Tuesday, December 03, 2024

Re: Quick question regarding puffy

Hello,

Firstly, sorry for breaking the threads, I see multiple different
threads coming off the original email but I would like to respond to
all of them at once so I am replying to the most recent email.

Secondly, I was originally not going to respond to this, as I am unable
to provide any advice (not an OpenBSD dev nor contributor) and usually
just lurk on the mailing list, however seen as nobody has responded to
the disruption with a good enough response (in my opinion), I want to
respond.

Gwen:

The logo looks cool, and seems to be very well made, congrats!

I personally believe it is important to make groups where people can fit
into better, we are all drawn to different groups so it is beneficial to
have more groups, so more people are drawn to OpenBSD.

You spotted an issue of lack of LGBTQ+ OpenBSD pubnix's and you have
attempted to solve that issue. I personally don't benefit from this in
any way (however I am sure if non-LGBTQ+ people were interested you
would let them join too?), but for those who would benefit, thank you
for your contribution to grow the OpenBSD community.

tux2bsd:

> Most BSD/GNU people are hard-line leftists

This is bullshit. I would agree with that it is the norm for GNU, but
for BSD I completely disagree and you are disregarding so many people
with this naive comment.

For decades, ISPs and hosting providers have built around OpenBSD, many
people on this list if you paid attention have their own businesses,
they might not be right, but they sure aren't "hard-line leftists".

What you are doing here is assuming that someones economic views
translate to their views on social issues, which is wrong, and
offtopic. By bringing up politics all you will do is alienate people.

> The ideology that has a hold over you demands the denial of reality.
> It strongly encourages the chemical and physical mutilation of
> children, young adults, and adults.

You have the freedom to believe whatever you like, and you are free to
oppose, however there's no excuse for blatant transphobic comments. You
had no reason to respond, you don't agree with it, you couldn't help
Gwen with their query, you should have simply not responded.

If you feel the need to make offensive remarks in the future, I
recommend you pipe it to /dev/null, you would be doing the entire list
a favour.

> Kind of related. The guy called "Solene", another they/them, was quite
> a fan of OpenBSD but felt it necessary to broadcast why he moved on:
> https://www.osnews.com/story/141170/

There's a different between general transphobia, and directly attacking
a member of the OpenBSD community. The former might be possible to
brush off as simply expression of your views (even if it is
offensive), the latter is a clear attack on a member and is
discrimination. If you are unable to be kind and respectful to everyone
within the community, then I advice you start looking for a different
community, I am sure the list agrees with me here, and you probably
have already been moderated.

Also maybe brush up on how you are expected to conduct yourself. [1]

Brodie:

> Apart from below info you are hitting trigger right here:
>
> https://www.openbsd.org/goals.html
>
> in particular line:
>
> Be as politics-free as possible; solutions should be decided on the
> basis of technical merit.

In defence of Gwen, this isn't something political. They did not come
to the list to express their political views or in any sort of
activism, they came to enquire about potential licencing issues because
they are forming a pubnix.

Its no different than a group of Germans coming together and forming a
German pubnix. Why should LGBTQ+ groups be treated any differently?
They aren't holding a gun to your head telling you that you must join
their pubnix and agree with their beliefs are they?

If someone came along and started asking about licencing issues because
they run a corporation and want to use OpenBSD within it, I doubt a
single person would have kicked up a fuss, despite it having
capitalistic intent.

Katherine:

> I am wondering about OpenBSD and Harry Potter: would these be
> complimentary or non-offending (to each other, probably very
> offensive generally) "perceived cults"? I find it interesting that
> people that discuss cults tend to have no formal training in the
> humanities. Anyway, I ask because I was thinking of wearing my
> Ravenclaw robe to an OpenBSD event and don't want to seem like I'm
> representing the wrong community/ideology.

Very good example. Do you actually have a Ravenclaw robe?

Hansteen:

> some frequent posters here also have a habit of activating
> auto-ignore mechanisms

There is an auto-ignore mechanism? How do you trigger said mechanism?
Is there any documentation on said mechanism?

I haven't heard of it until now, and I have been subscribed to the list
for a few years now :/

Izzy:

> Like others have mentioned- this could technically be considered
> "political".
>
> However, thats the least of my concerns as social science is not
> political science. I would only consider this "politicised" in recent
> times, rather than "political".

See my response to Brodie, and I believe Katherine was making the same
point too, just with a much better analogy than me.

John:

> If the OpenBSD Foundation want to avoid 'party political' - sure,
> understandable. But 'anything' political? Impossible.

To build on this point, I was actually thinking about this just
yesterday. It seems to be impossible to share your views on anything
without some hint of your political opinions coming through.

For example, say someone supports self hosting and decentralisation, you
can usually infer that they sit somewhere in the Libertarian spectrum,
then if they complain about corporate decentralised software and
advocate for community led decentralised projects, you could quite
reliably place them within the left-libertarian wing of politics, even
though they were only discussing tech-related content, their political
views seep through.

The aim of the policy, I would assume, is it limit/eliminate DIRECT
political discussions, not eliminate anything which could have some
indirect political motive. Gwen was simply seeking licencing advice for
one of their projects, just because that project could potentially have
a political nature doesn't mean the intent was political.

> Good luck with the project, Gwen.

+1

> In my opinion, a gay event has the same political weight a Muslim
> event or a Christian event has. I'd argue there is a lot of Muslim
> and Christian political activity which is not partisan either, but
> only people with an agenda would argue they have no political goals.

And if Muslims/Christians come together and form a BSD pubnix, who the
fuck would care?

Gatekeeping the community on what they can and can't do with OpenBSD is
the complete opposite of freedom.

The majority of the emails on this thread were redundant, most of them
were in response to tux2bsd's offensive remarks, which shows just how
one off topic, offensive comment can cause a thread to spiral off
topic. If you have something unproductive, or offensive to say, best to
leave the email in your drafts.

> Honestly I am a bit pissed off because we are discussing this subject
> which does not mean anything for the project and meanwhile we have
> unattended port submissions timing out in ports@.

Please clarify what you are pissed off at, the redundant responses
caused by an offensive comment? Or the fact someone seeked advice for
one of their projects?

If it was the former, then I agree, "shut up and hack", if it was the
latter, then I disagree, Gwen's outreach is just as important,
pointless developing an operating system and porting software without a
community to use it and contribute.


I apologise for the rather long email, however it pissed me off that
someone who was simply trying to form a pubnix was being attacked for
trying to solve an issue they discovered. Outreach is just as important
as development, Gwens efforts to bring more people to OpenBSD should be
congratulated, not insulted! Have some respect for your peers.

Good luck Gwen, I hope you get the answers you need from someone who is
actually able to help, and good luck with the pubnix.

Take care all,
--
Polarian
GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760
Jabber/XMPP: polarian@icebound.dev

[1] https://www.openbsd.org/mail.html

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