I don’t want to dox myself so I’d rather not say, but it was some time ago and I’m no longer leading that project. I do still do development in the same field though!

Your post couldn’t be more true. Decades ago I was sold on MythTV, this PVR software but it only ran on Linux and you had to compile it yourself. So I gave Linux and MythTV a shot. As it turned out, both MythTV and early desktop Linux were a buggy, frustrating mess. X broke all the time. Incomprehensible, ungoogleable compile errors all the time.

I spent so much time troubleshooting MythTV and compilation problems that I ended up learning Linux inside and out and the C programming language to be able understand the compile errors. I went on to lead a major open source project and have had a long career as a programmer, using all the knowledge I gained that started with fighting MythTV.

They always say the same opinions because it’s part of a massive astroturfing campaign by Chinese and Russian state actors. They’re both attempting to sow discord in the West and lay the foundation to ramp it up to interfere in the 2024 US election.

Do you remember what a shit show Reddit became in 2016? We’ve seen this exact pattern before, where a deluge of people with the same carefully calibrated opinions on everything appear out of the blue. They want to create the illusion that there’s some popular movement towards all these inane opinions, and you can even see from the comments on this thread. They’re using the same known troll tactics to push this (eg. “Just asking questions”).

This a good test of Lemmy’s moderation and federation model and will be indicative of how it fairs next year when these campaigns really ramp up. Good on the admins for taking this seriously and nipping it in the bud.