What do you do if you want to leave tech?

You don’t. Every aspect of modern society needs some amount of tech. But the tech we need doesn’t automatically need to be the adware-laden, spyware-as-a-service enshittified garbage that BigTech foists on us in the name of ever-increasing quarterly profits.

We all have a choice. If you can make tech, you can choose to make tech for humans, not corporations. There are numerous apps that we would all love a simple, cleanly implemented version maintained by a small team of individuals dedicated to creating a useful application that solves real-world problems without ripping anybody off or filling our viewscreens with pointless ads.

There’s a simple equation anybody can follow. Make something useful that someone else finds value in, sell it for a reasonable price. That’s it. That’s all any of us need to do in tech. Grab the off-the-shelf hardware, the open-source software, make something useful, and sell it for a modest profit that the makers can live a modest life on.

We all can choose to be less greedy any time we want. We can choose to work for less greedy people. We can choose to maximize for human impact, or for quality, or for longevity. We do not need to keep choosing maximum profit at the expense of our own ecological well-being.

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What is there to fear? Seriously. Pretending like this has anything to do with fear is the most childishly narcissistic framing possible. Grow up.

Xorg is nearly dead and buried. Nobody actually cares about Xlibre. Notice how the only thing being mentioned is the sidenote that this fork is run by a racist troll whose been kicked for cause from several prominent OSS projects. Literally the only reason XLibre exists is because this individual needed to start his own project because he’s worn out his welcome in many others.

And, considering the geopolitical state of affairs at the moment. It’s pretty plainly obvious that the only sort of person who is “anti-DEI” are fascists. And the only people making excuses for the fascists are other fascists. So, thanks for letting us know who you are.

Found the useful idiot. You’re willfully ignoring the racist dogwhistles. That either makes you a supporter or a fellow traveler. Either way, you’re complicit and not innocent.

This is the childish actions of a whiny technofascists that’s gotten himself banned for cause. Note the open bigotry right in the README. For some odd reason he feels the need to make an anti-DEI statement. Treat it like the far-right dog whistle it is.

Feel free to go back and read the thread for yourself. It’s all right there.

Funny how you call me a gatekeeper, but can’t explain what I’ve prevented you from doing. You claim that outside critique is Super Important, but then can’t figure out why anyone should care about your critiques. And now you claim I’m lying about something that the text is all right there to read, and somehow I’m incorrect because reasons that you can’t articulate.

Are you sure you’re okay?

Thanks for admitting that you don’t actually care about the software. This was never about the software. This was only about your desire to control the actions of other people. Your previous comment already showed that when you chose to highlight my lack of interest in your opinion and not anything that actually matters.

You might want to consider spending less time on social media.

Correct. There are actual efforts going on to resolve those issues. Which begs the question, why post vague exhortations for people to “do something” about this, rather than focusing the efforts in places where it will make a difference?

This isn’t a post saying “hey, come to this project and pitch in.” This post is just bitching into the ether and then some folks getting butthurt when the pointless performative nonsense is called out for what it is.

Posts like this one happen on a near-daily basis all across FOSS mailing lists. It’s trivial to find numerous, often young, often inexperienced people who think their idea is the one that “fixes everything”. These people reason that everyone should fall over one another to put effort into their magical idea once they see the obviousness and correctness of the idea. Clearly, it’s simply incorrect to find fault in an obviously perfect idea such as this one.

It’s just so weird that literally none of the people with these amazing ideas are the ones doing a “git init” and getting started on the work of actually implementing their amazing ideas. Bizarre how so many spectacular, world-changing ideas need to be worked on by literally anyone BUT their champion. What a horrible world we must live in filled with nasty, evil people who simply won’t volunteer their personal time when we should feel so blessed with this holy relic of an idea.

This narrative is so childish that the only response it deserves is the one echoed by nearly the entire FOSS community, “Patches welcome!”

It’s always interesting to see how people react to being told to put in their own effort instead of demanding the effort of others.

You have access to the code bases. You have access to the contributing rules. You can submit your patches to the same repos everyone else puts their code in. What exactly is being denied to you?

Nobody is gatekeeping. One of us is asserting that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

The features being requested do not come for free. Someone has to sink the time into doing the work.

So, in an argument between people doing the work and people insisting someone else do the work for them, but it must be to the specifications of the armchair quarterbacks… well… I’ve got bad news about the things the non-paying non-coders want.

You can either pay money or pay time, but nobody cares about the freeloaders demanding things without offering any kind of compensation.

ROFL. Kiddo, I’ve been contributing to OSS for over two decades. The day I start caring about what non-contributors think is the day I stop writing code. Either show up with patches or STFU.

Oh look. Yet another post demanding things from a volunteer-based community without actually volunteering their own time to work on solving the problem they’re insisting needs solving.

I’m sure these demands will totally make a difference in ways that putting their time into actually writing code wouldn’t.

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They weren’t that good, just charming.

They weren’t even that charming. Just a little more able to keep their mouths shut while in front of mixed company.

Source: In the early 2000s, I worked in a position that was two degrees away from BillG. I put together presentations and demos that my boss delivered to the man.

Listen to how Melinda talks about her relationship with him for clues about how little actual charisma he has. She’s responsible for every bit of humanity he’s shown over the last three decades. There were interviews he gave prior to marrying her where he expressed open disdain toward humanitarian endeavors.