2023 talk:Tech Subcommittee/Request for Proposal

Clarifications

Copied from Special:Diff/223671, inserted by User:Valerio Bozzolan:

Edit suggestion: "Free-Libre / Open Source Software(s) is preferred. Online registration and participation must be possible by using only Free-Libre / Open Source Software(s) on end-user devices (including JavaScript) because we must avoid to implement new digital barriers and new potential surveillance systems.

@Valerio Bozzolan: Reiterating the point made at 2023 talk:Tech Subcommittee#Clarification, we wish not be restricted if there is/are propretiary platform(s) offering relatively better user experience. Robertsky (talk) 18:10, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

@Robertsky: Thanks Robertsky for the answer but please take a moment to understand that this is not enough, and this is not my personal against yours, this is about keeping activists out, or allow them to participate. So my request is: allow them to participate.

The COT should have a lot of freedom in platform decision, but the platform SHOULD be preferred if it has a more glittering user interface, and, the platform MUST be adopted only if it guarantees participation of our Wikimedia activists. It will never happen that the COT will have a majority of people interested in information security, privacy and digital freedoms; that's why the platform MUST ensure a way to access with only FLOSS (included JavaScript).

I'm not saying that YouTube should not be used. I'm saying that YouTube can be used only as secondary platform.

It is not acceptable that activists create FLOSS, activists create the source code for Wikipedia, and when donations come in the decision is to take that money and invest that in company overseas that fuels digital barriers and keeps activists out from their event. It's such a cruel thing that it makes me want to roll back all my source code changes and all my edits.

If once again this year, for the third year in a row, with all the money invested by volunteer donations, the Wikimedia Foundation will not be able to guarantee the privacy and digital freedom of attendees, it is definitely much better to postpone the online conference, until when we intend to set the basic freedom requirements to avoid discrimination against FLOSS users.

Supporting FLOSS is not something alien. We already accept only FLOSS in any other Wikimedia project, from tools, from production, to Wikimedia Cloud servers, to Wikimedia Toolforge projects, to any medium-to-large MediaWiki extension, MediaWiki gadget in any other Lua module in any Wikimedia sister project in any supported language. So, the alien is a proprietary-only conference, not a FLOSS-enabled one.

The part that perplexes me the most is that not even mentioning Movement Strategy points about the importance of eliminating digital barriers (m:Wikimedians for software freedom) seems to have effect on this discussion. Valerio Bozzolan (talk) 16:53, 13 January 2023 (UTC)