[ale] as promised/threatened, an overly long post with probably nothing of real importance

[Jim Kinney]

For the past 10+ years ALE has been my extended family of geeks. The
aggregate intelligence of the group makes up for the other 99% of the
population. As in any extended family, there were squabbles that would flare
up and die down. Occasionally, someone would get very personal in their
attacks and I took it upon myself to direct the offender, offline, to
improve their behavior in order to continue to have a great, well respected
group of Linux geeks that could discuss nearly any topic with civility.

Things have changed in the past few years. As the rhetorical tone in America
has become harsher and far less accommodating of civil discussion, so has
the timber of conversation on ALE followed in the wake. ALE is, after all, a
microcosm of the larger society.

Yet ALE is above it at least philosophically. The foundation of our group is
the kernel called Linux. It has at it's core a license that requires
openness and freedom and above all, responsibility. I, like many many Linux
users, first used Linux because of it's monetary cost. Later, I kept using
it because of it's technical excellence. Along the way, I discovered that
the philosophical aspect of the GPL was beginning to have a profound impact
on my world view. I began to see that most, if not all, of the societal and
global problems humans face were exacerbated by the loss of openness,
freedom and responsibility. I began to suspect that the wholesale adoption
of those principles from the GPL into the larger society would produce a
similar beneficial effect as it did for the development of the Linux kernel
and the subsequent formation of the various distributions.

It is through the lens of the philosophical underpinnings of the Gnu Public
License (I am very fond of the GPLv3) that I view the political discourse
both in this country and particularly within the the ALE community. There
are views that are promoted in the larger community and echoed within ALE
that, given the opportunity to flourish, I fear will seek to destroy the
foundations that Linux is written with - openness, freedom and
responsibility. It is from this perspective that I view with deliberate
contempt political views that I see as opposed to the process that created
the Linux ecosystem we now enjoy.

The threats to the Linux freedoms are not political but financial and
control threats. They are the same threats that Groklaw has been covering
with the SCO debacle, the Microsoft backing of the shadow business behind
the current Novell buyout, the power structure that write rules governing
what software is allowed to be presented for bid at large government
contracts. The financial threats are based in legal challenges to the very
existence of code written in the kernel that trolls managed to obtain
patents on. There is a business structure within this country, and most of
the western world, that is based on the exploitation of others for profit.
This same business process has been involved in the active attempts to
extinguish the Linux process for the past 15 years. The philosophical
underpinnings of this business process form the core of some of the current
political shouting in the country and on ALE for the past several years. As
can be imagined, I view this political discourse with the same level of
deliberate contempt that view the efforts to topple the Linux ecosystem.

Yet there are ALErs who believe fervently in the political/business process
I only barely outlined above. In the past day or so I have written scathing
screeds back and forth with several; the likes such bile has not been seen
publicly on ALE (even with some of the loudest, ALL CAPS SHOUTING). Suffice
it to say that I can produce more political discourse venom than is required
to defend the safety of the Linux ecosystem from a handful of political
neophytes. It does require a substantial effort on my part and it is effort
better spent on other more Linux-ecofriendly productive tasks (I have a huge
list of GPL stuff to work on to try and rescue the public school systems
from the budget slashing mess of the past 30 years).

However, I exercised an option that is available to me as the list admin. I
set the moderator bit on for all list members. This effectively gave me the
power to censor the speech of ALE list participants. This censorship
practice is something I am deeply disturbed by. I am extremely embarrassed
that I let some irrelevant speech so affect my judgment that I would
exercise censorship on a group whose founding process involves openness,
freedom and responsibility.

So I am in a crisis of conscience. I have been the ALE list maintainer for
some time now and very happy knowing I have never done anything that I am
opposed philosophically to in my service to the group. I am opposed to the
use of the moderator flag especially for the purpose of silencing speech
with a group whose central reason for existence depends on freedom of
speech. And yet, I see no other recourse but to use it (albeit far more
selectively than a global off switch). Thus my dilemma.

However, the aspect that concerns me the most is NO ONE COMPLAINED THAT I
ALONE SHUT DOWN THE LIST. I made a unilateral decision and EVERYONE on this
list just shrugged like sheep and went along. I got emails asking me to not
bail out but if I was going to they would step up. But not a single email
complaining that I took away their freedoms on this list. I expected 20-30
emails within minutes of the announcement of my action. That it never came
has indicated this is no longer the ALE from my memories but it is something
strange and far less satisfying.

What I also got was several emails from people who have since unsubscribed
attempting to continue the political discussion. Bah. Waste of time.

When I took over as ALE admin there were some 1100+ subscribers. There are
now less than 400. There was a huge flurry of unsubscribes right after the
prior move. The discourse then had become intolerable for many. And here we
are again. At one point in time ALE did some pretty amazing things and now
most meetings look like a collection of actors for an upcoming AARP
commercial :-)

I have announced my departure as admin effective immediately. My reason is
because I find my behavior repugnant in my censorship of the group. As I
waded through the "viagra porn site" spam in French (I'm not kidding) in the
approval queue to find real ALE posts and send them on through, I did delete
2 posts that were a continuance of the political screeds and one was
bordering on personal.

I have received 7 offers to take over the admin duties of the list. Of those
7, 1 has a history of involvement in political crap on the list and one
brought up the political crap in their offer and tried to defend it. So the
short list is down to 5. I did get several emails asking that I stay on as
the admin with the argument that I have acted rationally.

So now what? Do I stay on, but knowing I will likely have to wield the big
"STFU" stick which I abhor or do I pass the reigns? If I pass the reigns do
I pick a successor or do I put together a vote thing?

I will stay if asked. I will wield the STFU stick with impunity if the
political crap starts getting loud again. I will step aside if that is the
best choice for ALE. I will not ask anyone else to step aside or
unsubscribe. I will ask those who continually poke politics to keep their
noise below background. Those that refuse or are incapable of restraint, I
will leave their STFU button set on until they improve.

Lastly, I do not relish the death of anyone. Whether it is the murder of
nearly 3000 or the assassination of 1 who led the murders. I would have
preferred that he die alone and forgotten in a dimly lit cell where he had
been in solitary confinement for the previous 50 years with no contact with
the outside world other than a constant video barrage of images of the dead
and the cries of the wounded that he can't turn off. Those faces should have
been all he sees until his natural death.

But the Navy Seals are pretty good shots and he resisted so it's over. His
14 year old daughter just became our next threat since she saw daddy killed.






-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to
consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they
please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.
- *2011 Noam Chomsky*
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