 Basically, what we’re saying to people today is: You’re interested in tech and you want a nice home (or just any home) and stability? Go work at Google, Facebook, or some other surveillance capitalist. What’s that? You want to work on free and open source? Sure, go work at IBM or Oracle… Oh… you don’t mean enterprise software? Tech to protect human rights/democracy? Not for profit hippie-dippie crap for the common good? Oh, then suffer. I mean, is it any surprise things are as they are? 73 comments
 @aral at this point basically all my projects are stalling due to lack of funding... And since #NUCbook and other projects go against #SurveillanceCapitalism, #PlannedObsolescence and/or other #Rentseeking they won't get funded. @aral AFAIK that is still a company in existance... And @snazzyq went to their offices... @aral @snazzyq To my defense, when #Intel announced that they want to cancel the #NUC production I kindly asked them if they want to FLOSS the #UCFF form factor details further and offered to rename the project if they found the name infringing... So far, my ticket [Case #:05916086] has yet to be replied to by Intel at all... But TBH, IDK if #modbook is still #trademark'd anywhere and I've not seen any reason to search for that term given the fact that I was aware of the #modbook and thus wanted to avoid people from mistaking it for something else... Tho nothing would prevent you from going the same route that #SnazzyLabs did and shove a #MacMini PCB inside... @kkarhan @aral
And just out of curiosity - why is a project that is supposed to be against #SurveillanceCapitalism being hosted on a site that undoubtedly belongs to #SurveillanceCapitalism ? Well, unless we exclude (for convenience? Because not for lack of other options) #microsoft from it.... @aral I guess you do want to see some structure that fosters innovation outside the direct and imminent profit motive...  @aZa1905 @aral Close but not quite. Now granted, @frameworkcomputer is the closest to it if you want to get something you can buy right now. Personally I just want to find something that is more flexible and repairable, using standard parts wherever possible and having basic features like toolfree-swappable batteries... Because I won't buy any device without that feature... @kkarhan @aral @frameworkcomputer i don't think you will See something in that direction in the next 20-30 years. Because why? Companies make more money with selling you the repair than they male with the Laptops probably. Either you have to pay A LOT of money (like with framework IMO, or it just isnt useful to the greedy companies. I would be very happy to be wrong though. @aZa1905 @aral @frameworkcomputer that is iterally the problem: There is neither incentive nor penatly for being [un-]sustainable.. That's why Apple is selling their devices with #ReducedLifecycle by design with soldered-down #RAM, #SSDs and #Batteries, and both of the latter WILL INEVITABLY FAIL OVER TIME AND USE!!!    @aral I was just joking with someone about this the other day. My software was used by movements all over the world to rally and organize for justice. I only was able to get out of debt and find some retirement savings when I took a left turn into VC-funded startups for a while. And now here I am in non profit open source, and, well, those savings were fun to have while they lasted. Not that I did it for the money. But still. @ben Similar. Initially sold a couple of flats we had in Turkey to fund our work but, when that money ran out, Laura started contracting for Stately (which is VC-funded) and that’s what’s keeping us off the streets currently. We’ve been turned down for every EU fund we’ve applied for and I’m done wasting time with it. So, yeah, we’re not directly funded by VC (nor would we be) but we’re still more funded by Silicon Valley than by the commons though everything we do is for the common good. @aral Perhaps ironically, Elgg was doing really well when we were a British limited company with no investment. It all went to pot when we lost focus on customer-aligned revenue, when investors entered the picture. So that’s how I’m thinking about these things these days. Open source at the center of a small business. I’m done trying to think about investors or non profit grants. I just want to find people who will pay for a solution, in order to underwrite software for all. @aral I think it’s the same in all industries, you can’t make good money simply by good will😮💨 Even in big NGO you can earn more than you do some good business to the poor  @aral @whereisk I feel the more important question is: can things be made better? (And yes, yes they can. Whether there’s any political will for it… that‘s a whole other question entirely.)  @aral This hits incredibly close to home for me. That's exactly why i quit my job. I want to build _something_ that gives people the opportunity to be creative without being beholden to an exploitative system rotten to the core. I think it's possible. Perhaps i want to believe it's possible. But if its not, then it's still worth doing. I am so fucking pumped to be in these conversations. ✊  @chrisg @aral I think there are places to work, earn decent money, and be broadly ethical. But I know in every single job I have had, there have been ethical considerations to bear in mind, to deal with. But in the end, I want my work to make peoples lives easier. I want to produce something that means other people are happier in their work. It is constantly a challenge. @aral I'd also add that most of those companies force employees to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) & Intellectual Property Agreements (IPAs) that badly limit their ability to participate in the libre software community beyond those projects for which they're specifically paid. It's also awkward when their corporate social media policies police employee speech to the point that using their IRL name online just isn't worth the risk anymore. @aral I think it’s the same crisis all over though. Mega corporations leading to cog-in-the-machine jobs. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/09/gen-z-lazy-girl-jobs-tiktok-work @aral (i’m not saying working for Google is a “lazy girl” job, just that they both stem from the same root problems). @cornelius @aral are "lazy girl jobs" the latest extension of the "quiet quitting" nonsense that was actually just people working their contracted hours like they're supposed to? 😂 @aral I feel this. "Do no harm" has been the bare minimum for my tech career, and it has been challenging. Opportunities are out there, but rare. One of my main goals is to find ways to create more opportunities for like-minded tech workers. @aral When I talk about this problem with some of my (non-tech) acquaintances I can see them struggling to not yell at me something like "fucking spoiled brat, just suck it". "Normies" are also clearly at fault for this clusterfuck when they not only do nothing to fix it or prevent it, but also prefer to attack those who oppose it. @aral part of the problem is that work outside large firms or vc-funded startups isn't valued by donors or the media. The director of a tech for "social good' program once told me I didn't have "experience working on real projects" because I hadn't worked for Google (despite their recruiters' best efforts).  I must respectfully disagree here: I love hippie-dippy crap for the common good, BUT it needs a workable business model OR it gets taken over by parasites. The EditPad guy made it work: free edition for regular users, paid edition for superusers at desk jobs. Here is the pro version: I think he makes his living off of those. Also for bonus: the maniac built a forum inside the editor software... "far out man." @aral When society as a collective decides that our purpose as humans is to struggle to survive, we get to where we are.  @aral I don't think it's ever been otherwise. The open source movement more or less grew out of the academic class, which is a vanishingly-small ivory tower of "People who get paid to think." Everyone else gets paid to do something concrete for someone, so it's no surprise that there's no money in just open source software. @katco @aral our society is organized mainly around weapon development, big, lumbering corporations, and consumer entrepreneurship. Things that don't serve one of the above have slim to no route to making money. It's not about socializing the problems or bringing awareness to them. It's not that we don't know what we need to do to solve them either. It's that we, as a society, with the Fed doing the bank transfers allocate our resources mostly to giant companies and military contractors. @avocado_toast @aral I am in agreement with you that there are larger, entrenched, forces at play. I still think that at the root of everything is that people are stretched so thin these days that they can't even have higher-order thoughts. That is, they can't contemplate why things are the way they are let alone how to fix them. Society is people in the end. @katco @aral society is people, sure, but the way it's driven and organized is guided by far fewer. There are people at the top of the pyramid with vast powers of allocation, dispersement, and influence. In the government that's the President, Congressional leaders, the Fed, Supreme Court, and the Treasury. In the "private sector" that's the Forbes 500 list and C-suite people. The President can invent a phrase (e.g. WMDs) and have it coming out of the mouths of ordinary citizens within a week. @katco @aral we've wrestled with this problem before in this country. I think only the war profiteering is new because prior to WW1 and WW2 we weren't a superpower with a fully realized military-industrial complex. But the robber barons and their influence over governmental policy looks a lot like the late 1800s. We're (IMO) living through a second gilded age. @avocado_toast @aral this is all true. Go one step beyond the analysis: what's the solution? How would one affect change? I'm convinced that at the bottom of it is what I've said: we need lots of people to understand these things and people are being denied the resources to do so. @katco @aral I don't think it is possible for one (ordinary) person to affect change. However, collectively we can. I think there are people out there doing their best to affect change. I think labor leaders are good examples of that. People were spread thin and hurting during the last gilded age as well. It was only through their perseverance that we had the labor movement and obtained things like social security and the minimum wage. @aral Back in the day, we didn't expect to get paid for free software development, but we did expect to be left alone and not harassed, sued, or arrested for the public service that we provided. As it turned out, even that was too much to ask for. @aral Security software for the government or even corporations seems like decent work that's all I can come up with though. @aral one of the best career paths still is, and has been for the past few decades, is to start with IT consultancies of the world, get a good real world exposure, get beaten into some core SDLC processes, work with decent solutions and platforms (cloud, enterprise, foss, anything) and discipline, then go explore the world as you see fit. Not sure what exactly you want to say and to whom with that message…. Jesus, are the replies depressing. @aral screwing people over is damn good money. Privatize the wins, socialize the losses.  @aral How exactly would you propose to solve this problem? You want to have money, but you also want to work on software "for the common good", who is going to pay for that? @AudraTran Hmm… if only we could crowdfund it somehow… you know, if we all agreed to pay a portion of our earnings so that they could be used for things that benefited us all. We could call it… I don’t know… faxes? No. Taken. Paxes? Nope, doesn’t sound right. Wait, I got it… how about taxes? https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/ @aral Strange you didn't mention that in your original Toot, but yes, I agree. I really wish the IRS (US tax entity) would fund some tax prep software because shit it complicated as hell. Unfortunately they do the opposite and accept bribes from Intuit to make it intentionally more difficult so Intuit can sell you a "solution". @aral I think people can work on things towards democracy outside all of those bubbles when they scope the problem well and experiment with a simple solution. things do not have to foss or anything, just software that might be useful to people out there. Careers are dead-ends, capitalism is imploding.. just make something useful while you can.my anon p2p jam is at http://atacama.rocks  @aral As I like to say, innovation is no longer by chance, but by finance.  @aral govt contracting was a happy medium for me. 10+ years bldg the software to process Refugees into the US What do you mean by suffer? Not make six figures? I did plenty of "hippie-dippie crap for the common good" as do lots of colleagues I know, and made a living. Google/Meta/Oracle living - no, but a decent one.  @aral I'm a librarian. I teach in a university, in a newly-created division where the department I teach in was thrown in willy-nilly with CS and Stats. DO NOT EVEN GET ME STARTED on how industry-controlled the division and its top brass are. It's MADDENING. @aral This resonates even from over here on the marketing/content side of things. Sure you can work for a nonprofit, but they'll expect you to do the jobs of four or five people for a "salary" that only someone with a trust fund, or a partner working at Google, can live on. |
Gregory's Server
@aral Eeyupp...
Either one has to sell their soul to some corporation or suffer...
No matter if it's #GigWork [#UberEats] , #GrindWork [Any fast food job] or whatever...