These messages are from Daniel Supernault, primary maintainer of Pixelfed.
I don’t want to recap the FediDrama here (drama recaps have a way of becoming drama themselves), but I suspect it’s the reason he’s taking a break.
I’ve never met @dansup but I know he’s contributed so much to the Fediverse and OSS communities. I am still a newb myself (Twexit era). But - for the good of the OSS community - would it be too much to ask we show some respect for the pioneers who got us here?
It’s a combination of:
Meta’s reputation most certainly precedes them here, and they’re not a company known for politely co-existing with others but rather for stomping in, and taking what they want and packaging it and selling it.
IMO people have a reasonable basis for reacting strongly (though it’s 2023 and the ‘hyperbolic over-reaction’ is the required thing online it seems).
I don’t know why everyone is so upset about the NDA thing… It’s such a standard business practice. Whenever I (a mid tier infra engineer at a mid sized software company) needed to talk to a vendor, get a product demo/consultation, get support on a licensed application, etc… We either sent an NDA to that company or bad one on file already with them. Nobody discusses internal processes, policies or roadmaps with an outside contact without an NDA first. It’s literally just a standard business practice.
It could be nefarious, since it’s meta afterall, but I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s thousands of people/companies who have standing NDAs with meta just so they could come on campus and demo their product to some team