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  • tantetante@tldr.nettime.org
    Jul 3, 2026, 1:41 PM

    This isn't a new idea of course, many people have been working on this. I am just deeply disappointed by how some "Open Source" organizations basically just argue that "AI is here to stay and what can you do, don't exclude people who want to slop their way into your project" which really shows how limited their understanding of what all this open source infrastructure and code is about.

    It's not about being able to download C files. It's about humane politics. About using technology to increase people's agency and wellbeing.

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Replies

  • ansuzansuz@gts.cryptography.dog
    Jul 3, 2026, 1:45 PM

    @tante I've been thinking about this a lot lately. FSF, OSI, SFC, Linux Foundation... basically every org that has claimed to stand for things that I care about in software has shown themselves to be absolutely undeserving of my trust.

    Edit: I forgot about the creative commons people

    Edit #2: Wikimedia foundation should probably be in this list too due to their recent union-busting efforts

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  • tantetante@tldr.nettime.org
    Jul 3, 2026, 1:48 PM

    @ansuz that has been exactly my impression. Not saying everything these organizations do is bad but they don't get us out of this mess because they have no political vision for anything better

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  • Zack Weinbergzwol@masto.hackers.town
    Jul 3, 2026, 2:21 PM

    @tante @ansuz I've got the front half of an essay about this stuck on ice for years now because I can't figure out what the back half wants to be ... the basic thesis is that the original vision of empowerment-through-computing, expressed in the GNU Manifesto in 1982(?), was *achieved* circa 1997 and the movement has floundered since then because nobody has come along with a follow-up vision (and there are reasons for that)

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  • Zack Weinbergzwol@masto.hackers.town
    Jul 3, 2026, 2:25 PM

    @tante @ansuz critically, that original vision of empowerment presumed *everyone* was self-motivated to learn how computers work at a low level, which is why the actual work done by GNU and *BSD, i.e. "reimplement Unix", could fulfill that vision ... for the (in fact quite small) group of people who actually were thus self-motivated

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  • like jam or bootlacesidlestate@toot.cat
    Jul 4, 2026, 2:17 PM

    @zwol

    a group quite small not just due to enthusiasm or other inherently distinguishing personal characteristics, but who had sufficient access to computers of any kind whatsoever at the time

    I keep taking tries at this point, but something I saw recently and need again to dig out puts it very well:

    The spread of computing has been effected through a bait-and-switch, selling it as if commodification were somehow inherently democratizing.

    Over my lifetime-to-date we've gone from having even a single 8-bit microcomputer in a middle-class home was a weird, niche thing, to obligatory compute ubiquity for most daily activities regardless of one's interest or desire.

    This has been, historically speaking, extraordinary. But people tend not to acknowledge it, let alone account for it.

    @tante @ansuz

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  • Zack Weinbergzwol@masto.hackers.town
    Jul 4, 2026, 4:31 PM

    @idlestate @tante @ansuz you're absolutely right but *also* I think there really was an "if we build it they will come" expectation among the early free software pioneers -- an expectation that computers would become more widespread and that this would *of itself* cause more people to become hackers, without any effort on their part put into making that an attractive prospect. all they had to do was make the *capability* of hacking software available to anyone who could afford the hardware.

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  • Zack Weinbergzwol@masto.hackers.town
    Jul 4, 2026, 4:33 PM

    @idlestate @tante @ansuz this goes some way to explain what little the FSF *has* done since 1997 -- the preoccupation with making firmware replaceable and source-available, with end-user notices that software *can in principle* be modified, etc.

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  • Zack Weinbergzwol@masto.hackers.town
    Jul 4, 2026, 5:00 PM

    @idlestate @tante @ansuz ...and this also goes some way to explain why the bait and switch went so smoothly

    like, a lot of nerds' reaction to google making android more of a walled garden is "but you can just install calyx/graphene/lineage/..." despite that that's really not an option for most people AND doing that doesn't make the walls completely go away (it is a nontrivial problem for me that I can't spend money via the play store) AND those projects only exist on google's sufferance

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  • DNA scheduleryanprior@mastodon.social
    Jul 3, 2026, 4:39 PM

    @tante how well do you know the free software community? Having been involved for about twenty years now, I've met so many people who do have actual political analysis and a theory of change that places software freedom in context. Open source resists that, and the orgs you mention certainly are disappointing, but many of the ideas they've promulgated and the people attached to them are great.

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  • Gryphon Myersgryphonmyers@mastodon.social
    Jul 3, 2026, 2:07 PM

    @ansuz @tante I'm convinced the problem is money and that we need critical projects to be self-sufficient to avoid the kind of corruption we're seeing now.

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  • FinFangFoomedFinFangFoomed@mastodon.social
    Jul 3, 2026, 3:42 PM

    @gryphonmyers @ansuz @tante or rather than funding the projects, we fund the people. Basic stuff like healthcare and UBI would allow programmers the freedom to work on projects that they were passionate about or they understood to be of importance.

    How many vital projects go under-maintained because it's not cool or profitable? Funding and supporting the programmers directly would solve a lot of these issues.

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  • mirabilos🐈‍⬛mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org
    Jul 3, 2026, 4:33 PM

    @FinFangFoomed @gryphonmyers @ansuz @tante yes and no. I could not do anything with direct funding. I need a stable job that brings a known, if not too large, amount of money to the table every month. Direct funding would be sporadic and after a while be tied to requirements, and I couldn’t give up the main job for it.

    UBI is the way to go here. Then I could "add on" with a job with less hours, and hopefully be more creative in the remaining time. (As it is I’m barely getting a week done due to $factors.)

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  • FinFangFoomedFinFangFoomed@mastodon.social
    Jul 3, 2026, 4:47 PM

    @mirabilos UBI is the direct funding in speaking of, as in money goes to programmers and not companies or individual projects. I don't mean people just sending you money through services like kofi and Patreon.

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  • Bjoern MichaelsenSweetshark@social.tchncs.de
    Jul 3, 2026, 4:24 PM

    @ansuz
    I think the orgs are right in that software licenses are not the right tool to attack these new challenges. Probably Codes of Conduct are the best fit currently, although they are double-edged swords because their enforcement brings very difficult governance challenges in the long run.
    @tante

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  • aeriqueaerique@genart.social
    Jul 3, 2026, 2:06 PM

    @tante "Open Source" as a label has always been contentious since it was coined by people not happy with the idealogy of Free Software.

    They were looking for something more commercially exploitable and especially Eric S. Raymond —whose politics are iffy— ran with it.

    So I'm not surprised they're embracing AI.

    See also "Open source as a term" here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_sou

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  • Forse (he/him)forse@kolektiva.social
    Jul 3, 2026, 3:06 PM

    @tante

    It's about tech that is accessible to everyone, because tech is power and when power is concentrated in few hands it means that we do not control our lives.

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  • thomkennonthomkennon@mastodon.social
    Jul 3, 2026, 4:55 PM

    @forse @tante I'm rereading Zuboff's critique of surveillance capitalism and she accurately places Google as its founding criminal enterprise for this very seizure of near absolute power.

    Deleuze saw it coming 20yrs ahead of Zuboff (and 10 years before Google) in his Postscript on the Societies of Control, warning:

    ""In the societies of control, on the other hand, what is important is no longer either a signature or a number, but a code: the code is a password..."

    Access to power = control.

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  • Borupborup@masto.hackers.town
    Jul 3, 2026, 7:42 PM

    @tante my feeling is that the whole thing started going wrong with the let's call it "Open Source" movement.
    The sole purpose of that was to make big companies think that it was ok to use open source.
    And of course they did. Because it let them exploit workers they didn't even employ.

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