Yesterday I was reading the post about the FUTO keyboard where there were a lot of messages deleted by moderators.
I’ve commented there
What the heck happened with all the messages deleted by moderator?
And it got deleted. Right now you can only see 4, but I’ve counted 19 messages moderated and the post has been locked. Why?
I’ve had a look ad the modlog and the messages don’t seems to violate any policy (now they’ve removed them in the modlog too).
I’m pinging here lemmy.ml admin and the mods of the open source community where the post was posted so they can have their say about it and clarify the situation to me.
@kevincox@lemmy.ml @CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml @Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml
@Cloak@lemmy.ml @davel@lemmy.ml @dessalines@lemmy.ml @nutomic@lemmy.ml @JoeBidet@lemmy.ml @cypherpunks@lemmy.ml
If I’m getting something wrong, please let me know, I’m here to discus and understand if I’m getting something wrong or if something went wrong in the moderation. Thanks!
Down here you can see the deleted comments.
P.s. I’m writing here because I think that this post on lemmy.ml wouldn’t last long.
That was me. I’m tired of FUTO fans derailing discussions about FLOSS with advocacy for their obviously-not-open-source software and insisting that it is open source.
Every time Futo comes up, someone will insist it is open source, others will correct them, and soon more than 50% of a thread that is supposed to be about open source is people arguing about them.
I’m pretty sure that Futo’s (now recanted) position that they were open source (despite the term having a clear definition which is very internationally recognized and which Futo’s license obviously does not meet) was an intentional marketing gimmick - “there is no such thing as bad publicity” and every time a bunch of people are arguing about them there is a chance they’ll get more customers (some of whom might even believe it is open source).
Probably more than that even; more than I want to count. The modlog is public.
The What’s the best open source keyboard for android? post where you commented has not been locked, but most of the futo-related comments in it are deleted. Note that while your comment was not advocating for futo per se, it was (successfully) encouraging others to continue the offtopic discussion. You could have answered your question by reading the modlog.
I did lock another post in the same community (the topic of which is, again, Open Source), which was What are your thoughts on FUTO? (and I left a comment there explaining why).
I generally try to assume good faith but I’m pretty sure some Futo proponents are actually just trolling at this point.
I hope this answers your questions.
Thank you for standing up for the free software definition. As someone who has been heavily critical of fauxpen source licenses including FUTO it’s refreshing to see moderators taking a stance against it.
The main concern I have with this attempt (by FUTO and other organizations trying to “fix” open source) is that watering down the open source and free software definitions causes damage to the community/movement. Whether the FUTO EULA or any other proprietary license is “good enough” for an individual user is not the question (and I have even seen people argue in favor of fully-proprietary blob software on the basis of being “privacy friendly”); real free software disadvantages rightsholders in favor of users and communities, which is important in case those rightsholders go defunct or rogue.
I try to assume good faith as well but I am seriously considering the idea that FUTO is astroturfing free software spaces to promote its version of open source. Despite publicly backing down on their openwashing attempt Eron Wolf-in-sheeps-clothing seems very determined that open source is broken and needs fixing.
what nice bootlickers you have here lol no matter how many they are, it is still not enough to deny the truth
Thanks for the level-heades and reasonable explination. These actions make complete sense
Yeah, Rossman getting in bed with people that are deliberately trying to dilute the meaning of open source really killed my opinion of him.
Who are some of those people? I’m still trying to get my bearings about this entire thing, I never heard of it before yesterday.
Louis Rossmann is a prominent right to repair advocate on youtube, I don’t like his videos personally, but he’s usually on the right side of things.
FUTO is a company owned by Billionaire Eron Wolf, they release several pieces of software under their own proprietary licence, that they originally tried to claim was “open source”. When they got called out on it not being open source they literally tried to redefine open source. Although they’ve since backtracked, and decided to use the term “source first” instead, it makes the whole organisation seem incredibly sketchy to me.
Rossman explained the dealio… daddy owner wanted this, it is his money.
Not ideal and there was some shoddy marketing. We still got a free app out of it.
But yes, this app is not OS and people should stop fucking arguing that it is.
If you don’t like it, don’t use it.
With that being said, i don’t see an issue with mentioning it as a viable alternative to OS but saying it is OS is bad faith behavior.
As far as I can tell, no one in the second comments thread who was deleted was doing this. They were talking positively about FUTO in ways that still acknowledged that it wasn’t open source.
I’ve reached the limit of my caring about this issue, but you can search the modlog for particular users whose comments in the second thread were deleted, if you want to check what they were saying about it.
my comment was removed just for saying FUTO has strong voice to text and that’s why people like it.
Rossmann’s billionaire patron is Eron Jokipii (aka Eron Wolf). As you can see here he comes off as a bit of a bumbling rube; it’s possible that he sincerely doesn’t understand the harm in what he is doing since he’s one of those people who became unfathomably rich by selling a company to Yahoo in the late 90s and has probably been surrounded ever since by yes men who can’t afford to contradict him.
Holy shit. A .ml mod being reasonable and making mod decisions based on what’d best for the community instead of pure personal bias. Congratulations perhaps their is still hope for .ml to be redeemed and forgiven.
What did we do
Yes: futo keyboard license. And also a contradictory license with that definition of ‘use’.
Unrelated but you should post one more comment
nice.
(although that is just the subset of my posts and comments which are visible on your instance; on mine i have more than twice as many…)
You’ve been censored by authoritarian mods! 😂
I would submit that even if it is misinformation and people are climbing all over the comments claiming that FUTO is definitely open source, removing the comments to leave only the remnant of it that is “truth” is often not the best way to handle it. The majority of the removed comments didn’t seem like they were saying that, some even specifically said that FUTO isn’t open source but blah blah blah, but even if so, here’s my feeling:
The way the conversation looks right now is just confusing. There are people who have no idea about FUTO who have the feeling that they’re just not allowed to talk about it, or to say true statements (for example, whatever you think of their license, they fund real open-source projects.) Because FUTO is officially “bad” and they might get banned or something for wanting to talk about it or ask questions. It actually doesn’t look to me like people are coming in primarily to evangelize. But regardless of that, my personal feeling is, you have to let people talk.
I feel like if there was a sticky comment from a mod / admin at the top of the comments, something like PSA: FUTO is not open source. The people that are claiming it is, are wrong, with respect to long-established definitions. (link) (link), then that would be fine. People can see the arguments, and presumably there’s enough respect in place for the “leaders” of the community that they’ll give a lot of weight to the sticky comment. But they still have the sense that they’re allowed to talk about it and think about it on their own instead of being ordered to receive the correct interpretations from above, when they don’t even have their bearings as far as what’s even being talked about.
I’m not secretive about my strong disagreements with a lot of lemmy.ml moderation philosophy. I’m just making an effort, here, to explain why I have such a strong disagreement in a productive fashion, instead of just hectoring or being combative about it.
i totally agree that it is often preferable to allow misinformed comments to remain so that they can be refuted.
in the case of futo, though, i feel like there are often actually some bad-faith actors who just want to keep the discussion going, and will continue to repeat their misinformed arguments in the face of any and all evidence.
and, in this particular case, it is even a thread in the Open Source community so any discussion of Futo is inherently offtopic. (and all of which is also effectively promotion for them; again see succès de scandale.)
the thread as it is now has lots of comments about open source keyboards, and a link to this thread for anyone who wants more information about all the deleted comments than they can find in the modlog. if you think it would be better if that thread was still mostly people arguing about Futo… well… i’m glad you’re not a mod there.
Oh, no, I was talking purely about the second post, about FUTO itself. I agree about protecting the first post, about open source keyboards, against being overshadowed by a big argument about FUTO which isn’t an open source keyboard.
Oh. Well, that post I sort of figured I should just delete altogether (because it is also offtopic there, and bad publicity is still benefiting futo) but I left it locked in hopes that it would discourage more of the same.