Is it appropriate for someone to be a mod here when they don't understand open source, and insult users in the community? (programming.dev)

submitted 4 months ago by SheeEttin@programming.dev to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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I'd understand if they were a random user, but a mod should already have at least some understanding about a community's topic.

But worse to me are their comments in that post calling the people responding "childish trolls in this community". I do not think that this is appropriate for a moderator.

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[-] shrugal@lemm.ee 39 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Wtf is this witch-hunt?!

The person asked a legitimate question and was being made fun of by some people, and downvoted to oblivion for completely legitimate viewpoints imo (wanting to make companies give back to foss). A mod should absolutely be allowed to call out childish behavior and herd mentality when they see it, they aren't supposed to be mindless drones after all! If anything they showed remarkable restraint when faced with some really nasty comments, mostly just stating/defending their opinion and trying to end toxic conversations.

Please just chill out, and accept that some people have different but equally valid opinions, even mods.

[-] BreakDecks@lemmy.ml 19 points 4 months ago

This wasn't even a real question. They basically wanted a brainstorming session on how to write monetization contractually into FOSS, and when overwhelmingly told by the community that their idea was counter to the Libre movement, they argued and made rude comments to anyone that wouldn't budge.

People answered the question honestly: No such license exists for FOSS and never will. If they wanted to learn more about FOSS this was their chance.

This level of ignorance of what this community stands for and contempt for the users here is completely disqualifying for a moderator. The only saving grace here is that they didn't abuse their moderator powers - if they had it would be like kicking an anthill.

I don't want them banned or punished, but I absolutely question their value as a moderator here. It doesn't reflect well on this community that someone like this has power over what the users can and cannot say, given their own propensity to endorse anti-libre values and insult people who oppose the same.

[-] shrugal@lemm.ee 14 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

We really must have read two different posts and sets of comments. All they did was to ask for a foss license that makes for-profit endeavors give back some of the money they earn by using foss projects, just like they have to give back code under most foss licenses. There is nothing bad about that general idea imo, we've hopefully all heard about the problems os projects have to sustain themselves, even when they are being used by commercially successful businesses.

They were then told by some levelheaded people that this doesn't really work with foss alone, and so accepted that the best course of action would be to dual-license their work going forward.

Everything else (including what you just wrote) is heavy projection and very toxic behavior by some people imo. Reading things between the lines that absolutely aren't there, accusing the OP of nefarious motives without any valid justification, claiming that there is only one correct way to do foss or be against "the community", and so on. That's cult and herd behavior, it has no place in foss imo, and that's pretty much exactly what the OP said when they called some of the more toxic responses childish.

I would encourage you again to realize that there is more than one valid way to think about foss, and that people who don't 100% agree with your way still aren't bad people!

[-] GBU_28@lemm.ee 12 points 4 months ago

This is Lemmy, ml, and a software sub.

Chilling out is not physically possible.

[-] EunieIsTheBus@feddit.de 28 points 4 months ago

A mod of a community is there for the purpose of moderation. He neither is nor needs to be an expert or a guru on the topic. If you want to talk and learn about something somewhere where the guy in charge also knows everything go to school / university. Teachers and professors will do the trick

[-] OmanMkII@aussie.zone 14 points 4 months ago

To anyone who believes this person is wrong, why are you not then moderating instead? Someone has to, and a good mod who knows nothing on the topic is better than a bad mod who's an expert.

[-] ResoluteCatnap@lemmy.ml 23 points 4 months ago

I didn't bother responding to that post because i assumed it was a troll...

[-] Lmaydev@programming.dev 22 points 4 months ago

Open source doesn't mean foss.

I think people being such zealots about getting paid is actually a huge problem with the open source community.

Giant corporations should absolutely pay to use these projects that are often labours of love done in spare time.

[-] onlinepersona@programming.dev 19 points 4 months ago

The purists and the zealots are the worst part of any community. If the real source (aka not obfuscated) is openly available with no access restrictions like "send me an email to get the source code", then it's opensource in my book. "Free" and "Libre" are just additional attributes for a subclass of opensource.

class Opensource {}
interface IsFree {}
interface IsLibre {}

class FOSS extends Opensource implements IsFree {}
class FLOSS extends Opensource implements IsFree, IsLibre {}

It's really simple.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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[-] red@sopuli.xyz 17 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I'm not seeing the "insulting users of the community" point you stated OP, could you clarify? I did see one snarky response to a dude calling him an asshole, and I also saw posts stating he shouldn't be a mod, and generally very hostile responsens. Those in mind, I think his output was quite civil even though I disagree with his reasoning and opinion to large degree.

This feels like a witchhunt to me, and I for one don't think a volunteer moderators job should be in question if he has a hot take on something. He's just keeping the spam etc. clean, he's allowed to have differing opinions on subjects, as long as there is no misuse of his mod powers.

[-] SheeEttin@programming.dev 4 points 4 months ago

"childish trolls in this community", "this community is full of trolls", "90% of folks here dont get the issue and rather troll"

[-] red@sopuli.xyz 7 points 4 months ago

That's insulting? Quite civil words, compared to the words the community he is describing, use in that thread.

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[-] velox_vulnus@lemmy.ml 15 points 4 months ago

Moderators deal with spam, hate speech and questionable content, so there's nothing wrong with it. From what I understand, the mod is trying to understand OSS, just like the rest of us. And that's okay. About the mod's unruly behaviour, that is really not a good looking for them.

[-] BreakDecks@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 months ago

I personally want mods that are a part of the community that they moderate. This is like the Lemmy equivalent of a city cop that lives in the suburbs.

[-] red@sopuli.xyz 8 points 4 months ago

In think that there's enough space here for differing opinions and discussion. Echo chambers are not good. Fyi: I'm against his idea, but I welcomed the discussion.

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[-] bloodfart@lemmy.ml 15 points 4 months ago

What the hell? This was all reasonable stuff to discuss in newsgroups thirty years ago and every time the equivalent of xz happened but somehow now it indicates someone doesn’t understand open source?

And before someone makes the absurd claim that the limits and constraints of open source were settled back then, a state funded targeted attack on an open source project is as good a catalyst as any to uhh… revisit the priors that the “community” holds dear.

I swear to god you can take the redditors out of Reddit but you can’t take the Reddit out of the redditors.

[-] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 12 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Very concerning misinformation in this thread. Open source does in fact mean more than "can look at the source code." The open source definition closely parallels the free software definition, in fact.

I don't like the terms open source, FOSS, or FLOSS precisely because of this misconception.

[-] TwiddleTwaddle@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I didn't even notice that was a mod. Disgraceful honestly. I was surprised to see that post still up after the poster continuously and deliberately misunderstood what FOSS means. Like its fine if you want to make open source software without a free license, but at least recognize the difference when people spell it out for you, or at the very least don't be rude about it.

[-] fafff@lemmy.ml 11 points 4 months ago

I don't mind moderators having their ideas or even ranting or even blowing off some steam in the thread they make/parecipate in.

Their moderating job is to avoid the community being drowned in spam/scam etc. and as far as I can see there are few to no spam posts in !opensource@lemmy.ml. In that particular thread they went wild but as far as I can see did not abuse their mod powers.

tl;dr: judge the moderator as the moderator, and the user as a user. I didn't particularly like that thread too, but from moderating POV, I haven't yet seem something by haui I disagree with.

[-] squid_slime@lemm.ee 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html

Am I missing something, ~~gnu~~ gpl is a licence, Foss a philosophy, is ~~gnu~~ gpl licence Foss? And if so why are so many people saying charging for software isn't Foss when Richard stalman himself makes the point "This is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of “free speech,” not “free beer.”"

Sorry if I got this wrong I am generally confused by this hole thing.

[-] d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

GNU is not a license, it's a project, one that practically spearheaded the whole FOSS movement back in the 80s. The programs that were part of the GNU project were licenced under the GNU General Public License (GPL), which was originally written by Richard Stallman, and evolved over time to its current version, GPLv3 (now backed by the Free Software Foundation). So the "GPL" is the actual license that can be applied to any program, should the developer choose to do so (so it's not limited just to the GNU project).

All GPL licenced programs are considered to be FOSS. However, FOSS can also imply other licenses such as MIT, LGPL, Apache etc. Most of them are kinda similar, but the way but differ slightly on how permissive/restrictive it is when it comes to modifications and derivatives.

why are some many people saying charging for software isn't Foss when Richard stalman himself makes the point "This is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of “free speech,” not “free beer.”"

As you said, it's not about the price at all, the "free" means freedom. Specifically, the GPL explicitly states that you may charge money for the software. Other free software licences also generally state something similar.

The confusion regarding selling is best explained by the FSF:

Selling a copy of a free program is legitimate, and we encourage it.

However, when people think of “selling software,” they usually imagine doing it the way most companies do it: making the software proprietary rather than free.

So unless you're going to draw distinctions carefully, the way this article does, we suggest it is better to avoid using the term “selling software” and choose some other wording instead. For example, you could say “distributing free software for a fee”—that is unambiguous.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

Also, just to be clear, opensource =/= FOSS. Opensource just means that the source code is available, FOSS however implies that you're free to modify and redistribute the program (+ some other freedoms/restrictions as per the specific license used).

[-] squid_slime@lemm.ee 1 points 4 months ago

Thank you for clearing this up, the comments in the linked post where having me question myself

[-] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 months ago

Opensource just means that the source code is available, FOSS however implies that you’re free to modify and redistribute the program

Incorrect. "Open Source" also means that you are free to modify and redistribute the software.

If the source code is merely available but not free to modify and/or redistribute, then it is called source-available software.

[-] d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz 1 points 4 months ago

Incorrect. "Open Source" also means that you are free to modify and redistribute the software.

Not necessarily true - that right to modify/redistribute depends on the exact license being applied. For example, the Open Watcom Public License claims to be an "open source" license, but it actually doesn't allow making modifications. This is also why we specifically have the terms "free software" or "FOSS" which imply they you are indeed allowed to modify and redistribute.

I would recommend reading this: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html

[-] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 months ago

Not necessarily true - that right to modify/redistribute depends on the exact license being applied.

If you don't have the right to modify and redistribute it (and to do so commercially) then it does not meet the definitions of free software or open source.

For example, the Open Watcom Public License claims to be an “open source” license, but it actually doesn’t allow making modifications.

The Sybase Open Watcom Public License does allow making modifications, and distributing modified versions. The reason why the FSF has not approved it is that it requires you to publish source code even if you only wanted to run your modified version yourself and didn't actually want to distribute anything to anyone. (The Watcom license is one of the few licenses which is approved by OSI but not FSF. You can see the other licenses which are approved by one but not the other by sorting this table.)

The FSF's own AGPL license is somewhat similar, but it only imposes the requirement if you run the software for someone else over a network. (Neither of these requirements are likely to be enforceable by copyright law, as I explained in my comment about the AGPL in the thread which this thread is about...)

This is also why we specifically have the terms “free software” or “FOSS” which imply they you are indeed allowed to modify and redistribute.

I would recommend reading this: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html

I would recommend that you re-read that, because it actually explains that the two terms refer to essentially the same category of software licenses (while it advocates for using the term free software to emphasize the philosophical aspects of those licenses).

[-] TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

There's nothing wrong with charging for your FOSS. You can't, however, force anybody who gets it from you to also charge the people they end up distributing it to like some sort of Ponzi scheme. The transactional relationship between you, your software, and another party ends at the first level.

[-] squid_slime@lemm.ee 3 points 4 months ago

This is what I had thought, where I was confused was the vast amount of comments in the linked post stating flatly that charging for software went against foss

[-] halm@leminal.space 9 points 4 months ago

I think it's perfectly appropriate for anybody in an interest based community, mod or common user, to question their basic understanding of the subject. Even if the shared topic doesn't change, its context will — and the question of funding FLOSS development has very much been thrown into the mix again with the xz backdoor.

To be clear, I don't think there is a way to license your way out of supporting developers. Short of UBI or a FLOSS unionisation that the major tech corps will then need to acknowledge and negotiate standards with — I remain unconvinced. But I don't need to agree dogmatically with the mod in question to gain from their point of view.

Worse to me are users who do not have the capacity to reflect on their views, and clutch their pearls over "appropriateness" only when challenged on what are essentially beliefs rather than established fact. Add to those the "childish trolls" which make up varying percentages of any forum. With users like this, a good telling off is not only appropriate, it's necessary.

[-] wahming@monyet.cc 9 points 4 months ago

But worse to me are their comments in that post calling the people responding "childish trolls in this community". I do not think that this is appropriate for a moderator.

Funny, because that's certainly how most of the responses sound like to me. OP was asking a reasonable question, and most of the responses there were nowhere near civil.

[-] Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

People are allowed to make mistakes every now and then. I would draw the line at open mod abuse such as using their rank to intimidate or just flat out removing people who they disagree with. Still a pretty crappy showing that I hope they grow from, but like, give them that chance.

[-] pe1uca@lemmy.pe1uca.dev 3 points 4 months ago

I'd say yes for the first part, no to the second.

And expert or someone knowledgeable may not have the time to invest in a community. A mod is a volunteer who helps ensure rules are followed and we can have a place to discuss about a topic.

But a mod insulting the community is a different problem. It's doing something which they should be helping mitigate.