ultrageraniumNov 21

Nothing in Commons: the end of digital collective ownership?

I'm sharing a new text where I try to summarize some older thoughts that have been slowly fermenting in the past years regarding the dead-end in which the digital commons have landed. I discuss the discomfort of their growing ambivalence, and the incredible difficulty, but urgency to move forward beyond this concept and rethink collective objectives in relation to digital tools and practices.

It is the follow-up of a copyleft/copyright/copywhat licensing workshop I gave at https://spookstad.boo. Amsterdam Alternative asked me to contribute an essay on the digital commons based on some of the topics discussed in the workshop for their web docu on collective ownership.

The text is also available in Dutch, thanks to a translation by Menno Grootveld from Starfish Books.

Illustration: @l03s

https://www.collectiefeigendom.nl/en/ownership/digital-collective-ownership

#commons #digitalcommons #freesoftware #opensource #creativecommons #licenses #freeculture #collective

Show threadKevin Karhan Nov 10

@natalie @pidgin Yes and no.

#SkypeForBusiness is the only #SelfHosting & #OnPremise option and like #Atlassian with #Jira, #Microsoft does discourage non-"#Cloud" / "#SaaS" deployments anew but they still honour existing #licenses and don't want to mess with big licensees that do #VolumeLicensing to pay for thousands of licenses in bulk.

I wish I could go into more detail but that's as far as I can go barring #NDA|s *unless summoned by court or regulators like @bsi ...

ResearchBuzz: FirehoseOct 23

West Virginia University: Knee Regulatory Research Center Releases Occupational Licensing Law Research Project Database to Study U.S. Licensure in Unprecedented Depth and Detail. “Today, the Knee Regulatory Research Center—a nonpartisan research center focused on labor, health, and regulatory frontiers—announced the release of the Occupational Licensing Law Research Project Database […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/10/23/west-virginia-university-knee-regulatory-research-center-releases-occupational-licensing-law-research-project-database-to-study-u-s-licensure-in-unprecedented-depth-and-detail/

West Virginia University: Knee Regulatory Research Center Releases Occupational Licensing Law Research Project Database to Study U.S. Licensure in Unprecedented Depth and Detail | ResearchBuzz: Firehose

ResearchBuzz: Firehose | Individual posts from ResearchBuzz
Obscure_RebelOct 21

[News] “Case Filed at Germany’s Top Court to Challenge Arms Exports to Israel”

by Palestine Chronicle Staff

@palestine
@Palestine @palestine@lemmy.ml
@uk_politics @BBC5Live
@BBCRadio4
@BBCNews
@UKLabour

“The constitutional complaint is directed against #German #export #licenses for #tank #transmissions manufactured by the company #Renk.Tanks in which these transmissions are installed are being used extensively in Gaza”

https://www.palestinechronicle.com/case-filed-at-germanys-top-court-to-challenge-arms-exports-to-israel/

#Press #Gaza #Palestine #Germany #Israel #Genocide

PrivacyDigestOct 17

State #Barcode Laws

Digital driver’s #licenses — have a big problem that almost nobody is addressing: the likelihood that once they make it very frictionless to share our #ID, we are likely to be bombarded by requests from all quarters to prove who we are. That’s a huge threat to our #privacy. There is, however, a set of existing laws in the states that point to a solution for this problem: regulations governing who may scan the bar codes on physical #IDs.
#tracking

https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/state-barcode-laws

Many States Regulate the Scanning of ID Barcodes; Why Don’t They Offer Similar Protections for Digital Driver’s Licenses? | ACLU

State regulation of who may scan barcodes from driver’s licenses and what scanners can do with the data point the way toward vital protections against abuses of digital IDs

American Civil Liberties Union
Sean MurthyOct 16

Public repo with text of a "Read Only License" and nothing else in the repo. So, can anyone else use that license text in their project? 🤔

(No license info -> no license grant, including no downloading, but would it kill to include a LICENSE.md?)

https://github.com/RayPS/Read-Only-License

#technology #licenses #conundrum

GitHub - RayPS/Read-Only-License: The ROL is an open source license for closed source projects to share thoughts on internet.

The ROL is an open source license for closed source projects to share thoughts on internet. - RayPS/Read-Only-License

GitHub
Yvan ー イボん 🗺️  Oct 1

https://all3dp.com/2/the-state-of-open-source-3d-printing/

I didn't know #Creality was violating the #gpl this badly again...

I thought they learned their lesson last time.

Maybe countries should start banning products that violate #licenses the same way they do when #patents are violated.

A license is not worth the paper / disk it's written on if there's no enforcement behind it.

#linux #3d #3dprinting #opensource

Had I knew this before hand, I would not have given them my money...
I like the printer, but I would have taken a different company.

#lessonlearned

Open-Source 3D Printing Needs You to Survive

Open source is considered a must-have for many 3D printing enthusiasts, but is the philosophy dead in today's industry? Read on to find out!

All3DP
Daniel KeerSep 21

Here's how to get your VMware Home Lab licenses after passing the VCP-VCF exam.

https://thedxt.ca/2025/09/vmware-home-lab-licensing/

#HomeLab #VMware #licenses #VCF #vExpert

VMware Home Lab Licensing

One of many advantages of passing the VCP-VCF (VMware Certified Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation) exam is that you can get access to home lab licensing. The license is valid for 365 days and can be used in non-production environments. An extra bonus is that if you also happen to have a VMUG Advantage subscription,…

theDXT
anchoreSep 19
Managing open-source license compliance is key for supply chain security. Watch our webinar on the latest Grant release to see how new features improve accuracy, performance, and risk analysis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVyryb8f5GQ
#SBOM #Compliance #licenses
beSpacificSep 18
#trump Says #Broadcasters Should Lose #Licenses for Criticizing Him https://www.bespacific.com/president-says-broadcasters-should-lose-licenses-for-criticizing-him/ #censorship #media #television #politics #maga #broadcasting #media
×
ultrageraniumNov 21

Nothing in Commons: the end of digital collective ownership?

I'm sharing a new text where I try to summarize some older thoughts that have been slowly fermenting in the past years regarding the dead-end in which the digital commons have landed. I discuss the discomfort of their growing ambivalence, and the incredible difficulty, but urgency to move forward beyond this concept and rethink collective objectives in relation to digital tools and practices.

It is the follow-up of a copyleft/copyright/copywhat licensing workshop I gave at https://spookstad.boo. Amsterdam Alternative asked me to contribute an essay on the digital commons based on some of the topics discussed in the workshop for their web docu on collective ownership.

The text is also available in Dutch, thanks to a translation by Menno Grootveld from Starfish Books.

Illustration: @l03s

https://www.collectiefeigendom.nl/en/ownership/digital-collective-ownership

#commons #digitalcommons #freesoftware #opensource #creativecommons #licenses #freeculture #collective

Show threadcompudanzas 🐌Nov 21

@320x200 super interesting read!

@l03s the illustration killed me 🥲😭👌🏾

Show threadDragan EspenschiedNov 22
@320x200 @l03s Great piece. Many threads to possibly continue with. What I currently find interesting is the new role and modes of organization of piracy. While already in the early 2000's it was known that for instance record labels would seed an album and watch downloads to help deciding what could be the next single, today piracy platforms and what you call the ICT industry seem to work hand in hand. Perhaps going beyond the undiscriminating claim to everything digital by ICT, piracy aggregators like Anna's Archive just by their technical and organizational infrastructure play a huge role to enable extraction, in case of AA even willingly. I wonder what you think about these developments?
Show threadultrageraniumNov 24
@despens @l03s hard to reply meaningfully in a few words 😅 Let's say that I was not surprised when NVIDIA started to defend shadow libraries. Makes complete sense to me. From what I've seen/experienced in the past decades, there is usually a significant overlap between digital commons activists and pirate digital data hoarders. IMO, it is usually justified by a mix of cherry-picked libertarian ideas that can be used to retro-rationalise what could be seen as hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance. More generally though I think the many forms of piracy would also need to be unpacked further to revisit how it operates and what could be learned from them in this context. I am specially thinking of small size specialized private torrent trackers (for its strong and dedicated attachment to the materials shared/curated), and the scene (for its governance and transaction system). These models have been often overlooked by digital commons activists, specifically because of their lack of public interface, which is seen as a kind of excluding practices, but I think this is a weak critique, specially given how the net has turned into a dumpster fire of corpo extraction.
Show threadDragan EspenschiedNov 24
@320x200 @l03s Thank you so much for these thoughts! (And for lurk's 1337 char limit 😉)
What probably hit me the most in your article is that piracy is not illegal anymore, at least for some actors. But clearly piracy needs to remain illegal to fulfill its valuable role to make materials available to communities that otherwise would have no way of accessing them, vetting them for quality/usefulness (not hoarding), and preventing piracy projects to grow into "platforms" that then run on some platform logic. The celebration and activist expansion of legal loopholes that allow some forms of piracy which, for instance, the Swedish Piratbyrån pushed forward, laid the groundwork for where we are now kind of.
Show threadultrageraniumDec 1

@despens @l03s

> What probably hit me the most in your article is that piracy is not illegal anymore, at least for some actors.

yes, and this is where I think the link with the digital commons connects quite well. No matter what are the different strategies in place, it always boils down to privileges and capital. Discourses of universal access (legal or not) will always clash with the singular brutal reality of pre-existing inequalities. And weird bricolages will follow as a workaround (private trackers, incompatible licenses, etc).