Last week, I wrote to object to Jack Dorsey and his company, Block, Inc., being accepted as main track speakers at FOSDEM, and proposed a protest action in response. FOSDEM issued a statement about our plans on Thursday.
Today, I have some updates for you regarding the planned action.
I would like to emphasize that we are not protesting FOSDEM or its organizers. We are protesting Jack Dorsey and his company, first and foremost, from promoting their business at FOSDEM. We are members of the FOSDEM community. We have variously been speakers, devroom organizers, volunteers, and attendees for years — in other words, we are not activism tourists. We have a deep appreciation for the organizers and all of the work that they have done over the years to make FOSDEM such a success.
That we are taking action demonstrates that we value FOSDEM, that we believe it represents our community, and that we want to defend its — our — ethos. Insofar as we have a message to the FOSDEM organizers, it is one of gratitude, and an appeal to build a more open and participatory process, in the spirit of open source, and especially to improve the transparency of the talk selection process, sponsorship terms, and conflict of interest policies, so protests like ours are not necessary in the future. To be clear, we do not object to the need for sponsors generally at FOSDEM — we understand that FOSDEM is a free, volunteer driven event, many of us having volunteered for years — but we do object specifically to Jack Dorsey and Block, Inc. being selected as sponsors and especially as speakers.
As for the planned action, I have some more information for anyone who wishes to participate. Our purpose is to peacefully disrupt Dorsey’s talk, and only Dorsey’s talk, which is scheduled to take place between 12:00 and 12:30 on Sunday, February 2nd in Janson. If you intend to participate, we will be meeting outside of the upper entrance to Janson at 11:45 AM. We will be occupying the stage for the duration of the scheduled time slot in order to prevent the talk from proceeding as planned.
To maintain the peaceful nature of our protest and minimize the disruption to FOSDEM generally, we ask participants to strictly adhere to the following instructions:
- Do not touch anyone else, or anyone else’s property, for any reason.
- Do not engage in intimidation.
- Remain quiet and peaceful throughout the demonstration.
- When the protest ends, disperse peacefully and in a timely manner.
- Leave the room the way you found it.
Dorsey’s time slot is scheduled to end at 12:30, but we may end up staying as late as 14:00 to hand the room over to the next scheduled talk.
I’ve been pleased by the response from volunteers (some of whom helped with this update — thanks!), but we still need a few more! I have set up a mailing list for planning the action. If you plan to join, and especially if you’re willing and able to help with additional tasks that need to be organized, please contact me directly to receive an invitation to the mailing list.
Finally, I have some corrections to issue regarding last week’s blog post.
In the days since I wrote my earlier blog post, Dorsey’s talk has been removed from the list of keynotes and moved to the main track, where it will occupy the same time slot in the same room but not necessarily be categorized as a “keynote”.
It has also been pointed out that Dorsey does not bear sole responsibility for Twitter’s sale. However, he is complicit and he profited handsomely from the sale and all of its harmful consequences. The sale left the platform at the disposal of the far right, causing a sharp rise in hate speech and harassment and the layoffs of 3,700 of the Twitter employees that made it worth so much in the first place.
His complicity, along with his present-day activities at Block, Inc. and the priorities of the company that he represents as CEO — its irresponsible climate policy, $120M in fines for enabling consumer fraud, and the layoffs of another 1,000 employees in 2024 despite posting record profits on $5B in revenue — are enough of a threat to our community and its ethos to raise alarm at his participation in FOSDEM. We find this compelling enough to take action to prevent him and his colleagues from using FOSDEM’s platform to present themselves as good actors in our community and sell us their new “AI agentic framework”.
The open source community and FOSDEM itself would not exist without collective action. Our protest to defend its principles is in that spirit. Together we can, and will, de-platform Jack Dorsey.
I’ll see you there!