Do not join the free software movement

This is kind of a follow up to my last blog post, but with a more specific example, I had lots of experience with myself.

Most people probably never considered to join that movement anyway, since they are not for free or open source software, but this advice is for people that are for free and open source software and understand why you should be for it.

So what should you do to progress free and open source software? I don't really know what to do, but now I know with high certainty what not do to, don't join the movement that is for free and open source software, since that is probably the most destructive thing you can do to promote free and open source software.

So why do I say that? Well first my personal experiences with that community and my experiences with outsiders of that community. Now I think that movement is a cult. Viewed from outside of that community it is universally hated, especially for the GPL license which I wrote about before ( https://duion.com/blogs/why-i-dont-use-gpl-license ). In short almost everyone hates it, because of the high restrictions it brings, even though it is supposed to progress freedom, but it is designed to be so restrictive, that a good use outside of the free software cult becomes as close to impossible as possible. People inside the cult do not realize, that they are hated from normal people, since they only live and interact within their cult and  to become hated is obviously not a good way to promote a thing. I was even hated for just wanting to promote free and open source software, because people directly associated me with the "official" movement that is supposed to promote it and since they hated that, they hated me. So overall not a good start, but it gets much worse.

Then when I tried to engage with the cult members, they seemed nice and friendly at first and seemed to be for promoting free and open source software, there was only the spirit of stagnation inside I did not really want to realize at first. So I tried to socialize and contributed, in my case I developed open source games and game content, but over time I realized I did not receive any form of gratitude from that movement, even though I was one of their best contributors, not only were they not grateful, they did not even help me, not even mention me as form of promotion, there was absolutely nothing, but it gets even worse. Over time people started to criticize me (even though they always tried to censor criticism made by me) and started to complain, that my contributions were not good enough and my license was not good enough ( it was too liberal, they wanted more restrictive GPL cancer licenses ). I still did not thing negatively about that and continued, after that their harassment became worse and they constantly threatened me I would have to change my behavior and censored things I said, they did not like and then later they banned me on most of their platforms and even when I left some cult members followed me around the rest of the internet and kept harassing me, which is what finally pissed me off. First they do not let me join or help me, but then they also do not want to let me go, well of course they don't want to, since I'm one of their best contributors, in a certain niche probably the only contributor that existed.

I don't understand what goes on inside those peoples heads, they sit on their ass, do nothing on their own to progress their supposed cause for free software, but then complain to others who actually do something, that their contribution is not good enough and their behavior is wrong and has to be "corrected" otherwise they need to be censored. It looks like those people just organize themselves to steal credit of other peoples work, sure most of those people did some mostly minor contributions in the past at some point, but then switched over to doing nothing and only running the movement and trying to hire other people into their cult and they think by "motivating others" they can progress the cause. "Motivating" to them means only to talk positive and censor everyone who says something critical, like me. What they try to do is some form of human farming which I wrote about also as well ( https://duion.com/blogs/social-media-human-farming ), of course it is much easier to let others do the work, then take credit for it and even collect donations for stealing credit from others, so they steal money from others through donations for stealing credit from others, so others do the work and you get the credit and the money, seems like a good deal.

I tried to tell them, if they would spend their efforts into actually doing something and giving the donation money to people who actually do something for real, they could progress infinitely faster than now doing nothing. There are many people from poorer countries that would do a lot of work for that money, but a fat well fed lazy westerner will not even move a finger for that money, I had even guys argue to me like that "Dude I make 200 per hour, I would not even stand up for that few hundred dollars", what wonders me in those cases is why those people not donate any of their own money to progress their cause instead, it would be even more productive than doing the work yourself, since others do better work for less money, but they did not like that suggestion as well. They did not like my highly logical and convincing arguments and banned me instead and because I'm censored everywhere on their platforms I have to write in my own corner again.

Well in the end it was just to be supposed to be an argument why not to join that movement. Of course most people never get into that trouble, because they are well behaved slave cult members, but they will not progress the supposed charitable project for more free software either, nor do they become significantly productive within their cult. Of course they praise each other constantly, but since they censor real criticism, they never progress and the whole thing just looks like a joke to outsiders and they don't take it serious or understand the issue.

If your really want to progress free and open source software, I would suggest you to stay normal and not become a cult weirdo, but try to teach people common sense why free and open source software is important. People don't care about the politics or idealistic side so much, they rather care about how it practically benefits them and it will benefit them a lot, they just don't understand it yet. Then pick some project you would like to contribute and do so and find like minded people outside of cults, if possible, or try to get them out of it. Also never donate money to organizations, it is almost always totally wasted, rather do something yourself, or pay someone to do something you can then use or contribute yourself, you at least see a result that way or donate to private people who actually do something directly.

Always remember, actually doing something for real does help much more than not doing anything for real and just talking nicely each other and throwing money somewhere down the drain and hoping it will change something. And of course don't join that cult, especially if you are for it, this may sound illogical at first, but you have to understand hypocrisy and that many people don't actually mean what they say and not actually do what they pretend to do.