You can trust @aral — he's shown long-term consistency, addressed his own issues (moved toward fully-FLO away from Apple).
But the rage-machine concerns are valid. It's one way to reinforce tribalism and manipulate activists. Purism is a witch-hunt style eat-your-own approach. The whole idea of badge-beliefs and of checking whether someone is "one of us" leads to all sorts fo dysfunctions.
That tribalism is exploitable by actual bad actors.
@wolftune @oshwm @aral @Shamar @cwebber @conservancy
So, I've begun to think about what you might call the "freedom curve", plotted on an axes labelled "freedom" (y) and "reach" (x). I suspect it looks something like an exponential decay, with high freedom plotted at the far left, but with very little reach (let's just say for sake of argument that's where RMS and TdR and a Gideon's Band of others sit). As you move to the right, freedom falls away, but you cover more people.
@wolftune @oshwm @aral @Shamar @cwebber @conservancy
Assuming one can influence the shape of the curve, what do you do?
Do you try to increase the overall limits of freedom for the few on the left? I think someone should.
Do you try to increase the integrated freedom, under the curve, by lifting the broad but imperfect freedoms of people further to the right? Yes, that too.
I haven't used this model so much to think about privacy but it might be useful there too.
@deejoe @wolftune @oshwm @cwebber
I like the approach but you definitely need more dimensions to describe the system.
Yet if @aral is a saint or not is totally unrelevant here.
Is he right about #SurveillanceCapitalism?
I think so.
Is he right that @conservancy should not accept #Google money?
Again I think so, but we can discuss this.
Yet for sure NOT for a conference on #Copyleft!
1/
I totally disagree about Microsoft being not-so-bad a threat.They remain powerful, they aren't embracing software freedom, and their approach to Google is to *try* to outdo them in surveillance-capitalism even.
All these entities, Google included, are mixed in some ways.
My main disagreement was with your framing that Microsoft's threat has reduced compared to years ago.
They were more obvious bullies before and are more nuanced now, but we're not going to see an Open Sourcing of Windows. And if that ever happens, it will be because Windows has become just a thin-client front to "cloud" computing SaaSS and such.
Microsoft's legal threats to software-freedom and embrace-extend-extinguish strategy are all still here today.
My take on what's occurring with Microsoft is that they're transitioning to a new business model. So far as they're concerned the personal computing era is over. From here on out the Azure cloud will manage all the desktops and your OS will be ad supported and monitor your behavior to optimize your user experience. Windows and Azure will remain proprietary, since that ensures the telemetry and content delivery pipeline, but anything else can be "open source" to cut developer costs. You'll be able to tweak some settings on Windows, but everything else will be managed from the cloud. No manual updates. Think ChromeOS, but moreso.
Microsoft will remain hostile, but as a different kind of threat. They'll be nice as pie so long as your open source project runs on Windows, or in a Linux VM running on Windows, Delivered by Azure(TM). Anything else they either won't care about or will be hostile towards.
@wolftune @Shamar @deejoe @aral @oshwm @conservancy It's also very strange to me to see Apple presented as "not as bad an actor" in regards to *copyleft* as Google in this thread. Apple has lead the way on most of the anti-copyleft sentiment, especially by the apple store's incompatibility with / banning of the GPL. At any rate, as I've said before, "corporations are hydras"... in general, many heads which may act differently, even if being bit is a general concern.
I didn't see any reference to Apple being not-as-bad about copyleft.
Aral has a history of mild Apple apologism along the lines of: if surveillance capitalism died, Apple would still have a legitimate business model (selling hardware) while Google and Facebook would not.
But I didn't see him or anyone else saying Apple was better on copyleft. Maybe I missed something.
@Shamar @deejoe @wolftune @oshwm @cwebber @aral @conservancy Bullshit. Are you saying all members of #rifle are against regulation? All Googlers are against software freedoms?
Then you've got nothing to say to Trump when he says all Mexicans are rapists. Why can't _some_ people at google be cool and want to support copyleft (whatever that is, I'm out of the loop there, just pissed at the blanket statement like this).
@Shamar @deejoe @wolftune @oshwm @cwebber @aral @conservancy
not exactly. I didn't interject into the conference taking or not taking money (that's what I dnt know about).
What I had a problem with is this: "The answer is no, simply because their business model is in direct contrast with such regulations."
That basically excludes EVERY business.
E.g You mention Trump's money for immigration. Him by name.
All I'm saying is, not all of Google is that guy.
Server run by the main developers of the project 
It is not focused on any particular niche interest - everyone is welcome as long as you follow our code of conduct!
@Shamar
What amuses me the most in this is 'Google won't touch it' is my main reason to use copyleft.