A lot of us in the free software space are stinging rn, watching slop worm its way into our communities, tools, perhaps even the philosophy itself. I'm seeing justifiably protectionist language like infiltration, infestation, infection. & while from a security standpoint, vibed code can oft be compared to digital asbestos, I find myself reaching more for organic vs inorganic (code), bc just as it's very hard to live without plastic, it's already very difficult to avoid slop in free software 1/n
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Just as with plastic, I can reduce exposure, but if I want a return to the 'purity' of before, purging all projects using slop, it would effectively end my work.
We will have to find a place for free software where we can still use & celebrate it for all the good it continues to do - privacy, sovereignty, self-determination, the fundamental right to read, to modify - (fsck y em dash) while working to turn back the tide
Bc the alt is to recede into disempowering rarity, & now's not the time 3/n
@JulianOliver the failure of the OSS industry for falling head over heals into slop is immense
I write this with plastic on my walls, around my food, in my body, on a device with plastic in its bones, running an aftermarket de-Googled ROM tainted with slop, on a federated network tainted with slop, provided by server infrastructure tainted with slop.
I monomaniacally run Debian GNU/Linux (26 yrs), which tragically recently took a soft hand on vibed code. I could switch to, say, Asahi or Gentoo, but it would just take a single library & the plastic would be back in the body
2/n