We have to talk about open source licensing.
  • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    20 days ago
    • “Discovers problem caused by capitalism”
    • “Decides to solve it by using a tool produced by capitalism (copyright law)”

    If you don’t want your software to be used for reactionary purposes then you have to combat it on a social and societal level, not at the copyright level. I’ve seen variations of this same take (including the laughable “post open” proposal) and its always missing the forest for the trees.

    The “Open Source” libertarians have realized how defunct their ideology was and are now reinventing proprietary software from first principles by attaching EULAs and conditional clauses. Unlike the free software movement, which envisioned a world where every person had the right and duty to have consent in using software, the OSS folks had no ethical goals, simply just to prove that their style of engineering was superior to the enterprise one. To spend nights after their shitty corporate gig playing hacker and not having to listen to their manager or boss, to get themselves feeling good in the heart like a lawyer doing pro-bono work after screwing over people at their law firm.

    Open Source is a reductive term that places workers in systems of patronage to Capital for even more exploitation. This was not by accident: corporations have been influencing this outcome through propaganda. GitHub’s default license (“MIT”) is a permissive “no rights withheld” hollow contract that relinquishes all your rights to anyone.

    Of course, licensing is just a tool, and the author here is correct. Money is a material issue, and volunteers maintaining the worlds critical resources have to beg and canvas for their existence, but that’s just what happens in a capitalist society. Using a weaker, permissive license was not a solution, corpos hate you even if youre literally doing charity and now they can cut you out at any time.

    Without any Marxist theory, the free software movement and OSI stay western centric and unable to adapt or respond to changes in the political economy. In any case, the tradition of the GNU project is still far more progressive than the open source dipshits I have to speak to on the regular whose ideology is a confusing soup of radlib progressivism and “soul-healing” charity.

    • DylanMc6 [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      2·
      20 days ago

      i think open source software and such would be good in a communist society where money is abolished in favor of labor vouchers. seriously!

      • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        20 days ago

        Even in a socialist society, producing proprietary software would be viewed as harshly as transporting food without inspections, dealing narcotics to kids or witholding life saving medicine until payment.

        Open source has made a political movement apolitical and self contained to the worldview of capitalists rather than viewing computing as a societal mechanism of control or liberation. We should reject this term entirely and instead take the opportunity to advocate for socialism and worker control over the means of production.