Kit 🔻 (32)
"There's no Claude, there's just other people's code", Leenaars offers a reality check
But don't fall into the trap of jumping into European-based big tech!
That'd be the same predators, just based in a different location
Instead, what this moment needs is social initiative, not more 🤑 says Leenaars
Curious (or not?) that one of FOSDEM 2026's sponsors is google, which provides part of the tech infrastructure for israel to commit genocide in Palestine through its participation in project Nimbus...
some refs:
It's Stockholm syndrome, Leenaars says.
Mentions the example of the Dutch government - ministry of Finance making a big project out of moving to Microsoft, even though this creates:
- More dependence on US-based tools
- Productivity loss
FOSDEM starting in a bit!
Some talks that could be interesting for workers:
31 Jan, 10:00
FOSS in times of war, scarcity and (adversarial) AI -> war always most hurts working people
We need to talk about war. And we need to talk about companies building bots that propose to rewrite our source code. And about the people behind both, and how we preserve what is great about FOSS while avoiding disruption. How do geopolitical conflicts on the one hand and the risk of bot-generated (adversarial) code on the other influence the global community working together on Free and Open Source software?
cc @techwerkers
Another talk relevant to workers:
1 Feb, at 16:05
Burnout in Open Source: A Structural Problem We Can Fix Together
This talk identifies 6 factors that contribute to developer burnout:
- difficulty getting paid,
- workload and time commitment,
- maintenance work as unrewarding,
- toxic community behaviour,
- hyper-responsibility
- pressure to prove oneself.
Recommendations for structural changes to address developer burnout:
- pay OSS developers
- foster a culture of recognition and respect
- grow the community
- advocate for maintainers
Exhibit 1: Github (= Microsoft)
WIth a repo on there, even if you don't share you code with anyone, you still share it with Github/MSFT, which in turn shares it with the US government
"We've been played", says Leenaars
In a time of war, the free & open source infrastructure shouldn't build weapons!
Instead it should be used to defend communities, and should be funded as such, suggests Leenaars
Sensitive content : disordered eating
These models are ingesting everything and anything, indiscriminately. They're over-eating
At a certain point they'll be ingesting their own excrement & barfing that up, suggests Leenaars
Dependency on short-form content & LLMs is hampering childrens' brain development, suggests Leenaars
It's a form of dementia, but worse, because they're not even developing a fully functioning brains
(disclaimer: i don't know the exact studies on this, just reporting the talk)