> Sent: Monday, April 19, 2021 at 1:10 PM > From: "Frosku" <fro...@frosku.com> > To: "Alexandre Oliva" <ol...@gnu.org>, "Jonathan Wakely via Gcc" > <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> > Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers > > On Sun Apr 18, 2021 at 9:22 PM BST, Alexandre Oliva via Gcc wrote: > > That's why it's best to dissent politely, lest they incorrectly conclude > > their opinions are consensual, or majoritary, just because they've > > driven dissenters into silence. > > The problem is, Alex, that the trolls mostly haven't been on the dissenting > side. All of the childish namecalling -- "jerks", "trolls", "crazies" -- > and the insinuations that our voices aren't worth listening to because we > don't get paid $250,000 a year by Google to contribute to GCC all day are > coming from the pro-forking side. > > Once upon a time, free software developers understood that users' opinions > were as valid as contributor's opinions. For a project like a compiler which > exists solely to enable other projects to exist, it seems like the only users > who are deemed worthy of representation in the 'room where it happens' now > are the major Corporations with the ability to sponsor a contributor on their > behalf. It's becoming very difficult to engage in good faith against this > kind of overt hostility to the grassroots users. > > > Violent emotional responses is what trolls of all alignments aim for. > > Let's not give them that. Let's not give them reasons to denounce > > censorship either. Let's dissent politely and kindly, without calling > > them names, whether trolls or jerks or crazy. Ad troll[i]um is a very > > popular fallacious argument these days, but it's just as logically > > unsound as other fallacies. > > I've only seen one or two genuine 'trolls' in the discussion, as in, people > who are just here to fish for a reaction who don't have an actual vested > interest in the outcome. All of them have sent a couple of messages and then > left. Completely agree with you that 'ad trollum' is being deployed here to > conflate the legitimate voices of concerned free software advocates with > childish trolling, much to the detriment of the level of conversation. > > > It's true that negotiating and settling with wildly different opinions > > requires more effort than having despotic powers to dictate the right > > answer. The community has made it clear what political model it > > prefers, so let's put that in practice, shall we? > > I think there's a fundamental disagreement here where we're defining 'the > community' broadly -- to include contributors, users, and pretty much the > whole free software and GNU community -- and certain people on the pro- > fork side are taking a more corporate view that only 'the firm' should get > any input into 'internal business'. This is not the free software community > that I recognize.
That's quite accurate. I can see again the emergence of the phreakers types of the 1980's, the minority that were up to no good. Want to join the club Frosku? > >>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<< >