this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2025
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On Evils in Software Licensing (lgug2z.com)
submitted 1 day ago by chobeat@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] toothbrush@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

"We know that there is a clear relationship between corporations which expend focused energy explicitly and implicitly promoting the use of Open Source Initiative-approved licenses to independent developers, and the genocide being committed in Palestine."

"The Freedom to refuse"

This article is bonkers. It manages to twist the Free Software Movement, that I would argue is intrinsically radically anti-capitalist, to be somehow pro capitalist, because free labour. Completely ignoring the whole mutual benefit and means of production held in common part of the deal. It tries to paint restricions of who is allowed to use the software (breaking F(L)OSS definitions) as a "Freedom", the freedom to "refuse". Actual use of Orwellian phrasing there. And then somehow: Open source = Siding against Palestine.

[–] freeman@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago

And then somehow: Open source = Siding against Palestine.

This is the most ridiculous part, if they ever try to enforce the license against someone the definition of evil is going to be decided by a court. In that context a humanitarian organization using your software to help Palestinians is more likely to be condemned than a military contractor that kills Palestinians.

[–] chobeat@lemmy.ml -5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

the article doesn't mention the Free Software Movement even once.

Also the article is making a point that you don't need to side for genocide to enable a genocide. That's the whole point.

[–] toothbrush@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The ideas we explore in concrete work should be informed by what open source licensing proponents seek to restrict (the individual freedom to refuse), the tools they employ (software licensing), the language they attempt to monopolize (“Free as in Freedom”), and what the established systems and cultural norms do in practice

The article doesnt use the wording "Free Software Movement" it uses "open source licensing proponents" which includes the Free Software Movement.

As for the genocide per default part: Its nonsense to believe that if open source didnt exist or was different that it would somehow lead to less genocide.

[–] chobeat@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 day ago

I don't know what understanding you have of this topic, but historically and presently, the Free Software movement and the Open Source movement are ideological opposites, with the latter spawning off of the first to accomodate pro-corporate, pro-capitalist positions.

Both of these are also different from the totality of entities proposing "open source licensing", which is a much broader set.

Then nowadays the Free Software Movement lost its momentum and it has been subsumed into the idea of "FOSS", but still, it should be treated as its own, dinstinct entity.

As for the genocide per default part: Its nonsense to believe that if open source didnt exist or was different that it would somehow lead to less genocide.

Open source is just a technical and legal reflection of a world and a time where Imperial venture capital benefited from the free flow of information. I think the author would agree that, if open source didn't exist, something else would have enabled similar or different forms of Imperial oppression, including genocide. Same for the start-up ecosystem, digital capital taking over the financial economy and Western democracies and so on. Open Source enabled that? For sure. But if we want to play "what if", any serious materialist analysis would conclude that Open Source was just a tool for digital capital to express itself and exploit workers. A tool that could have been replaced by something else.

[–] This2ShallPass@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

This argument in this article is poor. An analogy would be:

"Because donating free food to the poor might feed future criminals, we should no longer provide free food."