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Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

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Re: Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

#81

Post by icebraining »

carussell wrote: post #71
tmsldd wrote: post #63

if FSF wants a intelligent assistant it will have to collect usage data, no? a little against the whole principle... but if the data are open, that would be kind of cool ;)

An AI-driven assistant doesn't have to necessarily run on someone else's servers and be under their control to be useful. In fact, if I teach my assistant patterns like how when I say "David" I mean David O, then I don't see a) why this type of learning can't be fully localized, or b) how phoning home with this kind of data is going to be of any particular use to anybody else, anyway. To put it another way, what's wr…

I'm not involved in AI projects, but my understanding is that current state-of-the-art work, including in digital assistance components like speech recognition, the approach involves gathering large amounts of data and throwing it into deep learning algorithms. This is why Google had free services like Voice, which served as sources for their modelling data.

Re: Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

#82

Post by necessity »

dmlorenzetti wrote: post #41
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #24

> Encourage contribution by people underrepresented in the community Why is this necessary? There's no force keeping people from contributing, they are just choosing not to. edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain to me what is wrong with what I said?

There's no force keeping people from contributing At work, we had a speaker who talked about his company's diversity hiring approach. I don't recall specifics, but I believe it was a bank that was pretty well-known for having good representation across race and gender -- which was the basis for the invitation to come speak. The bit that stood out for me was the claim that they never hired merely to increase diversity…

I am a strong critic of diversity hiring - that is, hiring because of diversity - but this approach is sound. Reaching out to underrepresented groups but hiring solely on the applicant's achievements/merit is the way to go, in my opinion. Having diverse contributors is important, but it isn't more important than having good contributors.

Re: Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

#83

Post by brennen »

camdenlock wrote: post #70
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #24

> Encourage contribution by people underrepresented in the community Why is this necessary? There's no force keeping people from contributing, they are just choosing not to. edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain to me what is wrong with what I said?

It becomes an even stranger thing to focus on when you consider that the main avenue of contribution to open source projects is the Internet, a medium where identity is irrelevant. You can be an incredibly productive member of a community and never need to be known as anything but a name, and perhaps "human". Other so-called "identities" are truly irrelevant in this context.

> a medium where identity is irrelevant

I find it baffling that this sentence could have been written in earnest at the present historical moment.

Re: Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

#84

Post by throwaway729 »

flukus wrote: post #76
mwfunk wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, any hand-wringing over political correctness feels like mass hysteria a la UFOs in the '50s or fairies in the Victorian era. I see a lot of complaining about it, but I can't even tell you the last time I witnessed any examples of political correctness having any impact on anything of any import whatsoever. On the other hand, I've seen seemingly endless instances of people using political correctness as…

> I see a lot of complaining about it, but I can't even tell you the last time I witnessed any examples of political correctness having any impact on anything of any import whatsoever. You've never worked in an office? It has an impact all the time because there are many subjects not safe to discuss.

> It has an impact all the time because there are many subjects not safe to discuss.

I agree with you, in the sense that cultures heavier on PC typically have a bit more self-censorship than they might otherwise. However, my experience so far is basically that nothing of value was lost!

I can kinda sympathize with the first guy who gets in trouble for stepping over the (newly instated, sometimes implicit) line.

But as far as actual effects on the office? Mostly just a work place that feels more like a place where important work happens and less like a high school lunch table.

I'd be curious to know why you think the typically censored topics add anything of business value to a work place.

Re: Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

#85

Post by tree_of_item »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #57
hackuser wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no force keeping people from contributing, they are just choosing not to. We all naturally have tunnel vision, and apply our experience to everyone else. I can't speak for you, but many people who don't face discrimination naturally don't encounter the obstacles and don't feel negatively toward minorities; they assume that therefore such things don't exist. But something is missing from our perception, beca…

What affect does culture and income have on the prevalence of people in tech? Do white people who come from a poor background get into IT more than black people with poor backgrounds? What leads me to believe culture has more of an affect nowadays than race is the fact that Asians have higher average incomes than whites, even though they were also historically subjected to racism.

On that last note, you may be interested in reading https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/29/the-r...

Re: Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

#86

Post by mikekchar »

no_wizard wrote: post #58
idobai wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Free/libre OSS won the battle for the server, lost the battle for the desktop I don't think it lost the battle on desktop - if you don't rely on platform(or interest)-specific software like the adobe/microsoft suites and some 3A games then you'll be more than fine on the linux desktop.

I take slight issue with this. It's not you personally, but I see this a lot in tech, in particular from the FOSS crowd 'Well, if you don't need x or y, then its fine!' FOSS will always be second tier for most people until the plethora of software available is at some relative parity, similar to that of macOS at least. (I'm talking strict availability). The fact that there isn't more cohesive efforts to have big soft…

It's an interesting point of view, but I'm not sure I agree with the underlying argument. Specifically, I have not seen the free software environment stagnating at all. If anything I have seen it accelerating fairly consistently since I first became aware of it in 1985. There was a time when I was forbidden from using free software in my day job. Now I am encouraged to use it. How far we have come.

This point of idealism comes up a lot and I think it's something of a red herring. Keep in mind that the FSF's goal is singular - to promote software freedom. It is not idealism to hold to that mission. It is their only purpose for existence.

Let me give you a real world example of why a mixed scenario is not realistic. My wife has an Android phone that she bought from the phone company. It is on version 5.02. There is a bug in that version of Android where a log file fills up and the phone refuses to connect to WIFI connections that have had a lot of activity. This bug has been fixed for a long time in the Android code base. The code base is open source. I can inspect it, compile it, etc, etc. I can see the bug. I can see the fix. But I can't load the fix on the phone because the phone is locked. I can't even get root on the phone. I can't fix the problem. The vendor has told me that since the phone is 2 years old (2 years!) that no updates will be forthcoming and I should buy a new phone.

The problem is that no matter how free a piece of software is, it is really only as free as the environment in which it runs. We have seen over and over again, that companies will collude to ensure that their interests trump that of the user. A world in which free software exists only as an extension of non-free software is a world in which it is marginalised to the point where software freedom is lost entirely.

It is not idealism that prevents software freedom from working well in organisations that do not want software freedom.

Where I agree with you is that we have a long way to go to allow users to connect the dots between the problems they have as consumers and the protection that software freedom affords. My own wife thinks it is completely reasonable to spend $1000 replacing a perfectly good phone simply because the vendor wishes it. Somewhat unusually, this is a consumer movement held dear by developers, but virtually unknown to the consumers it seeks to protect. This is clearly a problem. However, we won't fix that problem by abandoning the purpose of the movement. Will my next phone be an open source phone that denies me software freedom, or a proprietary phone that denies me software freedom? Does it matter?

Re: Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

#87

Post by synicalx »

otalp wrote: post #32
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #24

> Encourage contribution by people underrepresented in the community Why is this necessary? There's no force keeping people from contributing, they are just choosing not to. edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain to me what is wrong with what I said?

Not necessarily minorities in the US(in fact a lot of US minorities are overrepresented in tech), but if you could make say, a few Spanish speaking people in poorer parts of Brazil contribute, they could spread whatever knowledge they gained with their broader community and encourage more people to participate who might have otherwise viewed these things as stuff "genius hackers with degrees" do. That would be my rea…

So it's not really minorities at all, but entire countries that someone feels are underrepresented?

Re: Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

#88

Post by belorn »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #36
cperciva wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are herd animals. They tend to look at what other people like them are doing, and do likewise. It's unfortunate that people look at trivia like gender and ethnicity in such circumstances; but it's a fact of human behaviour. If potential contributors look at a project and don't see anyone who "looks like them", they're unlikely to contribute; so projects which want to maximize contributions are well advised to…

I view this issue differently, and I would love your opinion on my view. First on sex/gender: I feel that hormonal differences create psychological differences in the norms between genders. This is why men are generally more aggressive and violent(see higher incarceration rates) and women are more nurturing. These differences lead to people in general choosing careers that reflect their psychology, and forced diversi…

Hormonal effects has a long history of being overstated and overused when looking for cause in human behavior. It has been used to argue that women aren't fit to vote, then later that they are not fit to hold professions where a stable emotional state is required, to later conclude that estrogen effect on emotional states is complex and what people at the time attributed to estrogen was primarily cultural expectations rather than actually brain chemistry (concluded with some really interesting studies). One conclusion that a profession said that always made good sense to me is that sex hormones are intended to regulate effective reproductive success, not to regulate emotions in women or violence in men.

For example, there was a study done on violent men in prisons and testosterone. The theory that was tested was if testosterone levels were indicator of more violence, for which the data revealed was not the case. Further studies showed that so long testosterone is within natural occurring levels, aggression was not effect by testosterone.

Re: Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

#89

Post by flukus »

throwaway729 wrote: post #84
flukus wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see a lot of complaining about it, but I can't even tell you the last time I witnessed any examples of political correctness having any impact on anything of any import whatsoever. You've never worked in an office? It has an impact all the time because there are many subjects not safe to discuss.

> It has an impact all the time because there are many subjects not safe to discuss. I agree with you, in the sense that cultures heavier on PC typically have a bit more self-censorship than they might otherwise. However, my experience so far is basically that nothing of value was lost! I can kinda sympathize with the first guy who gets in trouble for stepping over the (newly instated, sometimes implicit) line. But a…

Depends on how much value you place on office socialising, which certainly has it's benefits. It can also have a big impact on hiring when it becomes heresy to question things like diversity quotas.

One I often see personally is not being able to discriminate based on communication ability out of fear of being labelled racist.

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