@joenepraat @SupportOccupyNL Ongetwijfeld zullen er uitzonderingen zijn, zoals met alles. Maar bijna iedere keer dat ik gelijkgestemden probeer te zoeken, loopt het weer op een teleurstelling uit. En ik hoor hier zelden onderlinge kritiek over, noch bewegingsbrede initiatieven om dit aan te pakken.
Pak bijvoorbeeld radar er eens bij: https://radar.squat.net/en/events/country/NL
Van de eerste 10 (niet-gecancelde) evenementen die in de lijst staan, bevatten er maar 2 uberhaupt enige informatie over toegankelijkheid (waarvan 1 de CCC is), en geen van allen reppen ze ook maar met een woord over coronamaatregelen die aanwezig zijn. En dit is geen momentopname, zo is het altijd, en ook bij oproepen op sociale media enz.
Dit is gewoon een bedroevend slechte score, die betekent dat er heel veel mensen binnen de beweging een hoop werk te doen hebben om toegankelijk en inclusief te worden. En dat is dan alleen nog maar een stukje informatieverstrekking dat makkelijk zichtbaar is.
En prima dat er mensen zijn die daar wel mee bezig zijn, maar als die niet herkenbaar/vindbaar zijn en de bredere beweging nog steeds zo ontoegankelijk is, dan heeft dat niet veel *bewegingsbrede* waarde.
Want waar zijn die mensen dan? Bij welke initiatieven zijn mensen zoals ik - die bijzonder vatbaar zijn voor corona, en wel graag actief aan dingen willen bouwen met anderen, zonder eindeloos "ja maar dat gaat nooit lukken" - dan wel welkom en op hun plek?
Want het antwoord daarop heb ik niet gevonden, en "de Nederlandse linkse scene in het algemeen" lijkt het in ieder geval niet te zijn.
(If you think "they aren't necessarily a defense contractor! what if they just argue for a company's security, like Google or Facebook?" then have a look at where they have worked before, and keep a look on where they end up working afterwards. You're going to find a defense contractor.)
Please stop using "blindness" as a lazy synonym for "ignorance" in your writing. If there’s one thing about Blind folks: we survive and thrive by being perceptive, observing patterns and responding to cues. Not only is this use of "blindness" rude — it's uninformed. Mistaken. Obtuse. Naive. Counterfactual. There you go — five better ways to say "ignorant" than "Blind"
@aeva I mean, such organizations do exist, but they don't generally get funded much better, and it's also not something you really want to be centralizing into one organization for a variety of reasons
@silvermoon82@strangeobject.space @typeswitch (Notably, you *can* build offline webapps, just companies typically don't bother)
@aeva I think that might be optimistic in some ways :)
I've had a lot of conversations about this over the years with people, and I'd say that "never thought about it" or "didn't even realize libraries were being used" is overall far more common than "thought about it and concluded the application developer would do it". Not that it doesn't happen, just not very often from what I can tell.
@aeva To the added question: I sometimes pay for or donate to software. It's a case-by-case decision, and I try to pick out the projects that are having the most trouble getting funded, rather than the 'obvious' ones. Trying to spread the funding a bit more evenly.
@aeva one of my coworkers got a winrar license as a white elephant gift
he reported the email to security when he got it before the gift reveal event
ticket closed with reason "i have it in good confidence that this was a white elephant gift, not a phishing email"
#poll Have you ever paid for software when it was optional to do so?
EDIT: If you only occasionally pay for software when it is optional, please reply with what sorts of software you typically do and don't pay for.
The part where many people tend to expect the software to already be relatively mature and high impact to give support leaves an open question of how new development is meant to be funded, since it takes a lot of work to get there. I suppose that's where stuff like grants come in. It's a shame society is set up so the general population is coerced into being a cheap labor source for the whims of the wealthy, or we'd probably have a lot more high impact R&D happening outside of corporations.
Not a lot of mention of funding libraries, middleware, and critical infrastructure though. I guess most folks just assume that's someone else's problem
It seems like applications that people interact with directly have the best shot at being funded through a pay-what-you-want or donation based model. Within that, games have a bit of an advantage over regular applications by more commonly having an end date to their development without being considered "abandoned".
Lots of people also unsurprisingly strongly prefer one-off donations or payments instead of recurring ones to support long term development, but are also often vocal about how they are entitled to updates and improvements long term. That seems to imply that "growth" is the unsaid expectation of how a project should be funded long term.
I think it is probably safe to call it here. The overwhelming majority of you support the development of software you use to varying degrees of "sometimes", which is pretty cool.
From the replies to this thread, I gather it's relatively common for people to only support projects that are already relatively mature and popular, which is an interesting chicken and egg problem. Also you don't get anything if you don't ask, but it works better if the asking doesn't feel extractive. Not surprising
@aeva I find that there's generally very little acknowledgment of the concept of a 'software commons'; not just in the sense of making things usable broadly, but also in terms of feeling an obligation to *support* that commons, particularly the invisible parts.
Most folks seem to think about "supporting software by donating" as a sort of "purchase-lite" where you compensate someone for their work on a thing that you, personally, use. That works to a point, but logically means that libraries and underlying infrastructure go underfunded (or often entirely unfunded), because end users never interact with them and potentially aren't aware of there even *being* a public commons to support.
I think we'll need an actual culture change to fix this problem. To change the narrative and framing from "donate to express your gratitude" to "donate to support the commons", so that the funding 'pitch' for things without direct end users becomes easier.
Jesus christ, we really need an actual proper community-run browser project.
"Mozilla this week said it has acquired ad metrics firm Anonym [...] Asked whether Mozilla has any concerns that its user base, many ardent ad-blockers among them, will oppose Anonym, a spokesperson for the Firefox house told The Register advertising as a business model is what allows the internet to be free and open to everyone, though there's still room for improvement."
Source: https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/18/mozilla_buys_anonym_betting_privacy/
@Wolven Tangentially: I don't think a community browser project necessarily needs to achieve feature/spec parity to be considered successful, even at a large scale. "You must ship a complete product to achieve success" is a capitalist mode of thinking that we do not actually have to conform to in community projects.
I think it's entirely reasonable, for example, for the 'attractor' of the project to be "this is an inclusive, accessible and open development process that keeps improving every day, and so even though it doesn't do everything yet, you'll find it much more pleasant to use than the alternatives".
In the process of moving to @joepie91. This account will stay active for the foreseeable future! But please also follow the other one.
Technical debt collector and general hype-hater. Early 30s, non-binary, ND, poly, relationship anarchist, generally queer.
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Sometimes horny on main (behind CW), very much into kink (bondage, freeuse, CNC, and other stuff), and believe it or not, very much a submissive bottom :p
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Strong views about abolishing oppression, hierarchy, agency, and self-governance - but I also trust people by default and give them room to grow, unless they give me reason not to. That all also applies to technology and how it's built.