[martypitt]

Wow - that article was a tough read. I like a LOT of what Drew has to say, but this seems over the top.

He claims that authors promoting their open source software on channels like Twitter, Hacker news, LinkedIn or even Github is "selfish and unethical outright":

> Many projects choose to prioritize access to the established audience that large commercial platforms provide, in order to maximize their odds of becoming popular, and enjoying some of the knock-on effects of that popularity, such as more contributions.

> To me, this is selfish and unethical outright, though you may have different ethical standards.

I find Zealotry like this tough, and promotes a definition of FOSS that feels hostile against those who want to simply build something cool, and share it with the world - (or even more controversially, make money from FOSS).

Given such a strong view, it's really surprising that he then posts stuff like "Can I be on your podcast"[1] to try to promote Hare - his programming language.

He didn't ask for podcasts that aren't distributed on platforms like Spotify or Apple Podcasts. In fact - he's right there with several appearances promoting Hare.

That feels like hypocrisy.

[1]: https://drewdevault.com/2023/11/09/Can-I-be-on-your-podcast....

[jraph]

> or even more controversially, make money from FOSS

I doubt Drew is against making money from FOSS. He actually runs a business (businesses?) around FOSS.

I don't think it's controversial to make money from FOSS anymore. FOSDEM just happened, many companies making money from FOSS were there, and they are liked. Some specific ways of making money might be less appreciated, but not the whole concept.

People are not silly, they know money helps develop (free) software and also many would love to be paid to work on free software.

> That feels like hypocrisy.

No, that feels like living in an imperfect world and trying to make it better. To improve something, you generally need to be part of it and its imperfections.

[dash2]

> No, that feels like living in an imperfect world and trying to make it better. To improve something, you generally need to be part of it and its imperfections.

Right, but that's the hypocrisy, no? He's being rude about people who use github, or post an article on HN, but surely most of those guys are doing just the above. When is it OK to use non-free software and when not? Maybe there's a dividing line you can draw about "platforms".

[jraph]

Are you talking about Drew or "those guys", whoever they are?

Let's focus on Drew. I've not seen him mention HN, which by the way doesn't require running non-free software, and he literally runs a free software competitor to GitHub. I've not seen him be rude to people using GitHub. He certainly strongly criticizes them.

I assume he uses GitHub to communicate with projects hosted there. If he does, I don't think he could be blamed for meeting people where they are. He is not arguing about this, he is arguing against hosting non free software on proprietary infrastructure and strengthen it instead of helping strengthen the free software ecosystem. Which he doesn't do. He doesn't host his projects on GitHub.

He could boycott GitHub to make an even stronger point, but I believe that isn't practical at this time when you are part of the open source community. And running a whole GitHub competitor is way more than most people do for this cause. Accepting to reluctantly use GitHub (or Discord, or whatever) and spreading the word against its use is not contradictory.

Hypocrisy would be telling people not to use proprietary infrastructure to manage your free software project, and then hosting on GitHub.

Specifically about podcasts because that's what people seem to take issue with here: podcasts are usually hosted somewhere else, in addition to Spotify. Historically, podcasts are handled with RSS feeds, there's nothing more standard and open than this. It would be wrong to force people to use Spotify to hear his podcast, but that's not the case. He also should accept to be hosted on Spotify. When you are spreading ideas, you should want to reach people who are not yet as aware as you are in your cause. If you stay outside the world you criticize, you don't reach people inside it. And more importantly, he didn't mention Spotify at all; in particular, he didn't say "please host me on Spotify". Podcast ≠ Spotify.

I see hypocrisy nowhere.

Activism is hard, you know. You often need to do compromises for you activism to be efficient. Nobody is perfect. Should you wait to be perfect before making something for your cause?

[martypitt]

I'm struggling to see the distinction here.

Sure, Podcast ≠ Spotify, just as Git ≠ Github. But people choose to distribute their code on Github for exactly the same reason the people choose to distribute their podcasts on Spotify - reach.

That exact reach is what Drew argues so articulately against - in fact he expressly calls out marketing on Twitter and Facebook as a "mistake", and damaging against the FOSS community. He goes on to encourage people to prefer open infrastructure with lesser reach, even if that comes at the expense of effectiveness:

> Such projects would prefer to exacerbate the network effects problem rather than risk some of its social capital on a less popular platform. To me, this is selfish and unethical outright.

It's hard to see how that same argument doesn't extend to promoting your software on podcasts which are primarily distributed via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc.

On the topic of Activism, I think I'd agree with you, if he was on Spotify podcasts promoting other "Free" podcast platforms.

But he's not - he's promoting a programming language.

[jraph]

I'll grant this to you.

My opinion is that he didn't explicitly ask for the podcasts to be on Spotify or Apple. That Spotify and Apple Podcast are the main way of consuming podcasts is not of his making. And maybe he requests podcasts not to be hosted on those platforms. Maybe not.

But I can see how you may find that there can be some contradiction here.

To me this would be a "you still need to be part of this imperfect world" thing, or a "imperfect activism" thing, but I would totally understand someone disagree with this / find that it's not coherent.

[dash2]

You're right, he mentioned Reddit not HN. I was speaking loosely when I said "being rude" - he criticizes them.

[jraph]

Now, I wouldn't be shocked to read someone consider HN as a proprietary platform.

> I was speaking loosely when I said "being rude" - he criticizes them

Ok, we are on the same page. The distinction is important to me :-)

[martypitt]

> No, that feels like living in an imperfect world and trying to make it better.

Fair call.

[djha-skin]

Podcasts are actually distributed via rss. Proprietary platforms pick them up but they're actually one of the few forms of media that the public widely consumes via open standards.

[jstanley]

> you may have different ethical standards

Isn't this the exact opposite of zealotry? Zealotry is imposing your ethical standards on others.

[martypitt]

You may be right, Zealot may not be the right word here.

But after reading that article, I was definitely left feeling judged because I choose to do exactly the things he's talking about, for exactly the reasons he's suggesting. Maybe that's on me, but I certainly felt his standards imposed on me, disclaimer or not.

Also, given the conviction with which he argues with in the article, that disclaimer feels a little weak -- kinda like when someone says "No offence, but... <very offensive thing>".

[BHSPitMonkey]

It's at least a form of _casual_ zealotry. "You may have different ethical standards" is clearly the author's passive-aggressive way of saying "your ethics might not be as righteous as mine", as opposed to "reasonable minds may disagree".

[jraph]

I certainly read this sentence as your second option. It may depend on the tone you imagine for Drew's sentence.

[lostlogin]

> Zealotry is imposing your ethical standards on others

It’s even more specific than that though isn’t it? A fanatical belief in a single cause to the exclusion of all else.

[jraph]

Yes. "fanatical" is key here.

The commenter somewhat retracted their use of this word in a sibling comment, but it seems important to me that we don't confuse strong views with zealotry. Drew's views are certainly very strong.

Strong views can be rational and well thought. I even believe they are often the ones that can push the world to a better place. Usually you can even argue with someone yielding strong views if they are rational (unless the person is bad at communication / is an asshole, of course it's possible). Strong views can shake you up and are not always enjoyable.

Zealotry is just plain irrational and dangerous and there's no way you can have a constructive discussion with a zealot.

[zzo38computer]

You can promote the software, as well as mirror the code of the software, on multiple services. (Unfortunately, while the code and documentation can be mirrored, the discussions usually won't be.)

Requiring the use of priorietary software to access and discuss it is a problem, and requiring complicated software is not that good either, but it is also possible to use open protocols with multiple software.

(In the specific case of GitHub, they had previously allow viewing files without needing JavaScripts; that has changed now, but the data is included as JSON data within the HTML file, so I was able to write my own much shorter script to substitute for theirs. Of course, that does not help much if you do not have that script, but you can still use the git protocol to download the files, or to use the API (the form for creating a new repository has stopped working on my computer, but I have been able to do so by using the API).)

One thing they do not mention is NNTP, which I think can be a helpful alternative than mailing lists (although you can also have multiple interfaces for the same messages).

[jraph]

You might be interested in GitHub's cli tool, which is open source, if you want to access GitHub without running their proprietary JS code.

https://cli.github.com/

[mrd3v0]

Promoting free software through unfree software IS selfish and hurtful to society.

Just because you don't necessarily have a solid counterargument to his convictions, doesn't make anything he said "over the top." That's just a disingenuous dismissive attitude towards what is clearly a post on his personal website that builds on established and clearly communicated values (freedom of software.)

There's absolutely nothing in that article that criticises making and sharing free software. It is clearly criticising using a certain type of medium to share free software. If that's zealotry, then any argument against doing anything is, too.

I wager that this hostility felt by these views are projections of guilt, devoid of criticisms towards said views or values. In fact, I'd argue that having no opposition towards a certain ethos then opposing it for frivolous reasons such as personal offence out of a public blog post is as close to hypocrisy as one can get.

[jraph]

> Promoting free software through unfree software IS selfish and hurtful to society.

Well, it's a tough call. I agree that communicating trough them strengthens them because of the network effect. But if you never reach "unaware" people with your ideas where they are (on those platforms, that is), you are not really helping either.

So it's not clear using those platforms only hurts. It could be a net win, all effects taken in account.

In any case, I agree that you should not force people to use these platforms to follow you.