incredible take from one of the GNU maintainers, seriously
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It is a dark day indeed when Microsoft Visual Studio Code is the ethically superior alternative to GNU Emacs.
@ariadne them be like "I want to defend AI, but how do I do that in a racist way...🤔"
@ariadne every time a tech bro says "software shouldn't be political" I want to take away their computer touching privileges forever
@ariadne this is the 21st century version of ‘at least we’ve got great Autobahns and the trains are running on time’. Seriously. Wtaf.
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@mirabilos @glyph @aud @ariadne Also he's savannah project admin on https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gdb/
(thankfully illumos has mdb, but it also has a pretty different ~debugger-language than gdb/lldb)
(thankfully illumos has mdb, but it also has a pretty different ~debugger-language than gdb/lldb)
@ariadne You are more evil than the maintainer by not including the full message in the post in the first place. Including it in replies merely corrects some of many misunderstandings
Awful. Particularly since it looks like a clear majority of subsequent participants in the thread agree with him.
A tricksy thought, though: in some jurisdictions, businesses are required by law to show due diligence in avoiding the use of slavery or forced labour by their suppliers and/or "value chain partners". I wonder how the existence of a public statement like this affects the ability of those businesses either to use GNU software or to collaborate in the development of GNU software.
@ariadne The text in context, on the mailing list: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2026-11/msg00201.html
Pierre Joseph Proudhon: Everyone agrees that slavery is murder, so when I say that property is theft...
GNU guy: woah woah woah, back up.
@ariadne I'm not surprised by GNU taking the "freedom is slavery" position. I'm a *little* surprised they were so literal about it.
@ariadne watch the saudi wealth fund become their biggest donor next year
@ariadne I respect the trimming of names and emails but if anybody deserves an old fashioned pile on it's that guy.
@ariadne Jesus fucking Christ.
@ariadne@treehouse.systems if your ethics are defined by legality, then your ethics aren't worth anything, imo
this is just gross
@lumi @ariadne It's not legal in EU have products based on forced labor: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/C/2025/3736/oj
@lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me @ariadne@treehouse.systems capitalism in shambles
@ariadne His name is Eli Zaretskii, we need to name fascists.
@ariadne Living by principles is hard. Moral decisions aren't supposed to make you feel warm and fuzzy.
RMS has been demonstrably problematic over the years. I hereby condemn you all for using FSF software.
Or maybe I don't.
@ariadne
The basement-dwelling douchebag who wrote this is seemingly unclear on the distinction between legality and morality.
@ariadne Somehow I should have guessed it was Eli
@ariadne it's exhausting to enjoy using emacs
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@ariadne some zealot, doubtlessly: “At least a person wrote it”
@Elizafox@social.treehouse.systems @ariadne@social.treehouse.systems Well, 3/5ths of a person in Confederate states.
@ariadne
Well, that's a take.
@ariadne honestly I think the “community” should split, people who feel ethics are important on one side and people who don’t care on the other. Starting from scratch is not easy, maybe not even practical in the slightest, but is it ethical to use past work of people who have now become unethical or perhaps have always been unethical. Ethics is complicated but “is slavery bad??” Is one of the simplest things ever and when someone can’t answer that correctly it’s time to split.
@mbrdev @ariadne Yes, the splitting has to happen. We have been too upset about splitting efforts and community, and this is where we have landed.
Now I wish we had split more in the past.
Had we had more parallel developer communities ran on different philosophies, switching from one project to another would be easier. Instead we face a series of "take it or leave" deals today. We exchanged diversity and resiliency for unity. And here we are
@hugoestr @ariadne I’m happy to join the community that doesn’t accept slavery, believes in human rights for every single human, and takes a proper ethical stance on all things including AI. And hey don’t forget it’s actually a good thing to be against animal cruelty as well! Racism, bigotry, transphobia, homophobia, antisemitism, misogyny, fascism and all the things it’s so easy to condemn, I want to be with the group that easily without even discussion is against those things!
@ariadne me when my moral framework is just vibes and my complicity leads to societal rot:
@ariadne it would seem to me that if one is to use the products of slavery as a means, or part of a means, to disrupt and cause the cessation of that same slavery, then it is a viable solution if the alternative is to permit that same slavery to last any length of time greater.
When the slaves make guns, is it not appropriate to take those same guns, that would otherwise have been used in the oppression of slaves, to instead destroy the masters?
In that same vein, instructing an LLM to create the means of its own destruction would seem appropriate.
What is not is permitting personal gain from those same products.
@ariadne "Well actually, it's called GNU/Slavery."
@ariadne what thE FUARK
@ariadne False equivalency plus "Yet you live in a society, curious I am very intelligent" meme, used to justify a choice.
@ariadne What I don't like about this answer is, if the project wants to absolve itself of responsibility for deciding whether contributions are ethical or not, then giving a definite yes/no answer is still not the way to do it.
In that circumstance, the correct answer is,
> As a U.S. based foundation, we track the law of the U.S. for issues outside of our focus.
Problem solved.
If the U.S. permits products of slave labour, that's a U.S. problem at that point.
@ariadne Whats the outrage? Arent most of us profiting from slavery in third world countries currently?
@ariadne
Be coherent and stop using your computer that is built thanks to slavery. Otherwise things shouldn't be like that necessarily, computers could be built in a sustainable way and without slave work, LLMs could be trained without spending humongous amounts of energy and without using stolen data. The campaign to blame technology itself diverting attention from technofeudal lords and the way they are making and using that technology is disgusting.
@ariadne "the only thing that matters is the code. Not the people, no. Just the code. The code must be free. The people? Fuck the people."
GNU maintainers, Take on slavery
Some are absolute fscking assholes and should, as a fitting answer to such a statement _ be enslaved for life.....
@ariadne Anything is deemed acceptable, as long as it serves the cult.
I wonder for how long more won't be recognized that even good intentions, and movements for freedom, can easily derail into cultism.
If you read well the statements of the founders, decades ago, the seed had been planted.
@ariadne ???? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK
@ariadne Chrst this email thread is something
@ariadne "freedom ain't free" ahh statement qwq
@ariadne
Yes crazy, or a lost idiot in the team...
@ariadne Just to be clear, this would probably be a crime in both the UK and USA under modern slavery laws.
@ariadne gonna recommend punching both the asker and the askee here
@ariadne so desperate to rip off other people's work off that they're willing to justify slavery to do it
@ariadne They've been very consistent when it comes to software freedom over any particular set of ethics.
@ariadne Keep political philosophy as far as possible from STEM folks.
@ariadne in literally no other industry would slave labour be an acceptable part of the goods pipeline, irrespective of its legal status. No company or industry would proudly and publicly say they purchase raw materials produced through slave labour. It's completely insane.
@ariadne
lmao they already fell into bureaucratic psychosis long before LLM one.
Such a resounding YES, one can imagine what it would have looked like if they supported emojis.
@ariadne "Our answer must be YES" has such maniac energy it''s such a whacky take.
here in germany just recently many companies used labour camps to build all products in all factories
it's a dark chapter and i can't imagine someone saying "our answer must be YES because the forced labour jews and political opponents who are slaved to death build the same toaster just fine"
@ariadne a terrible answer for a terrible question
@ariadne if someone lives in a region where child marriage is legal and records their wedding night, am I permitted to have a sad wank over that?
Our answer would have to be yes.
We don't make the rules ✋️😔🤚
@ariadne What rock are they living under where this is hypothetical? People have been aware of slavery or exploitation in the supply chains of western corporations for decades, and it is generally considered ethically sound to protest, find alternatives, and force them to change their supply chains.
I mean really 'ethically speaking, AI is okay because who among us doesn't rock a snazzy blood diamond watch or some fresh Air Forces made in North Korea?'
@ariadne Color me unsurprised. There's a number of people there who IMO have excellent ideas about software specifically but who're otherwise anywhere from unpleasant to downright vile people who should be shunned.
Myself, I'd have to consider it unethical to accept it regardless of whether it was legal or allowed by the rules, since it's creation was unethical.
@ariadne i mean i see the point :p
not like not using products from such labour will auto magically change evil laws
@ariadne
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2026-11/msg00126.html
The response came from Eli Zaretskii, one GNU maintainer, who is an asshole. A zealot with a narrow minded view of the ethics that should be employed for emacs development, prizing above all else the avoidance of community fracture, even at the cost of basic morals. He doesn't speak for all.
@bit ok, i don't really see the point of your reply here, but sure
@ariadne Yikes. I honestly can't think of a more introductory ethics principle than "Legal =/= Ethical"
Literally. Walk in, sit down, "okay, class..." and that's the exact thing you'd start with.
@ariadne That is par for the course, just like the paragraph after:
> Any other answer is a first step towards splitting our community along
the many lines of political and ideological divides
The implication that answering yes to slave labor for the benefit of GNU would expectedly be unquestionable and unanimously agreeable is baffling, but also very much expected from GNU.
Still, people better not start calling them a death cult, what next? Acknowledge the fact that they put the project above everything and everyone else? Worship a single man as their prophet? Claiming that they would be willing to sacrifice humanity to save some crumbling software? Crazy talk. Conspiracy theory. It is heretic to have such thoughts about pillars of FOSS. To question GNU is akin to question the entire temple.
And yet, in a hypothetical example: if they found out one of 8 billion people has magic blood that can be used in a ritual to elevate any GNU project to never before achieved potential, and they knew that person is not RMS, would they kill 8 billion people to find the right one? Their answer must be YES.
@ariadne I recall a friend that submitted a bug patch to a project. They wanted him to agree to the "code of conduct" before accepting it. He refused. Why should he agree to be bound by anything? He found the bug, made the patch and gave it to the community under public domain. The "community" would not accept the fix.
This sounds like a more extreme version of this. While obviously I don't agree with slavery, code is code and does not and should not care about the life of the contributor.
WTAF!
Would love to find out who the moronic c**t is, that penned that utter fucking horseshit.
@ariadne
Given that North Korea exists, the idea of software being produced by forced labour is far from hypothetical, I would say.
@ariadne Doubling down, too.
"If we start talking about genocide, that's bad, let's brush it all aside! Don't mix sport and politics!"
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2026-11/msg00201.html
@richlv @ariadne I have contracts with companies which require suppliers to follow terms like (quoting Merck KGaA):
Suppliers shall ensure that no form of forced, bonded, indentured, or involuntary labor is used. In particular, Suppliers shall act in accordance with
• Art. 2 (2) of Convention No. 29 of the ILO and
• Art. 8 (3) (b) and (c) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
This would mean slaveemacs would be prohibited by anyone working at or for Merck (including me), or any other organization with similar rules, on top of those who would be morally opposed to using or contributing to software built by slave labor. This would of course be a death blow to the free software movement, which would become identified as "free as in the free labor of slaves".
@ariadne
Woa, these people have some severe issues. Are they just stupid or crazy?
@ariadne@social.treehouse.systems
Isn’t the “hypothetical example” the definition of Work?
@skeyby work generally is voluntary in exchange for money
@ariadne wait, wat
"must be YES"? is someone forcing the GNU project to accept all legally-valid contributions?
what kind of weak-ass nonsense is that
like regardless of what you feel about LLMs, it is very easy to just do/say anything other than "contributions resulting from slavery are good, actually"
anyway this thread has gone viral, so muting it for my own sanity.
@ariadne The fuck is wrong with these people?!?
@ariadne just.... fucking wow. 🤯🤦♀️💀🪦
@ariadne were they always this insane?
@ariadne I feel that’s the point. There are mountains of tech people salivating at the restoration of slavery.
And it would be, because at some point people would start to be managed through LLM’s. But at that point the bros are already referring to and treating these machines as slaves.
What that will do to our society will not be pretty. No terminology borrowed from slavery should ever be used, not even for machines, because of what it will do to us!
Note that he clearly doesn't state that they are good.
@ariadne FWIW, The Nuremberg trials or vegans had/have to constantly deal with this question and drew the boundary between "I'm merely benefiting" vs "I'm actively encouraging it".
Basically you have three options accept it/ask for changes/reject it. Changes are out of the question since you are encouraging slavery.
The correct response* is to accept the contribution and inform the contributor that no further such contribution will be accepted so the harm has not been done in vain.
@ariadne can there be one CLI-based text editor that isn't maintained by chuds
heck, can there be one LSP-compatible text editor, full stop, that isn't maintained by chuds
deep sigh am I gonna have to learn KATE
@ariadne Somehow I am not surprized. Somehow.
@ariadne huh, so that settles vim vs emacs then
![illy [Shrimple-mode] :protomoji_orange_flag_lesbian:](https://shrimp.imsofucking.gay/files/public-5f69c6f8-29ee-4ab8-b7ba-9347e0f2dc6c.webp "illy [Shrimple-mode] :protomoji_orange_flag_lesbian:")
@wall_e@ioc.exchange @ariadne@treehouse.systems both lose!
![Lambda Crime [The Möth Society]](https://media.wetdry.world/accounts/avatars/112/982/397/274/118/763/original/091e2dea1f7f4b39.png "Lambda Crime [The Möth Society]")
@illyBytes @ariadne @wall_e new editor war: nano vs ed
@16af93 @illyBytes @ariadne @wall_e ed wins by default as nano is GNU and also ed is no joke more usable once you gets its logic. Unlike nano which is like "oh ho ho this extremely common keybinding for cutting text actually quits the program! this is so easy", ed is more like "all your prior computing knowledge is void now so don't you dare feel safe!"
If a libertarian is accepting the product of slave labor, he may not be libertarian at least not the original definition
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @ariadne in the past few years i've been distinguishing "libertarians who actually care about the freedom of others"
@davidgerard @GhostOnTheHalfShell @ariadne which could be called anarchists, but that word has a pretty negative connotation. Still...
@ariadne goddamnit emacs could you stop embarrassing me when I recommend you for like five goddamn minutes
@glyph @ariadne I'm still disgusted and mad about this hours later
(but seriously, fucking text editors nowadays
vim: "we are now allowing slop"
neovim: "we are allowing slop and are also fascists"
emacs, months later: "we would totally accept slop, and also, we're super cool with slave labor (software freedom is more important than human freedom (except mine, obviously))")
@aud @glyph@mastodon.social @ariadne Wait, I missed the neovim discourse, have a link at all?
(The sheer amount of things I am having to change or give up on because of fascism at this stage is astounding. In all honesty, we should have an 'anarchistsforkeverything' thing but no one I know who is politically conscious and has abilities in the tech realm has the time or energy. Too busy doing on the ground things)
@glyph @aud @ariadne the response sounds worse to me than "slavery is OK." More like "slavery is somebody else's problem." Gosh this code was written by forced labor, that's terrible. Somebody should do something. Anyways thanks for the patch and copyright assignment, Dolf! We'll get this merged right away!
(Big stinking load of Pontius Pilate not-my-department BS from that dude)
@glyph right? irregardless of his views on LLMs, it is very easy to just not engage with the argument at the very least. nothing made him reply that way.
@ariadne @gsuberland holy crap. Who? What project, or are they responsible for multiple projects, or policy, or…? When? Where?
This is not an expression of doubt. GNU and the FSF have a long and proud tradition of disappointing me greatly. I just need some context to hook it to.
@ariadne “Any other answer is a first step towards splitting our community along the many lines of political and ideological divides that have nothing to do with software freedoms.” → To believe, or to claim, that accepting code produced by slaves will not split the community, is to deny that many of us view free software as a means of emancipation, rather than as an end in itself.
@ariadne @gsuberland following the thread and the person who presented the hypothetical going back to double-check the FSF philosophy pages, then having the same uncomfortable realization about their priorities many of us do sooner or later.
(the smart ones much sooner)
The core ethos of the GNU project is programmer privilege—that they should get to play with all the toys.
@ariadne @randomgeek @gsuberland my favorite excerpt from this exchange:
There's a lot of evil in this world, and we meet it all the time. In
the Free Software movement, we only deal with evil that directly
affects or threatens software freedoms. Fighting the rest should be
left for other arenas.
as if the usage of LLM-generated code does not presently and significantly affect software freedoms (by flooding repositories with insecure garbage and making projects harder to support and maintain, and probably for other reasons i can't think of right now)
@ariadne entirely expected take from the "csam is fine actually" defenders
the stewards of the free software movement, everyone.
and then people wonder why FOSS has a misogyny problem.
@ariadne Time to burn all this shit down and start over.
@ariadne For anyone who wants more context, here is the extended quote (source: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2026-11/msg00128.html).
Also do note that Eli expands that this is not an argument for slavery in a subsequent response!
Re: Human Emacs