|
Top-level
 @jsbarretto @j3rn I've heard that some younger people, including some in Minecraft mod communities, believe the ideals of FOSS are "outdated" for exactly this reason. It's dismaying to see how much political polarization is undermining the concept of mutual benefit. See also how at the start of the pandemic Americans were all willing to be careful, but powerful voices quickly undermined that unity by politicizing it all, indirectly killing people thereby. Selfishness won't destroy hate. 3 comments
@jsbarretto @j3rn I guess I wasn't clear on what my point was there. It's less about corporate exploitation, and more about some people wanting to gatekeep the political views of people who work on, or even use, their projects. Some people want "open for me but not for thee" without money even being a factor. To me, that only makes sense insofar as tools should be as politically neutral as they can be without harming anyone in the process (keeping in mind that fascism *is* harmful).  @pteryx @j3rn Politics & exploitation are all mixed together though. I do think it's possible to demarcate mostly positive and mostly negative things through legislative/legal means & 'does this thing generate profit?' seems like a good starting point. I think i broadly agree w.r.t wider political disagreement (I know for a fact that some crypto projects use my software, despite my general opposition to crypto) but I suspect my view might be more nuanced if I came from a place of less privilege. |
Gregory's Server
@pteryx @j3rn I can kind of see this argument. Without sufficiently strong license terms, FOSS often just becomes a vehicle for big tech to extract ever more value from people without paying their dues. I think I'd like to see licenses with stronger terms (such as 'only permitted for non-profit use, otherwise payment must be provided') that have been actually tested in court, but I'm not really aware of anything like this today.