Hello fellow telecom hackers,
Seeing that OsmoDevCon 2022 is being discussed, I would like to propose
a more inclusive alternative, to be held in either USA or Mexico.
There are two severe lack-of-inclusion problems with OsmoDevCon:
1) Since its very beginning, ODC has been exclusionary, limited only
to Osmocom developers specifically, excluding those developers and
tinkerers who work on non-Osmocom projects in the "indie" telecom
space, "indie" being defined as independent of major commercial
vendors and industry. I hold the opinion that all monocultures are
bad in principle, and an Osmocom monoculture is no better than, say,
a Microsoft monoculture. Osmocom is currently in the dominant
position, outweighing all others by some orders of magnitude, but
might does not make right, and we need more diversity. We need more
players in this niche space than just Osmocom!
2) The recent decision to limit OsmoDevCon only to those who have
agreed to put a certain class of pharmaceutical into their bodies,
*on top* of the Osmocom-only restriction of the previous paragraph,
makes the proposed conference even more exclusionary and therefore of
no service to the wider telecom hacker community.
Of course it is not my place as a Russian-American to try to tell EU
countries whom to allow or not allow within their borders, nor is it
my place to tell private individuals like our Fearless Leader Harald
whom to allow or not allow in their private spaces. But what I *can*
do instead is to step forward and offer to organize and host a more
inclusive alternative, and that is what I am doing with this post.
Specifically I am offering to organize and host a physical in-person
gathering of telecom (all telecom, not just wireless) hackers,
enthusiasts and tinkerers, very similar in spirit to OsmoDevCon, but
more inclusive:
1) Welcoming everyone who has devoted a major portion of his or her
life to *any* project in the indie telecom space, regardless of which
domain that project is hosted under, and regardless of whether that
project is FOSS or merely PSS. (PSS = Published Source Software, a
superset of FOSS.)
2) Welcoming everyone regardless of personal medical choices - what
you do with your body is your business, not mine - you don't tell me
what I should or shouldn't put in my body, and I won't tell you what
you should or shouldn't put into yours. Also no forced testing: if
you wish to get yourself tested for this or that before attending, it
is your sovereign choice to do so, but no one will *ever* be turned
away from an event which I organize and host, neither for refusing to
test nor for any other reason.
If there is anyone interested in such an inclusive in-person gathering
of telecom hackers, I am offering to host one in my part of the world.
Where is it geographically? I live in USA, near San Diego, and right
next to the border between USA and Mexico. Depending on who is
interested in joining and where they will come from, I can host our
InclusiveDevCon on either side of the border, i.e., either in USA or
in Mexico.
It is my understanding that gaining entry into Mexico is much easier
than gaining entry into USA, hence for that reason I suggest that we
hold our get-together on the Mexican side of the border. If we do
choose Mexico as our host country, the specific location will need to
be in the northern part of that country, specifically in the Mexican
state of Baja California; the candidate cities would be Tijuana or
Ensenada, somewhere close to the border with USA. However, if the
only people who are interested in joining either already live in USA
or can easily enter this lovely country, then holding our Inclusive-
DevCon in USA would make more sense - in that case it will be somewhere
in San Diego area.
Alternatively, if there is anyone in the community who shares my stated
values of wider inclusion but cannot or does not wish to travel to USA
or Mexico, if you would be willing to host an inclusive event in your
part of the world, then I will consider traveling to attend your event
- but *only* if your event is open to non-Osmocom PSS developers *and*
open to those who refuse injections. Please note, however, that I
cannot enter Russia - other parts of the former USSR including
Transnistria are potentially accessible to me, but not Russia - I was
born there, but I permanently lost the ability to visit my birthplace
as a result of having done my gender transition while living in USA,
with all steps for legal name and gender change done under the
American system, as opposed to Russian.
In hacking solidarity,
Mother Mychaela of FreeCalypso
