Drew DeVault

I write code

Natural language proficiency:
★★★★★ 🇺🇸
★★★☆☆ 🇯🇵
★★☆☆☆ 🇳🇱
★★☆☆☆ 🤟
★☆☆☆☆ 🇫🇷

Does not want to talk to you about cryptocurrency or AI

Website: https://drewdevault.com
Code: https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn
Location: Amsterdam
Pronouns: he/him

Public Key

npub1d88002d7uxl3cg9pwtgsnpgxs7qrmrgetqara0p4kw7d3yy4r50qtz57ex

NIP-05 Address

drewdevault_at_fosstodon.org@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsxnnhh4xlwr0cuyzsh95gfs5rg0qpa35v4sw37hs6m80xcjz2368spz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsuhuxka

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1d88002d7uxl3cg9pwtgsnpgxs7qrmrgetqara0p4kw7d3yy4r50qtz57ex

Show more details

Last Notes

2024-09-04 17:15:44

Property is an illusion, intellectual property doubly so

2024-09-03 09:35:34

- reply

sourcehut's robots.txt might be a good place to start:
https://git.sr.ht/robots.txt
It has comments on why each entry is there

2024-08-31 10:23:26

- reply

I don't even think the changes of it being used have to be very slim. I think that if the project I proposed got on its feet, it would be used. I think it'd have excellent chances for success. The chances of a research OS project going somewhere are much slimmer but if you're going in with compatibility with a proven design as a core goal then your odds are way better.

2024-08-31 10:22:09

- reply

Finally, if you think that I fly with toxicity in the Linux community and see me as an enabler rather than an ally, then you don't know jack shit about me and I have fucking receipts.

2024-08-31 09:35:31

- reply

This is the worst, even the stuff which isn't just outright personal attacks towards me are just dismissing the worst-faith versions of my arguments.

2024-08-31 09:34:41

- reply

"Drew is a passionate Rust hater, nothing he says about it should be taken seriously. He's also the author of a low-level C-like language (without safety assurances of Rust), so it's likely whatever he's saying is motivated by pure spite and jealousy."
"some of [Drew]'s opinions are truly insufferable"
"Drew DeVault's name has managed to stick in my head as someone I just can't stand"

2024-08-31 09:32:22

- reply

Some of the Rust community's responses to my blog post:
"Sometimes people [Drew] would benefit from thinking a bit longer than they did.", followed by moving the goalposts several miles
"I am a Drew Devault hater, so buckle up. [...] I never have the sense Drew has ever thought critically about his opinions at all"

2024-08-31 09:27:58

Jesus, the eagerness with which the Rust community jumps to answer my discourse not with any kind of good faith, but with personal attacks and put-downs and horrible ad-hominem nonsense is just... insane. It's almost as bad as when I post about "woke" stuff and the far-right descends on me with harassment and death threats.
Your community has a big fucking problem, Rust, and cosplaying as inclusive and healthy and welcoming is disgraceful in the face of reality.

2024-07-28 13:46:42

I like HL: Alyx but it's a bit long to be playing 20 minutes at a time (max playtime before I start feeling nauseous)

2024-07-26 21:47:27

- reply

On the subject of games I got the VR rig out again and am finally playing through HL: Alyx and getting some Beatsaber in
Got partner to try out Persona 5, though, and consequently the gaming PC has been monopolized for the past few weeks

2024-07-26 21:33:34

Recommend good couch multiplayer/co-op for PC for 2-4 players? Linux/Proton support mandatory

2024-07-25 07:02:55

- reply

cool?

2024-07-25 06:51:06

- reply

recognize this?
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/112/845/800/151/596/371/original/8bbcafde51c86b68.png

2024-07-24 15:52:24

- reply

Since there is some confusion about this, I never supposed that Hyprland was some kind of obscure "dark web" project. Instead I compared the discourse around Hyprland (and connections to it via Brodie, Lunduke, etc) to the broader social conception of the "Intellectual dark web", which I cited in a follow up to clarify:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_dark_web
Happy to debate the applicability of this comparison but not really to debate something I didn't say re: "dark web"

2024-07-24 15:46:33

- reply

I agree that we should not misgender anyone, including those we disagree with; please desist and/or edit replies which did so.

2024-07-24 15:45:55

- reply

"sway has been around for 4x longer", "Hyprland's growing faster"
Does not support the argument that Hyprland is more popular than Sway
"many people have sway installed and dont use it, the longer it's there the more there are"
No evidence to support or quantify this assumption
"opt-in arch pkg-stats"
Same bias applies to the Hyprland stats and balances out
"8% is not 'dark web'"
Still misinterpreting my comment on the "intellectual dark web"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_dark_web

2024-07-24 15:00:41

"manipulates facts to fit his argument"
"calls a project more popular than his, a dark web underground who-even-knows-this"
Fact check
https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/packages?query=hyprland
https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/packages?query=sway
I last committed anything meaningful to to sway or wlroots in 2020 and I officially handed off maintenance, so it's hardly "my project" either.
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/112/842/058/125/438/023/original/7265ea68da008bb6.png
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/112/842/058/126/552/521/original/cd425c6097148145.png

2024-07-15 19:06:00

- reply

yes, I've seen it

2024-07-15 18:55:04

Quote from an upcoming blog post: "While open source was proven to be incredibly profitable and profoundly useful for the software industry as a whole, the economics of making open source work for one business are much different. [...] The revolutionary economics of FOSS are based on collaboration, and are incompatible with competition."

2024-07-02 15:51:26

- reply

A humble request, though: if you need to discuss anything graphic, I'm still happy to talk to you, but please use a content warning so that I can address it when I have the space.

2024-07-02 15:49:19

Of those five issues I enumerated, dealing with sexism and problematic men is probably the most difficult/controversial.
There's a lot which could be said here, but it is something I'm working on. For now, I'll reiterate something I've said before, which is that anyone who is struggling with these issues -- your own behavior, the behavior of those around you, struggling to understand the "other", etc -- you can always speak to me about it privately and I will keep your questions in confidence.

2024-07-02 15:35:20

- reply

5. The Free Software Foundation. #hottake
The one thing all of these issues have in common is that the FSF has no answers for them. The EUPL and MPL are doing a better job of facilitating copyleft than the GPL family. Savannah isn't a match for Codeberg, let alone GitHub. Most egregiously, the FSF has utterly failed to address diversity and social issues, especially sexism, and with RMS's position restored and maintained at the helm that is never going to change.

2024-07-02 15:32:55

- reply

yeah, or install a package if it's available for your distro. New release soon

2024-07-02 15:28:57

- reply

it depends

2024-07-02 15:26:48

- reply

Moreover, we need more people than just programmers. You know why we don't have an answer to Discord? A big part of it is that we don't have people doing visual design, translations, marketing, etc. Learn about people who differ from you and your expectations: their struggles, their victories, and their needs and what's important to them. Become a student of the other, and take your skills to your leadership and moderation roles, to make safer and more inviting spaces.

2024-07-02 15:26:35

- reply

We need to *deal with* bigotry. In particular we need to acknowledge the quiet sort, especially sexism and the behavior of problemtic men in our communities. For all of our advances in other domains (in spite of the loud pushback against these advances), sexism remains an important flaw in the FOSS community.

2024-07-02 15:26:14

- reply

4. Lack of diversity in FOSS. Yes, I mean the culture war sort, but also others besides. Most of the people reading this post still fit the mold: the relatively affluent white male cishet computer science major. We live in a time of struggle and if we don't foster solidarity with other political movements it's going to break down our doors sooner or later. We need different perspectives and backgrounds among our *peers* and *leaders*, and so far they're mostly relegated to users if even that.

2024-07-02 15:15:40

- reply

Worst of all, it's really good. It's simply outcompeted the FOSS market. This isn't like GitHub, where the alternatives are equally good or better on technical merits. To solve Discord we need to both take the approach of committing our own projects to free platforms, but also *investing* in our free chat platforms to make them even remotely competitive with Discord.

2024-07-02 15:13:52

- reply

It's also exclusionary, and even unsafe, for many other marginalized participants. Many Discord servers are infested with far right recruitment and campaigns of hate and harassment. Many harassment campaigns are launched from Discord and racist and queerphobic sentiments go unpoliced. It's an issue with the platform, which retains ultimate control and refuses to use it to moderate this behavior, and with the culture, who develop small monarchies where these problems go unanswered.

2024-07-02 15:11:47

- reply

3. Discord. This is another proprietary platform and many of the same arguments regarding GitHub apply here. It's an incredibly popular platform, and it's no surprise to find it landing on our shores. However, it is especially toxic for FOSS in many respects: it seeks legal action to prevent anyone from attempting to build software on top of it. It's a walled garden: Discord is an incredibly exclusionary platform which has countless accessibility issues for the disabled, poor, and many others.

2024-07-02 15:06:33

- reply

Oh, and on this subject: AWS is not really a threat to FOSS, if anything it's mostly been a boon for us. Any time someone cites AWS while taking any of the four freedoms away from you, you should start asking some pointed questions.

2024-07-02 15:05:40

- reply

Moverover, we need to re-discover reciprocal licenses like GPL and EUPL and hold copyrights in common between all stakeholders. Which is why you should never sign a CLA!

2024-07-02 15:05:25

- reply

To address this we need to better educate people on how money and free software can co-exist in a way which does not threaten FOSS, and for people to learn and *grok* the social and economic dynamics of free software. The commercialization of FOSS is not a bad thing -- so long as the *critical* provisions that all users are equally entitled to share that wealth and capitalize on it on equal terms is upheld.

2024-07-02 15:04:41

- reply

2. Open washing, which is to say the proliferation of licenses that look FOSS if you squint but don't work if you look closer, and practices related to these licenses. Here we have big players like Elastic, Redis, MongoDB, and numerous smaller cases as well. The practice of building off of the lavish advantages of being in the FOSS ecosystem, then pulling the rug and seeking exclusive commercial monopolization of the end result.

2024-07-02 14:59:44

- reply

Consumption of proprietary platforms in our infrastructure erodes support for the very real participatory projects that exist and need your support and legitimacy to succeed. The solution is to eschew consumption of proprietary software, and build your infrastructure on free software platforms. This is a problem of critical mass, and it won't be reached unless enough projects are bold enough to take the loss of access to these proprietary platforms and their reach on principled grounds.

2024-07-02 14:59:37

- reply

1. GitHub, and to a lesser extent GitLab. These platforms commodify the FOSS community and minimize the social aspects that matter -- people over stars. They are proprietary (or open core) and consequently encourage a consumption culture with respect to FOSS: users consume GitHub, rather than participating in it; and this culture fans out to the broader culture associated with projects and people that work with it.

2024-07-02 14:58:19

🧵 Biggest threats to FOSS and some proposed solutions

2024-06-04 08:56:44

The state of SourceHut and our plans for the future
https://sourcehut.org/blog/2024-06-04-status-and-plans/

2024-05-28 08:27:16

Send leads on apartments in NL within 2 hours transit to Amsterdam? Min 60 m² max €1500/mo. If you know someone with a place for rent, please get in touch
Boosts helpful :)