incredible take from one of the GNU maintainers, seriously
@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 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
GNU maintainers, Take on slavery
Some are absolute fscking assholes and should, as a fitting answer to such a statement _ be enslaved for life.....