Guidelines around promoting piracy at FOSS United events

Discussion
1

I’ve noticed a concerning post regarding recent community event on Instagram and YouTube where a talk promoting software piracy have been tacitly accepted as self-hosting and displayed on FOSS United’s social media. While I deeply respect this organization’s commitment to FOSS and software freedom, I believe we need to discuss whether promoting piracy aligns with the community’s values and long-term goals. The post that is in question can be viewed in the first few posts on FOSS United’s Instagram page.

As someone who believes in both FOSS principles and ethical conduct, I’m concerned that accepting pro-piracy content, or in the least promoting it as an organization:

  • Will create reputational risks for an organization that many of us respect and support.
  • Will distract from legitimate conversations about software freedom and accessibility, especially for people who are not-so-familiar with the FOSS environment, and might make some people think that FOSS is somehow primarily correlated to piracy.
  • Could potentially expose the organization to legal issues.
  • Undermines the credibility of FOSS advocacy.

This is not to say that piracy is a taboo, and no one should commit it or even talk about it. Everyone does it or has been in situations where they have done it at some point in time, including me. But from an organizational perspective, promoting such views on social media would only bring negative attention towards FOSS and the organization FOSS United as a whole.

Other FOSS communities have managed to maintain strong stances against proprietary software while clearly distancing themselves from piracy, or at least have not allowed such talks and views to have a public presence on the organization’s stage. I believe there should be guidelines and policies around such things, in the pure interest of safeguarding the organization from any issues in the future, and separate the organization from any personal and political views that any participant(s) might hold.

I’m genuinely interested in hearing different perspectives, especially from those who have been active in multiple FOSS communities. Should we as a community advocate for clearer guidelines around such content?

4 Likes
2

Thank you for pointing this out @chinmaydpai. We’ve been trying to push content more actively and looks like this went out without a review from our end.

We’ve taken down the said clip from all social media platforms (the speaker also agreed that this shouldn’t have been posted).

You’re absolutely right, it probably makes sense to draft guidelines distancing ourselves from pirated content. We can talk about tools like PLEX without explicitly promoting piracy.

1 Like
3

Thanks @chinmaydpai for pointing this.

After this talk at IndiaFOSS 2024. Our host @Akshit_Tyagi mentioned the fact that we don’t promote piracy and the speaker agreed to it.

1 Like