Notices by Bradley M. Kuhn (bkuhn@floss.social)

It's very special to me reading this thread.

I spend a lot of time defending copyleft in venues where people hate copyleft, including with Musk fans & tech bros.

I get falsely accused of the worst imaginable.

But reading here just four or five people commenting who clearly believe copyleft is a core and important strategy for FOSS really makes today a better day for me. And good days are hard to come by in my part of the world these days.

Thank you all.

@dexter I didn't say that at all. I amazed you're trolling when I shared something heartfelt, but OK, I guess that's the world we live in now.

@kfogel's essay & his further comments …
https://kfogel.org/notice/AtP2KpuBUuXbbz8eFE
… share an important perspective. Karl'as been an #OpenSource Initiative Director, an #OSI volunteer, & an OSI contractor.
His key point is same as the petition (which Karl signed & I hope you will too): regardless of your views about candidates & their positions, the elections must be transparent & OSI has the right to not seat us even if we won, so why not be transparent?
Pls sign today:
https://codeberg.org/OSI-Concerns/election-results-2025
#FreeSoftware

@dneary

I hope you'll sign the petition.

As @kfogel says, it's not an issue that the Board didn't seat me and @richardfontana , but that it continues to hide the results.

Every petition signature helps, even if you're disliked by #OpenSource Initiative.

It's now 49 sigs:
https://codeberg.org/OSI-Concerns/election-results-2025

Paraphrasing (& mixing metaphors of ) Arlo Guthrie's *Alice's Restaurant*:

If 1 person signs, #OSI figures I'm a malcontent & won't seat me on the Board. If 2 people sign, they'll just seat neither of us.

But if FIFTY PEOPLE walk up to OSI, sing a bar of Alice's Restaurant, sign the petition, & walk out, they'll think it's a Movement.

Only 1 more sig 'til *A Movement*

Wow, everyone, response to the petition to #OpenSource Initiative seeking release of results of 2025 Board of Directors Election had quicker response than imagined, but it still needs more sigs:
https://codeberg.org/OSI-Concerns/election-results-2025

I joked than per Arlo Guthrie's song, *Alice's Restaurant*, that it's officially a Movement (since Arlo says 50 people)…
https://floss.social/@bkuhn/114371121751860621
… But forgot to mention Arlo said “50 people a day”😛 — as such, I'd really appreciate if 50 more of you could sign. Could you please?

Tomorrow's 4 weeks since #OpenSource Initiative tampered w/ ballots to surreptitiously remove Bentley Hensel, @richardfontana, & me from already-cast votes to pretend like we never ran. The only time @osi will now even say our names is to spread false accusations.

According to the “results” announcement…
https://opensource.org/blog/announcing-the-new-directors-of-osi-board
…they've promised to publish a “retrospective” on their 2025 election by tomorrow. One wonders what they'll say to justify all this? 🤔

ICYMI: https://lwn.net/Articles/1014603/

The petition is for those *not* on #OpenSource Initiative's Board to sign.

A petition is an opportunity for the common people to have their voice heard by those in charge. As we believe in the USA (where #OSI, @dexter & I live):

> Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom … to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

@webmink: you, like me, have fame that grants you political safety to sign the petition. Will you sign it, or do you agree with the recent ballot tampering?

Oh, are contractors as required to sign the “code of silence” (i.e., the 19 words that Open Source Initiative considers sacrosanct):
> “Disagree during Board deliberation but support publicly all Board decisions, especially those that do not have unanimous consent.”
?

I've never heard of a 501(c)(3) charity (at least in FOSS) that forbids and/or curtails employees & contractors from expressing their public policy views. It'd be new to me to learn OSI has a gag order for its contractors.

… activists who are on Open Source initiative's radar have taken & will take more political hits for questioning this status quo & saying these emperors have no clothes. By signing the petition, every single individual in #OpenSource & #FreeSoftware communities can do a tiny bit to help those of us who face the constant onslaught in the political fray. I consider it my job to take the risk, but I ask you do something tiny to help make that work a bit easier.

Thank you for your consideration.

… disagreeing publicly w/ #OSI — who has a track record of seeking political retribution — is indeed risky!
Petitions beautifully grant “safety in numbers”: widely signed petitions create “herd immunity” for signers; More signers yield more political safety for each signer.
Petitions are also an easy, effective way for relatively “unknown” individuals to support famous activists. #OpenSource Initiative likely won't bother to seek political retribution against individuals they don't know well…

Some say they're afraid to sign #OpenSource initiative Election Results petition…
https://codeberg.org/OSI-Concerns/election-results-2025
…they correctly say (paraphrased):
> “you [bkuhn] faced — & will continue to face — political retribution from #OSI . You have privilege of notoriety to endure that; I don't.”

Herein, I respond: that view assumes a zero-sum game that doesn't exist.

Thesis: each person who signs has nominally less personal political risk *&* incrementally reduces risk for each past & future signer. HMO…

Circa 1993, I came back to my dorm room & one of my college roommates was watching CSPAN (yes, I lived exclusively with other geeks 😆). I ranted:
“Congress just talks and talks & nothing gets done. They should work faster & more efficiently”

My roommate said something I'll never forget: “You don't want to live in a country where laws change quickly. Laws should change slowly & rarely.”

At the time, I didn't agree but thought he had a good point. I recently decided he was unequivocally right

I also thank @iank for volunteering to use Microsoft's proprietary Github platform on behalf of us all to accept signatures there.

It's obvious that Github has (at least right now) wider appeal than Codeberg & Ian is currently “taking one for the team” to make it convenient for people who already have a Github account to sign the petition.

I do urge everyone that if you do not have a Github account already, please *do not create one* to sign the petition. Instead, create a Codeberg account.

Dear @georgetakei
Sorry to bother you.

I spent my career working on policy issues in Free & #OpenSource software. I didn't write the code for Mastodon/fediverse, but I invented the licensing structure it uses called Affero #GPL —

its licensing ensures equal rights between companies, individuals, hobbyists, & enthusiasts.

You've been a hero of mine since I was 11 years old. I have been crying with joy for 5 minutes upon discovering you use this platform.

Thank you for everything.
🥹

I encourage everyone to please sign this petition that asks #OpenSource Initiative to release the election results for #OSI's 2025 Board of Directors Election.

3 methods available to sign:
* email <sign@osi-petition.org>
* Pull request on Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/OSI-Concerns/election-results-2025
* Pull request on Github: https://github.com/OSI-Concerns/election-results-2025

I thank @wolftune & @iank's leadership in shepherding the drafting of this petition.

OSI's work impacts everyone involved in #FOSS, so everyone is welcomed to sign.

@downey wow, that bug ticket thread re: “private mention” actually *is* in my beloved tradition of “hard to write, then it's hard to use”.
Seems developers have a data model of microblogging & they abstract DM into that data model b/c it has that neat & clean OO feeling you get when every subclass roots (& routes!😁) back to the One True Base Class.
It's mildly comforting to know every generation of programmers wants One Ring to Rule Them All…💍
…But remember how that worked out for Gollum, folks!

Fascinating. I lack Steven Coblert's Tolkien lore recall, but had this head-canon: since Gollum spied on Frodo & Sam so long, Gollum knew everything they did.

OTOH I don't remember if Gandalf told Frodo about the other rings😬

I see now my unforced error was bringing up Gollum at all, as it exposed I score poorly on Tolkien portion of Nerd Credibility test.

But I got a good joke:As a frequent #OpenSource event-goer, I am annoyed most event organizers don't seem to know about Second Breakfast.

I like that all I have to do is mention a few obscure bits of lore and can cause
@richardfontana to go off and research primary sources just to prove me wrong.

This dynamic convinces me it's time to bring back the Fontana/Kuhn debates to a micro blogging platform near you

I think some misread my first post in this thread.
I meant: while it took me a while to learn the platform, UX is smooth (on all clients I have tried, in fact) that my only complaint is “DM is ‘private mention’” thing.
I'm old school & still believe in the pithy adage: “if software was hard to write, it should be hard to use”, so having just one complaint for a large system like this seems like I live in a fantasy land…except the non-meta content then reminds me I live in a hellscape of course😬