A great article by @APC looking back at @NGIZero and software and community sustainability in #FOSS
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A great article by @APC looking back at @NGIZero and software and community sustainability in #FOSS
"So, rather than begin our discussion with questions such as: “How can we democratise FLOSS services and/or FLOSS research and development?”, we should ask ourselves: "What sort of working conditions would serve the needs of actual communities and societies?" Another important question is: where do discussions about the future of FLOSS take place, and who can join them? "
https://www.apc.org/en/blog/communicating-free-internet-future
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A great article by @APC looking back at @NGIZero and software and community sustainability in #FOSS
"So, rather than begin our discussion with questions such as: “How can we democratise FLOSS services and/or FLOSS research and development?”, we should ask ourselves: "What sort of working conditions would serve the needs of actual communities and societies?" Another important question is: where do discussions about the future of FLOSS take place, and who can join them? "
https://www.apc.org/en/blog/communicating-free-internet-future
@onepict @APC @NGIZero Anyone can join them. Anyone can start new conversations.
My personal take is that we need to rally around a core set of values that sets out the principles of post-FLOSS, and we actually have those already. You start from human rights.
When you do, you quickly find that the OSD is flawed. It's a compromise for sure, but its "any use" policy includes "may be used to violate human rights", which frankly is not good enough.
You also quickly find that protection of...
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@onepict @APC @NGIZero Anyone can join them. Anyone can start new conversations.
My personal take is that we need to rally around a core set of values that sets out the principles of post-FLOSS, and we actually have those already. You start from human rights.
When you do, you quickly find that the OSD is flawed. It's a compromise for sure, but its "any use" policy includes "may be used to violate human rights", which frankly is not good enough.
You also quickly find that protection of...
@onepict @APC @NGIZero ... the commons is not sufficiently covered.
Enclosure is somewhat addressed in copyleft, but leaves massive loopholes. And extraction is actively encouraged, it seems, through the insistence of the blanket "any use" principle.
A human rights first, commons oriented movement is what is required.
Quite a few folk here understand this, but the vast majority seems to be struggling with those concepts. But there is your future of FLOSS.
Anything less won't cut it.
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@onepict @APC @NGIZero ... the commons is not sufficiently covered.
Enclosure is somewhat addressed in copyleft, but leaves massive loopholes. And extraction is actively encouraged, it seems, through the insistence of the blanket "any use" principle.
A human rights first, commons oriented movement is what is required.
Quite a few folk here understand this, but the vast majority seems to be struggling with those concepts. But there is your future of FLOSS.
Anything less won't cut it.
@onepict @APC @NGIZero The hack of copyleft, cute as it is, is a hack - by the best definition of it. It tries to use the weapons of license restrictions against those who wish to enrich themselves via license restrictions.
That's fine, but our problem tend to consist of constraints similar to copyright, which work against the spirit of maintaining a commons - make such things unnecessarily hard.
From questions of "ownership" of IP, via establishing organising entities, entering contracts...
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@onepict @APC @NGIZero ... the commons is not sufficiently covered.
Enclosure is somewhat addressed in copyleft, but leaves massive loopholes. And extraction is actively encouraged, it seems, through the insistence of the blanket "any use" principle.
A human rights first, commons oriented movement is what is required.
Quite a few folk here understand this, but the vast majority seems to be struggling with those concepts. But there is your future of FLOSS.
Anything less won't cut it.
@jens I think it's hard for folks to understand what the harms are, I'm quoted:
" [.]in Digital Poppets – How the Modern Fae Hold Power Over You. She describes the current “realm” of trade and labour, often unpaid, in the age of globalised digital technology, where the rules are set by Big Tech and we do not really appreciate the price we pay at every moment, both for having a (false) sense of ease and for providing Big Tech with the fruits of our labour for free and without our real consent."
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@onepict @APC @NGIZero The hack of copyleft, cute as it is, is a hack - by the best definition of it. It tries to use the weapons of license restrictions against those who wish to enrich themselves via license restrictions.
That's fine, but our problem tend to consist of constraints similar to copyright, which work against the spirit of maintaining a commons - make such things unnecessarily hard.
From questions of "ownership" of IP, via establishing organising entities, entering contracts...
@onepict @APC @NGIZero ... that might enable sustainable development, let alone the question of taxation for donations towards public interest work: all that is unnecessarily complex, because at their core, all those regulations are also hacks.
They're hacks of a regulatory framework that at its core - falsely - assumes that "commercial activity" is the rule, and commons tending the exception.
Nothing could be more unnatural to human beings.
The opposite is the case, that we engage in...
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@jens I think it's hard for folks to understand what the harms are, I'm quoted:
" [.]in Digital Poppets – How the Modern Fae Hold Power Over You. She describes the current “realm” of trade and labour, often unpaid, in the age of globalised digital technology, where the rules are set by Big Tech and we do not really appreciate the price we pay at every moment, both for having a (false) sense of ease and for providing Big Tech with the fruits of our labour for free and without our real consent."
@jens Big tech very much is a part of FLOSS now, in the recent Python Documentary, I found it informative just how much resource Facebook put into working with the language.
There's a lot of who didn't realise the Faustian bargain we made.
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@onepict @APC @NGIZero ... that might enable sustainable development, let alone the question of taxation for donations towards public interest work: all that is unnecessarily complex, because at their core, all those regulations are also hacks.
They're hacks of a regulatory framework that at its core - falsely - assumes that "commercial activity" is the rule, and commons tending the exception.
Nothing could be more unnatural to human beings.
The opposite is the case, that we engage in...
@onepict @APC @NGIZero ... commercial activity - hold down jobs - because commons tending needs to either fly under the radar (fully legal stuff: I bake a cake and invite my neighbours, for example), or disguise itself as commercial activity via hacks.
Because commons tending as a primary activity is not imaginable nor imagined by law.
So what the future of FLOSS needs to do in the short term is to commoditize those hacks that make the disguise work, to enable much easier access to them.
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@jens I think it's hard for folks to understand what the harms are, I'm quoted:
" [.]in Digital Poppets – How the Modern Fae Hold Power Over You. She describes the current “realm” of trade and labour, often unpaid, in the age of globalised digital technology, where the rules are set by Big Tech and we do not really appreciate the price we pay at every moment, both for having a (false) sense of ease and for providing Big Tech with the fruits of our labour for free and without our real consent."
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@onepict @APC @NGIZero ... commercial activity - hold down jobs - because commons tending needs to either fly under the radar (fully legal stuff: I bake a cake and invite my neighbours, for example), or disguise itself as commercial activity via hacks.
Because commons tending as a primary activity is not imaginable nor imagined by law.
So what the future of FLOSS needs to do in the short term is to commoditize those hacks that make the disguise work, to enable much easier access to them.
@jens I think you've the kernel of a blog post there Jens.
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@onepict @APC @NGIZero ... commercial activity - hold down jobs - because commons tending needs to either fly under the radar (fully legal stuff: I bake a cake and invite my neighbours, for example), or disguise itself as commercial activity via hacks.
Because commons tending as a primary activity is not imaginable nor imagined by law.
So what the future of FLOSS needs to do in the short term is to commoditize those hacks that make the disguise work, to enable much easier access to them.
@onepict @APC @NGIZero And in the long term, the position in law has to shift. Commons tending as a primary activity for people to support a decent life needs to be enshrined, and commercial activity needs to become an unapologetically supportive role in this.
Politics. Can't pretend to keep it out of FLOSS.
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@jens I think you've the kernel of a blog post there Jens.
@onepict I know! And finally it's not directly a rant about AI slop
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@onepict @APC @NGIZero ... commercial activity - hold down jobs - because commons tending needs to either fly under the radar (fully legal stuff: I bake a cake and invite my neighbours, for example), or disguise itself as commercial activity via hacks.
Because commons tending as a primary activity is not imaginable nor imagined by law.
So what the future of FLOSS needs to do in the short term is to commoditize those hacks that make the disguise work, to enable much easier access to them.
I wholeheartedly agree, of course, as we have discussed these matters at length in the past on Social coding commons channels.
The most interesting part starts directly after the "what [we] need to do" i.e. after defining the SX solution on a sticky note, in Social experience design terminology.
We know generally very well what we ought to do at scale, as a movement, and we try to deduce what we can do as individuals to move in that general direction.
Our challenge then shifts, and the wicked problem becomes one of prolonged coordination between many people in an utterly chaotic commons, on operational, tactical, and strategic levels. The struggle isn't grasping the concept, but picturing how to get to that desirable future state. Paving the path to a solution, and walking it.
This is where SX focuses, and unique oppprtunities exist on the intersection of social networking technologies, sustainable FOSS (i.e. SOSS), and chaordic commons organization.
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@onepict @APC @NGIZero ... the commons is not sufficiently covered.
Enclosure is somewhat addressed in copyleft, but leaves massive loopholes. And extraction is actively encouraged, it seems, through the insistence of the blanket "any use" principle.
A human rights first, commons oriented movement is what is required.
Quite a few folk here understand this, but the vast majority seems to be struggling with those concepts. But there is your future of FLOSS.
Anything less won't cut it.
@jens @onepict @APC @NGIZero
People treat the "for any purpose"/freedom 0 requirement of free/open software definitions with near *biblical* reverence. But it is arguably anti-labor to require allowing corporate exploitation, apart from numerous other wrongs.I think one of the biggest questions is how do we move to more ethical licensing while preserving at least some of the broad license compatibility we enjoy today.
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@jens @onepict @APC @NGIZero
People treat the "for any purpose"/freedom 0 requirement of free/open software definitions with near *biblical* reverence. But it is arguably anti-labor to require allowing corporate exploitation, apart from numerous other wrongs.I think one of the biggest questions is how do we move to more ethical licensing while preserving at least some of the broad license compatibility we enjoy today.
@jens @onepict @APC @NGIZero I find no inherent problem, ethically, with SSPL but it is fair to admit that if you have an SSPL-licensed component involved you have fun and exciting license compatibility concerns if you need to combine it with any other licenses. You can sort of assume it's "like AGPL as long as you don't sell that software as a service" in practice but the line is fuzzy.
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@jens @onepict @APC @NGIZero I find no inherent problem, ethically, with SSPL but it is fair to admit that if you have an SSPL-licensed component involved you have fun and exciting license compatibility concerns if you need to combine it with any other licenses. You can sort of assume it's "like AGPL as long as you don't sell that software as a service" in practice but the line is fuzzy.
@ocdtrekkie @jens @onepict @APC @NGIZero
Imho the biggest 'mistake' is in how we generally treat FOSS-the-software and FOSS-the-movement of its creators as one and the same, leaning way too heavily on licensing of the software as the sole tool to assure the sustainability of participants in the movement.
"Ethical licensing" is a fundamentally weird concept, if you come to think of it, yet we discuss it because of this dogmatic license focus.
If one wants to conduct ethical sustainable business, we choose partners that align to our values, and we address externalities of our work. That last bit also involves not delivering our goods to the bad actors.
In FOSS the whole working-in-public paradigm has cultist proportions and imho has serious ethical flaws to which the people involved are myopic.
🫧 socialcoding.. (@smallcircles@social.coop)
#ThoughtProvoker :blobhyperthink: Uncomfortable questions.. - To what extent is #FOSS complicit to the rise of #BigTech? - To what extent is FOSS complicit to disruptive #AI craze we face today? - To what extent are vibe coding #LLM even possible without FOSS? "BUT.. BUT.. The License!" - To what extent does slapping on a license free us from responsibility, knowing that it hardly offers protection from abuse? - To what extent did FOSS too just introduce the tech and damn the externalities? - To what extent is FOSS complicit to the current state of the world? - To what extent is it enough to consider FOSS to be "imbibed by good morals and values" if we can't defend those? #poll #ethics [ ] We are clear. Because our intentions are good. [ ] We are clear. We just code. Bad actors abuse it [ ] We must find better ways to protect our work. [ ] Other (please comment)
social.coop (social.coop)
Yes, by all means lets take licenses as a tool. But let us not by default also deliver the Ring of Power at Sauron's doorstep.
We need a commons-based value economy.
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@ocdtrekkie @jens @onepict @APC @NGIZero
Imho the biggest 'mistake' is in how we generally treat FOSS-the-software and FOSS-the-movement of its creators as one and the same, leaning way too heavily on licensing of the software as the sole tool to assure the sustainability of participants in the movement.
"Ethical licensing" is a fundamentally weird concept, if you come to think of it, yet we discuss it because of this dogmatic license focus.
If one wants to conduct ethical sustainable business, we choose partners that align to our values, and we address externalities of our work. That last bit also involves not delivering our goods to the bad actors.
In FOSS the whole working-in-public paradigm has cultist proportions and imho has serious ethical flaws to which the people involved are myopic.
🫧 socialcoding.. (@smallcircles@social.coop)
#ThoughtProvoker :blobhyperthink: Uncomfortable questions.. - To what extent is #FOSS complicit to the rise of #BigTech? - To what extent is FOSS complicit to disruptive #AI craze we face today? - To what extent are vibe coding #LLM even possible without FOSS? "BUT.. BUT.. The License!" - To what extent does slapping on a license free us from responsibility, knowing that it hardly offers protection from abuse? - To what extent did FOSS too just introduce the tech and damn the externalities? - To what extent is FOSS complicit to the current state of the world? - To what extent is it enough to consider FOSS to be "imbibed by good morals and values" if we can't defend those? #poll #ethics [ ] We are clear. Because our intentions are good. [ ] We are clear. We just code. Bad actors abuse it [ ] We must find better ways to protect our work. [ ] Other (please comment)
social.coop (social.coop)
Yes, by all means lets take licenses as a tool. But let us not by default also deliver the Ring of Power at Sauron's doorstep.
We need a commons-based value economy.
@smallcircles @ocdtrekkie @jens @APC @NGIZero
Yeah we do need a commons based ecosystem, but that does also mean being open about our values and recognition of when perhaps they are utterly incompatible.
See for example Framework (hardware) and the desire of its founders to have a "big tent" for it's community, to justify it's support of DHH and Omarchy.
We can't expect licenses to fix that, nor can we expand the conversation to folks on the sharp edges of society if we aren't explicit.
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@smallcircles @ocdtrekkie @jens @APC @NGIZero
Yeah we do need a commons based ecosystem, but that does also mean being open about our values and recognition of when perhaps they are utterly incompatible.
See for example Framework (hardware) and the desire of its founders to have a "big tent" for it's community, to justify it's support of DHH and Omarchy.
We can't expect licenses to fix that, nor can we expand the conversation to folks on the sharp edges of society if we aren't explicit.
@smallcircles @ocdtrekkie @jens @APC @NGIZero This is where choosing a certain kind of licence is part of that. How often are projects advised or think choosing MIT over the GPL to appeal to corporate?
In the same way as we must be explicit in our values and understand we can't and shouldn't try to appeal to everyone. After all we're on here because we are trying to create new spaces for this conversation to happen.
But more than one space can and should exist.
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@smallcircles @ocdtrekkie @jens @APC @NGIZero This is where choosing a certain kind of licence is part of that. How often are projects advised or think choosing MIT over the GPL to appeal to corporate?
In the same way as we must be explicit in our values and understand we can't and shouldn't try to appeal to everyone. After all we're on here because we are trying to create new spaces for this conversation to happen.
But more than one space can and should exist.
@onepict @smallcircles @ocdtrekkie @APC @NGIZero I've also been on the corporate side of FLOSS licensing more than once, and I think a fair few licenses don't actually serve businesses all *that* well.
Nor does SPDX's license list, FWIW.
Though CC doesn't apply well to code, at least the CC framework is very explicit about what your rights and obligations under a license are. Other licenses need to be analyzed to arrive at the same understanding. That alone is a major hurdle to clear.
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@onepict @smallcircles @ocdtrekkie @APC @NGIZero I've also been on the corporate side of FLOSS licensing more than once, and I think a fair few licenses don't actually serve businesses all *that* well.
Nor does SPDX's license list, FWIW.
Though CC doesn't apply well to code, at least the CC framework is very explicit about what your rights and obligations under a license are. Other licenses need to be analyzed to arrive at the same understanding. That alone is a major hurdle to clear.
@onepict @smallcircles @ocdtrekkie @APC @NGIZero But I agree fully that it should not start with the license, but with a set of shared values, which would be similar to, but ultimately incompatible with the OSD or FSF's requirements.
Which, to get back to the core of this, is really the main issue. I mean, I wrote some about this a while ago: https://interpeer.org/blog/2024/04/in-search-of-foundational-floss-freedoms/
It's been two years now. Feedback at the time seemed to have been largely positive, but nitpicky about the details. I still...
