«an ineffectual "open source revolution" that maintains the status quo of our modern day hellscape by facilitating an upwards transfer of wealth and power, amassed by the hyperscalers who are now entering their final, fascistic form. Open source "won" by aiding and abetting the already dominant owner-class.»
Quite a long read, but the core issue of where FLOSS is failing feels about right to me.
Hmm... This article raises some questions for me.
1. We need software licenses that discriminate against fascists and Nazis, like the non-commercial use NC-CC license.
2. We need ways for software to make money that is not given through grants or donated through charity.
Those two points seems to directly contradict one another, if the way to make money is in any way commercial?
My approach to making money to produce FOSS is by manufacturing and selling FOSH.
The final points in the article mention possible future topics, which include a list of beliefs without any reasons, including why copyleft restricts economic opportunity. I'd like this topic fleshed out. I'd be curious whose economic opportunity to do what is restricted by copyleft. It's a bold statement with no reasons listed.
I'm planning to use AGPL for all of my FOSS and FOSH, and I plan to make money manufacturing and selling FOSH to support my endeavor. This author clearly disagrees with me and agrees with me in various places, while also contradicting themselves.
Ah, thank you for the link. Following it further to the definition of Peer Production License, it gives a definition of the distinction that I didn't previously have:
https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Peer_Production_License
I have never heard of "copyFARleft" licenses. I like the idea. Thanks, I'm going to read up on it. It sounds potentially stronger than the AGPL, although the AGPL has viral aspects that force improvements to be released back to the public, which prevents an individual (or individual nonprofit) from forking and creating a superior closed source version of the product. This seems like a potential weakness of the PPL.
The author in this piece seems to ignore the topic of politics and legislation around taxation for government services.
The way to provide social services is to tax the rich and powerful people and corporations to pay for the building and maintenance of social infrastructure.
This article appears to be trying to solve these political and economic problems through software licensing by restricting commercial use, which seems just myopic.
@gedankenstuecke Do they think if we just ignore the fascist government it will go away? Are they purposefully ignoring the fascist government? We the people need to take responsibility for the government. The government makes the laws that define the corporations. The corporations don't exist without the government. The people need to control the corporations by controlling the government.
This lack of coherence and lack of democratic responsibility is really frustrating.
Software licenses won't control the fascists... What a scam.
There's a bit of nonprofit elitism in there too, which is up there with "I shop at my local co-op" type of value signaling.
People should be paid for their labor.
Did you spend time creating a product? You should get paid for your time. Did you make 100 copies of a piece of software? No one worked for making those copies of software. No one should get paid for making copies of software. Did you sell 100 physical hardware devices? You should get paid for manufacturing those 100 physical pieces of hardware.
Some things require labor. Some things require no labor. Humans should be paid for their labor. Humans should be paid a living wage, whether or not they have the ability to work, like the young, the old, the sick.
Software licenses can help to control whether or not the future end users of software will be able to use that software.
For example, the AGPL protects against an entity creating a better closed source version of a piece of software and causing the ecosystem to move to the "better" proprietary version, and then putting the power into the individual entity that can now monopolize the closed source version's role in the ecosystem.
AGPL protects against this. The NC-CC type licenses, including the PPL, sounds like they are weaker than the AGPL in this sense.
The fact that the author of this piece appears to be suffering from a mental illness, or heatstroke, or is "too tired" to actually present a coherent argument against copyleft or AGPL is a sign of this inherent weakness.
This is a long read, but I think it has a much more coherent take on the idea of creating ethical, political, or anti-capitalistic software licenses:
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2022/mar/17/copyleft-ethical-source-putin-ukraine/
#nccc #ppl #agpl #gpl #foss #fosh #freesoftware #freehardware #license #licensing #softwarelicense #softwarelicensing #copyleft #copyfarleft
Toward a Broad Ethical Software Licensing CoalitionWe are passionate about and dedicated to the cause of software freedom and rights because proprietary software harmfully takes control of and agency in software away from users. In 2014, we started talking about FOSS as fundamental to “ethical software” (and, more broadly “ethical technology”) — which contrasts FOSS with the unethical behavior that Big Tech carries out with proprietary software. Some FOSS critics (circa 2018) coined the phrase “ethical source” — which outlined a new approach to these issues — based on the assumption that software freedom activists were inherently complicit in the bad behavior of Big Tech and other bad actors since the inception of FOSS. These folks argue that copyleft — the only form of software licensing that makes any effort to place ethical and moral requirements on FOSS redistributors/reusers — has fundamentally ignored the larger problems of society such as human rights abuses and unbridled capitalism. They propose new copyleft-like licenses, which, rather than focusing on the requirement of disclosure of source code, they instead use the mechanisms of copyleft to mandate behaviors in areas of ethics generally unrelated to software. For example, the Hippocratic License molds a copyleft clause into a generalized mechanism for imposing a more comprehensive moral code on software redistributors/re-users. In essence, they argue that copylefted software (such as software under the GPL) is unethical software. This criticism of copyleft reached crescendo in the last three weeks as pundits began to criticize FOSS licenses for failing to prohibit Putin from potentially using FOSS in his Ukrainian invasion or other bad acts.
Basically, the software license won't do your politics for you. You gotta get out and politically organize to stop the fascists.
Bastian Greshake Tzovaras
Bo Morgan