[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.