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Who is free software for? (tante.cc)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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An engaging critique and on-going work concerning the inability of open source communities to deal with the consequences of its use beyond the blinkered mantra that 'what we call #FOSS today was originally for hackers by hackers'. Free software usage has been systemically captured well beyond that scope and appropriated by existing and aspiring large corporations, with resultant human and social consequences largely ignored. And this is just the beginning ...

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I've seen this way too many time: "OSS is great but it's bad and I don't say why in the whole article."

On Mastodon:

how to defend those commons against appropriation:

Either create a new license like "GPL except you can't sell it" but you'll need lawyers, and it gives too much restriction.

the GPL also is very binary in how it operates and does not allow you any nuance. It's very much a libertarian-influenced document

What nuance do you need? Either you share as required or not, there is no debate. As for the libertarian BS...

So why have we not “won”?

Again, the winning part is not undefined. Do you want money? That's not the point of most of those free licenses.

Firefox – the Open Source browser [...] has a market share of 2.63%.

That's because Mozilla is a corrupt organization that doesn't care about Firefox, and because Google made its browser the default on most phones, but I don't think it's relevant.

Linux has a desktop market share of about 4%.

Because users are brainwashed by Microsoft and will never change unless it's presented in a pretty package from Apple.

We are not meeting people where they are. We expect them to come to us

I don't expect them to come and wouldn't want yet another eternal September with AI slop replacing everything. But if you want to do something, do it.

understand why our values matter and are the best. Which – sorry to have to say so – they are not.

Again, free attack without explaining why.

Because what we are selling isn’t a solution to people’s actual problems but a new identity

Fuck, that's confusing. Open-source software is about creating technical solutions to technical problems with an OSS license. As long as we're drifting away from this simple definition, we'll go deeper and deeper into sociological issues that do not concern us (maybe call yourself a life-hacker or socio-hacker) and that we'll never fix because a lot of us are either introverted or unconcerned about the whole thing.

Freedom 0 [...] And where has that got us? Are we happy here?

Yep, I'm pretty happy. But I'm also pretty pissed that, at this point of the text, the writer still hasn't clearly defined his problems with software, OSS, society... A simple definition would help him toward a first fix.

We need to reshape our thinking towards more political goals and values

God no. But I'm not preventing you to do this.