I see Jack Dorsey was scheduled to give a keynote on FOSDEM 2025 this weekend. It's a very big European conference for the free and open source community.

The plan caused outcries in the community. "In my view", wrote one, "billionaires are not welcome at FOSDEM", warning that Dorsey would promote his "AI/blockchain/bitcoin/climate-disaster-as-a-service grifty business ventures". (https://drewdevault.com/2025/01/16/2025-01-16-No-Billionares-at-FOSDEM-please.html)

A protest was planned. FOSDEM responded by asking them to reach out about planned crowd sizes, so that they could scale crowd control and fire safety measures accordingly. (https://fosdem.org/2025/news/2025-01-16-protests/)

"We will be occupying the stage for the duration of the scheduled time slot in order to prevent the talk from proceeding as planned.", wrote the protest organizer in a later update. (https://drewdevault.com/2025/01/20/2025-01-20-FOSDEM-protest.html)

Finally, last week, FOSDEM appears to have quietly relented, withdrawing Dorsey's keynote from the schedule. "We extend our heartfelt thanks to the staff for reconsidering the decision to platform Dorsey and Block, Inc. at FOSDEM.", wrote the protest organizer. (https://drewdevault.com/2025/01/23/2025-01-23-Transparency-and-governance-FOSDEM.html)

Block remains one of the main sponsors of FOSDEM 2025.

(After doing this research I noticed it's been reported widely already, but this is my post and I'm sticking to it)

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So you can't be pro open source if you're a billionaire? I'm not a native to the open source space, but I was of the impression that Dorsey is a positive force, funding lots of open source initiatives.

#FollowTheMoney & it’s proven true jack has donated much towards open source. Some people will never forgive him for whatever perceived mistakes he’s made in his past. Humans always human.

Sure. I haven’t checked in awhile. See he’s a good egg 🥚

Sure he's funding a lot of open source, but it's the *wrong* kind of open source. He's funding Bitcoin projects, which fuels the climate collapse and pulls us into the capitalist pigs' sweaty hands, and he's funding fascist social media alternatives that cannot be properly moderated, trapping vulnerable people in unsafe environments and allowing people to say the wrong things.

He does all this with dirty, illegitimate money he earned from selling Twitter to a fascist, destroying our communities. Nobody should have as much money as Dorsey does. Honestly, nobody should have money at all, because money feeds into class mentality, but until we have achieved the post-capitalist money-free society, at *least* nobody should have more money than anyone else.

(This is how they think, more or less. If you're in a bitcoin bubble, you may not realize the intense opposition to bitcoin that exists within the mainstream free and open source community, especially in Europe.)

I bakvendtland kan alt gå an!

This is spot on in my experience. I have a few friends that think in similar ways, it is very hard to explain to them that just because someone has money it doesn't mean they stole it from someone else.

I'm really curious how this will actually turn out at #FOSDEM25. If they just gave in that'll set a dangerous precedent because then it's basically a free for all to get people cancelled and prevent them from speaking in public.

If you participate in such actions that prevent speech you're part of the problem.

Depending on how this ends I'll decide if this was my last FOSDEM.

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Jack's great. Commie FOSS-larpers are not.

not surprised

The Borg!

Who do these people think pays for open source developer' rent?

Protesters gonna protest

"forgive them father, for they not know what they do"

Fascists