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Kolektiva is an anti-colonial anarchist collective that offers federated social media to anarchist collectives and individuals in the fediverse. For the social movements and liberation!

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@mira I mean, I think there is a point where adherence to FOSS principles can become absurd — like Debian refusing to include non-free drivers as an option in their main easy to find installer for many years, thus essentially stopping most people with a modern laptop that doesn't have an ethernet port from even installing it. The mission of FOSS should be to improve people's software freedom as much as possible, and putting artificial limitations on your software to prevent people from doing non-free things not only actually *decreases* their freedom (because people should be free to make mistakes and use crappy software if they have to or choose to), but, in completely preventing people from using such software, it actually makes it so that it's impossible for people to improve their rights even a little bit if it isn't possible for them to be *perfectly* free. It's letting the perfect be the enemy of the good — saying if that if someone isn't willing to go 100% FOSS then they don't get any software freedom. Or, for another example, the Libre version of the Linux kernel refusing to allow microcode updates. Your computer is already going to be running proprietary micro code and firmware that you have no control over and no idea what the fuck it's doing. So allowing manufacturers to upgrade their microcode or firmware literally isn't changing the situation at all. Even if what you are objecting to is them being able to load new microcode whenever they want in either case you're using proprietary microcode that you know nothing about and have no control over that was loaded without your permission so not allowing any new microcode literally doesn't help with anything and only makes your system less secure.

novatorine 🏴🏳️‍⚧️

@mira a lot of FOSS purism that manifests itself as locking down free software and limiting its capabilities honestly has the same Vibe as moralistic rich leftists decrying poor people for buying from unethical but cheap places like Walmart or Amazon, or SWERFs getting angry at sex workers for having to work in an industry where they are exploited, as if that's their fault or their lives will get any better if they were stopped from having that option.

It's trying to prevent people from being exploited or participating in exploitative systems by restricting their choices, instead of by providing non-exploitative options —escape hatches — ignoring the fact that there is a *reason* people choose to be exploited (most of the time), and so simply restricting their choices when there isn't another option available isn't making them freer, it's hurting them. It's victim blaming, essentially — "you're wrong for making the choice to be exploited when practically speaking you didn't have any other option" — and it's fundamentally confused. You don't make people freer by policing their choices in order to prevent them from choosing exploitative options, you make them freer by giving them non-exploitative options and making a world where they can choose not to be exploited.

@mira you can't increase someone's freedom by policing them, preventing them from making certain choices when they have to.