Advisory: If you don’t know anything about FOSS/FLOSS (Free/Libre open software) or RMS (Richard Stallman), you are much better off not reading this and having a nice cup of tea instead. Update: Fedeproxy has renamed themselves as “Forgefriends“.
Some talking points:
- If they can find my contact page on my website, they most likely would have viewed the front page which includes a post about diversity in FOSS, yet they continued on their quest to ask me for free work. This could have been avoided.
- They can’t want “diversity” while writing scribes using fascist dog-whistles like “cancel culture” and defending racism and rape apology for the front page of their personal website. They want the benefits of their project being considered “diverse” (they think it’s a trendy thing that will get them funding, and are probably correct) without actually giving a shit or benefiting anyone who isn’t a gross white dude.
- They want people to put together pitches to “bid” for their “diversity” contract, which means what they really want is people to work for free and give them a bunch of free ideas without paying for them.
- They wrote an unsolicited message to a woman who is a rape and sexual assault victim with that RMS shit on the front page of their website. This guy must be fun at parties.
- This is only what was gleaned from the front page of their personal website and the one link they sent me. Imagine what would happen if I actually looked into this further, which I will not, because no one needs this kind of bullshit taking up their time unless being paid very large amounts of cash. I don’t know who Loïc Dachary is, or what fedeproxy.eu/(now forgefriends.org) is, or anything about their place in the FOSS ecosystem, and at this point I don’t want to know.
- If he’s not just a straight-up fascist troll, he sees himself as getting credit for being some sort of saviour of the downtrodden who will get lots of money and accolades for being “one of the good ones”. Either way, when you are as ignorant as this guy thinks he isn’t, that is a bad sign.
- To think I would pass along his offer of “do work for us and give us ideas for free and we will post your work for free on our forum for anyone to take and for us to publicly debate about” to anyone is laughable and also a common thing in FOSS, a field that is built on unpaid labor.
May this serve as a warning to other FOSS dudes. I am an angry woodswitch who wants nothing to do with your shitty projects. I quit open software bullshit because of exactly these kinds of shenanigans. Stop traumatizing everyone with your nonsense. I might be poor but I’d rather it be that way if the alternative is helping people like you. But if you still need advice, here you go:
Stop using the internet. Go to therapy. Give your money to poor people. Start an animal rescue. Find homes for the homeless. Plant trees. Kill a billionaire. Do anything that is not doing what this dude is doing in my fucking inbox.
