A common problem I notice on the internet is the lack of awareness of many problems in the world. Of which, there are times when someone may be aware of the problem, but not to what extent. One of the common problems is a lack of effort to raise awareness and protect marginalized groups, particularly in the free and open-source software (FOSS) community. In this article, we’re going to go over the problems associated with not raising awareness and protecting marginalized groups. I’ll also go over the “keep politics out of FOSS” demand from many free software activists who oppose raising awareness.
  • Lvxferre@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I know that it’s a personal blog entry, and that we [people in general] are often sloppy when it comes to “I want to vent this in my blog, without caring too much about its productiveness”, so this should not be seen as criticism towards the author; it’s solely criticism towards the text itself, as it’s shared in Lemmy. OK? Even then I’m still willing to criticise the text.

    And, IMO, this text is a sloppy mess and it’s hard to take anything useful out of it.

    The author highlights problems based on esoteric concepts like “intentions” and “bad/good faith”. Those things can be at most assumed, never known. A better approach would be to focus on objective matters, like “what is said” and “what is done”.

    Same deal with “awareness” - plenty people and groups show “awareness” of the struggles that marginalised groups go through… and they still show that they give no fucks. For a good example of that, look no further than Reddit’s treatment of its blind community.

    Even the definition that the author uses of “marginalised group” is problematic - it expects you to have a crystal ball, to guess someone’s “bad faith” (note how the definition relies on the esoteric concept of “intentions”). You see for example a better def here: it focus on access, resources, and opportunities. (And it covers the groups mentioned by the author BTW.)

    When I gained more experience with web development and chatted with people with disabilities, that’s when I was made aware of it.

    The awareness itself doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the author took action towards the inclusion of those groups in his website, granting them higher access to his website.

    This “focus on access, resources and opportunities!” view is also relevant for the GNOME example that the author gives: removal of the status icons does not grant them more access, resources or opportunities; because even a broken feature is better than no feature. It’s just GNOME being GNOME and not willing to fix things, instead “throwing the baby out with the dirty bathtub water”.

    Then the author shifts from the above into another different matter: harassment. Still using esoteric concepts like “malicious actors”. Does it really matter if harassment comes from a malicious actor or from a clueless moron? (Nope.)

    Simpler way to address those shitty “keep politics out of FOSS” claims is to acknowledge that:

    1. one of the goals of FOSS is to enable access, resources and opportunities for everyone, including marginalised groups;
    2. access for marginalised groups requires their representation among FOSS developers;
    3. representation is only feasible if the environment is free of harassment (that affects marginalised groups the hardest).

    Done. This addresses the same wall of text that the author wrote, without the blatant issues in it.