with or without fee is hereby granted. # # THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES # WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF # MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. 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