Oct 19, 2026, 3:44 PMRemember y’all, if a shady company donates money to a small volunteer-run charity foundation that has never had to deal with adversarial donors before and has bylaws that constrain what they can do until the board can meet to change them, obviously the small charity run by volunteers in their spare time are the bad guys and should be accused of being fascists and/or incompetent. This also definitely makes you the hero.
Good lord y’all. Give them some time to sort this out.
Oct 19, 2026, 3:59 PMAnd don’t at me. Fuck FUTO and their bullshit. But give people trying to do the right thing some grace.
@rk Well shit. I'm glad I don't ( yet ) know what you're talking about. 😬
Oct 19, 2026, 3:51 PMOct 19, 2026, 3:57 PM@cR0w @rk don't do that to poor NetBSD...
(For the most part, the discourse i've seen is a few folks berating NetBSD and a lot of folks recognizing the nuance of "our policy never anticipated donations being abused to buy a platform, we need time to sort out what we can do". I don't think either is unhealthy, tho some of the beraters don't seem to be giving any grace or time)
Oct 19, 2026, 4:03 PM@cR0w @ajn142 @rk the problem is the bad shit keeps happening, even though we are swearing it's not.
that is the whole problem. my patience is really beginning to run thin here, and i think my patience is patient enough.
if the process leads to a bad result, whats the point of the process?
people are madder that we are considering these things and being proactive about our concerns than the bad thing happening.
so then fucking do better and we won't feel the need to get annoyed with you when you slip up.
sorry, if that makes me an asshole, I guess you can unfollow me.
Oct 19, 2026, 4:23 PM@cyberquixote @cR0w @rk i'm not going to unfollow you over it, and i don't think you should stop expecting better of institutions, or holding them to your standards. All i think is that when they inevitably fuck up, and fall short, just like all of us will to each other, we have to allow for the time that it takes to set things right.
Oct 19, 2026, 4:26 PM@ajn142 @cR0w @rk I agree that there does need to be time, but also you gotta be willing to take tough questions on socials, that is the nature of the beast.
I'll give em time to hopefully correct cause that's what I want, but concerns are concerns, and to act like they're not worth hearing or something just a direct attack to me is not accurate.
Oct 19, 2026, 4:27 PM@cyberquixote @cR0w @rk the leftist urge to go harder at our allies than our enemies ;)
(And that cuts both ways)
Oct 19, 2026, 4:29 PM@ajn142 @cR0w @rk would you rather the truth or a lie?
cause a liar can lie very easily, it takes balls (or not balls) to stick to your guns, and yes that can unfortunately cause folks to wanna run away from you.
anyway, yeah, i hope it all works out for the best. the webs we weave are indeed tangled, and every day we gotta figure out how to navigate the barbed wire
Oct 19, 2026, 3:53 PMfuto.tech is a software company here in Austin with a website that says a lot of nice things (we’ll never sell your data, AI is dangerous, etc).
They also have a history of whitewashing by donating to popular open source projects to show their supposed bona fides and exculpate their sins (like working with Curtis Yarvin, fuck that guy) by implying these open source projects agree with them.
It’s shady as fuck.
@rk What the fuck? Why are tech bros?
Oct 19, 2026, 3:57 PMThe NetBSD Foundation will put your logo on their donors page if you donate over a certain amount. FUTO did so. NetBSD put their logo on the page.
The FUTO website is not “yay fascism!” so it’s not unexpected that the Foundation did this.
They’ve been told FUTO was problematic. The Board is meeting to figure out what to do.
Again. This is a tiny foundation run by volunteers in their spare time. They’ve been blindsided.
@rk Sounds like they're handling it properly so far. And I get why FUTO is doing it, but still fuck them.
Oct 19, 2026, 5:50 PM@rk I'm on the board for the Plan 9 Foundation, which is structurally very similar to the NetBSD Foundation, although a fraction of the size. I could 100% see this having happened to us. We're sort of too small and low profile to be worth the attention of adversarial donors, but we certainly don't have any policies in place to prevent it. It would be really easy to not think about it until it happens.
(Although i'll certainly be pointing this out to the rest of the board now.)
Oct 19, 2026, 4:30 PM@rk I must have missed something. I have no clue what you’re referring to!
Oct 19, 2026, 4:32 PMA shitty company that doesn’t appear too shitty upon casual examination gave money to the NetBSD Foundation, who added their logo to the donors page. The Foundation has been informed of the issue and is investigating and the Board will (hopefully) make the right call and return the donation.
Oct 19, 2026, 4:33 PM@rk crimeny. What a time to be alive and care about anything.
Oct 19, 2026, 5:15 PM@rk no idea what happened but I can already be certain this take is the correct one lmao