Thanks for the generous thoughts :) I know it's not intrinsically bad. But I suppose I am saying that this specific event is bad, in non-shallow analysis.
Yes, all things are aspiring to "bend the world" (i like that term) -- a kid putting up a poster for selling cookies from their pantry for 10c is trying to affect people.
But then there's greater bending, of almost all possible paths of significance. GitHub/GitLab are THE places in our digital lives as coders. The scale at which this intervention/distortion is happening is important.
The unfair squelching of funding experiments in open source land WILL affect paths outside software. OpenCollective was using their learnings and profits in serving FOSS, to affect non-digital projects in the social fabric of physical cities: https://opencollective.com/brussels
This unfair buying of the opportunity space -- afforded only by deep pockets of Microsoft -- will affects paths that were leading to much more collateral benefit for all of us. Most maintainers would need to be irrational to use anything BUT their system while the distortions are in place. Those supporting this launch bear some real responsibility for what becomes LESS possible in the world when this feature "takes the ball and goes home". (at least in terms of open source funding)
I truly don't feel I'm doing a shallow analysis here.
Anyhow, I really appreciate the attention you may have given this.
Disclaimer: I work adjacent to civic technology, government procurement and the distributed web. There are many exciting paths dancing around these things, and the execution of this launch (separate from the feature itself) is certainly not one of them imho
Yes, all things are aspiring to "bend the world" (i like that term) -- a kid putting up a poster for selling cookies from their pantry for 10c is trying to affect people.
But then there's greater bending, of almost all possible paths of significance. GitHub/GitLab are THE places in our digital lives as coders. The scale at which this intervention/distortion is happening is important.
The unfair squelching of funding experiments in open source land WILL affect paths outside software. OpenCollective was using their learnings and profits in serving FOSS, to affect non-digital projects in the social fabric of physical cities: https://opencollective.com/brussels
This unfair buying of the opportunity space -- afforded only by deep pockets of Microsoft -- will affects paths that were leading to much more collateral benefit for all of us. Most maintainers would need to be irrational to use anything BUT their system while the distortions are in place. Those supporting this launch bear some real responsibility for what becomes LESS possible in the world when this feature "takes the ball and goes home". (at least in terms of open source funding)
I truly don't feel I'm doing a shallow analysis here.
Anyhow, I really appreciate the attention you may have given this.
Disclaimer: I work adjacent to civic technology, government procurement and the distributed web. There are many exciting paths dancing around these things, and the execution of this launch (separate from the feature itself) is certainly not one of them imho