 in conversations ive had around "open" source and "open" protocols im recognizing a recurring sentiment that does not sit well with me: the idea that "openness" requires that we tolerate capitalist corporations, that if we don't we are no longer "open". i disagree categorically with this definition of "open" 3 comments
so faced with "openness" what will a corporation do? the only thing it can do: try and turn it into a profit making scheme. is there a way to make maximal profit while supporting an open network/community/society? theoretically? maybe? but we haven't seen anything like that yet. its a much more straightforward path to enclose the open thing, make it your own, control it and extract value from it. to expect anything else is to fundamentally misunderstand how the world works. microsoft spent the 90s trying so hard to enclose the web the american government had to get involved. apple is repeating these tactics on iOS and the EU has had to get involved. XMPP was embraced and killed, google killed reader, the list goes on. this isnt just a theoretical concern, we have *decades* of experience running the experiment of introducing corporations into open spaces with disastrous consequences. its bonkers to me that people are arguing "this time will be different" somehow |
Gregory's Server
what is a corporation? a corporation is a specific modern legal fiction that exists to produce profit for its owners, who are distinct from the people who actually perform any of the work.
this is an *extremely limited* vocabulary of action. if something cannot be framed as producing profit, a corporation cannot do it, period. so they necessarily turn everything they touch into a profit scheme, like someone with a hammer turning everything they see into a nail.