If you take just one thing away from #FOSDEM this is it.
“If we lose our democracies, Open Source is irrelevant and goes away”
or putting it another way:
If we don’t apply, enforce, adopt and embrace Open Source in our public and government institutions we risk to lose our democracies.
#OpenSource #SaveDemocracy
Boost if you agree!
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@amirbkhan @_elena If you stop using billionaire software, just you, you are depriving them of your revenue, attention, and data. Each of us getting off "platforms" (Window, Mac, Facebook, X, etc.) is a member of the "walk away" revolt. And the continuing work to make Free and Open Source Software more accessible to the rest of them takes power away from the oligarchs AND the government they own. We are #OpenLDAP and #GCC #COBOL, two links in the chain.#
@amirbkhan Big tech, closed-source American tech with big moats, is perhaps the biggest threat to the freedoms currently enjoyed in most of Europe. It has corroded the best founding principles of America, and it knows no bounds. Unless checked, it will grow at all costs. All.
Open source, decentralized, federated, no vendor lock-in, etc, etc, are the ways to go.
@amirbkhan a technological fix will not solve a sociological problem.
Open source won't prevent the loss of democracy. It may make it easier to defend, in some scenarios, but it won't help when it's not facts being debated. Or an open source orphan crushing machine is still an orphan crushing machine.
@zimzat @amirbkhan yes. open source is completely compatible with authoritarianism so it can also flourish under fascism... just look at e.g. the fate of worker cooperatives under the franco dictatorship
@amirbkhan The other way around is also true: If our democracies don't switch to Open Source software, we will lose democracy.
