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Finite kindness

In a world where injustice seems infinite, it's a sobering exercise for the non-philosopher to decide how to spend finite kindness. I do not wish to kick off a philosophical discussion about utilitarianism or virtue ethics; rather, I wish to acknowledge the disquieting gap between the infinity of problems I might like to solve and my resources to solve a finite subset. Crawling Geminispace offers no shortage of problems to consider, with Geminauts expressing strong support for privacy, climate justice, and a long-tail of (mainly leftist) reforms. Indeed, my heart mourns for the uncounted victims of the surveillance machine (of which I am undoubtedly one), for the billions of lives threatened by the looming climate disaster at the hands of a post-industrial "lifestyle", for those struggling to find a meal on a continent which throws away prepared food without a second thought. Recognizing this world is a deliberate human creation and not a cosmic accident only underscores my sense of helplessness.

These concerns are not novel; any first-year humanities student is forced to make peace with them. They have plagued me for years, catalyzing both my contributions and guilt.

A partial resolution is donation to effective charities. In the absense of accompanying individual action, this creates a dubious moral hierarchy, valuing the pursuit of money -- even if destined to charitable causes -- when that pursuit is at the root of so many of the problems. At scale this ties in with the politics of philanthropy. Never mind the controversy around which charities are most effective, a problem organizations like Give Well are investigating. In some sense this is a lesser problem, as it can be mitigated by diversifying donations.

A resolution closer to home is individually effecting change. I'm proud to be in part responsible for one. In 2017, free software graphics drivers for newer Arm Mali GPUs were a pipe dream with bleak prospects. Today, free software minded users of modern Mali hardware enjoy 3D acceleration with Panfrost on devices like the Pinebook Pro. Furthermore upstream graphics support unblocks mainlining efforts, with positive second-order effects on the Arm free software ecosystem. While I entered the graphics scene with the modest goal of bloblessly running GNOME on my Chromebook, I never predicted how much further the project would grow.

Locally, this is success. I'm proud to know free software is better for my labour. But I am restless by nature, and with the original goal exceeded, I'm left struggling to contextualize. Are there higher-impact free software projects? Yes. Are there social justices causes more pressing than software freedom? Undoubtedly. Closer to home, what _is_ the winning case for Panfrost? Are we content to run some popular desktops and call it a day? Do we need high-performance "WebGL", to play 3D JavaScript video games in bloated web browsers when we could spend the time reading a book instead? What about Vulkan support for better performance? OpenCL for "machine learning"? Official conformance to ship in commercial products? Is the goal to provide a free software _option_ to all who desire it, or to uproot and replace the proprietary stack altogether?

What does success even look like?

_Victory_ is trivial: conformant OpenGL 4.6, OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.2, OpenCL 3.0. Victory is the default driver shipping on billions of Mali devices, with proprietary drivers a distant memory from dark ages past.

Victory is shipping alongside proprietary spyware on smartphones designed for obsolescence, priced low enough to top off next year's landfills but high enough to leave the masses financially clingy.

In light of free software's social justice alignments, is that _success_?

Success is enabling users to liberate their computing, including users with Mali GPUs. Success is preventing working devices from ending up in landfills because the proprietary operating system was discontinued, while free software stacks with PostmarketOS receive continued maintenance for years.

Success is wielding free software as an instrument to propel the free society we crave.

Unfortunately I recognize perfect success in the graphics space does not erase the expansive set of problems plaguing us. Crawling the political side of Geminispace tears my heart as I am faced with my own limits as an activist and as a being, compared with the seemingly unlimited problems around me. Naively I wonder if my energy spent on Panfrost might be better spent on climate or pacifist activism. I suspect I operate in a comfortable niche, a local maximum, not necessarily optimizing global "moral good" per human-hour but faring better than any other path in sight.

I can't know if victory will come, but I have a good feeling about spending my finite kindness on success.