A common problem I notice on the internet is the lack of awareness of many problems in the world. Of which, there are times when someone may be aware of the problem, but not to what extent. One of the common problems is a lack of effort to raise awareness and protect marginalized groups, particularly in the free and open-source software (FOSS) community. In this article, we’re going to go over the problems associated with not raising awareness and protecting marginalized groups. I’ll also go over the “keep politics out of FOSS” demand from many free software activists who oppose raising awareness.
  • LvxferreEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I know that it’s a personal blog entry, and that we people are often sloppy when venting in our personal blogs, without caring too much about productiveness. So what I’m going to say should not be seen as criticism towards the author; only towards the text itself as shared here. OK?

    Even then I’m still willing to criticise the text. IMO it’s is a sloppy mess and it’s hard to take anything useful out of it.

    The author is trying to highlight problems through esoteric concepts like “intentions” and “bad/good faith”. Those things can be at most assumed, never known, so they are not useful. It’s simply better to focus on the objective matters - like what’s said and done.

    This applies to “awareness”. Like, plenty show “awareness” of the struggles that marginalised groups go through… and still show that they give no fucks. (For a good example of that, look no further than how Reddit treats its blind community.)

    Even the definition that the author uses of “marginalised group” is problematic. Here’s a better def: it focus on access, resources, and opportunities. (It covers the groups mentioned by the author BTW.)

    When I gained more experience with web development and chatted with people with disabilities, that’s when I was made aware of it.

    The awareness itself doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the author took action towards the inclusion of those groups in his website, granting them higher access to his website.

    This “focus on access, resources and opportunities!” view is also relevant for the GNOME example that the author gives: removal of the status icons does not grant them more of those things, on the contrary - because even if the feature is broken from their PoV, a broken feature is better than no feature. It’s just GNOME being GNOME, throwing the baby out with the dirty bathtub water (i.e. discarding it instead of fixing it).

    Then the author shifts from the above into another different matter: harassment. Still using esoteric concepts like “malicious actors”. Does it really matter if harassment comes from a malicious actor or from a clueless moron? It doesn’t - what matters is how it affects the harassment victim.

    A simpler and better way to address those shitty “keep politics out of FOSS” claims is to acknowledge that:

    1. one of the goals of FOSS is to enable access, resources and opportunities for everyone, including marginalised groups;
    2. access for marginalised groups requires their representation among FOSS developers;
    3. representation is only feasible if the environment is free of harassment (that affects marginalised groups the hardest).

    Done. You don’t even need to argue if it’s politics or not.