• Elsie
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    9611 months ago

    FOSS is an active political statement!

    • Adderbox76
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      4511 months ago

      Was just coming here to say that. The entire Ethos of Open Source is basically the people owning the digital means of production. So some people really not grasp that?

      • OrangeSlice
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        1411 months ago

        So some people really not grasp that?

        Actually, yes, the original FOSS movement had more right-libertarian roots than anything to the left, although nowadays some might see it as “common ground”.

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          18
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          11 months ago

          The politics of folks like RMS (personal issues aside) were far above average, but the Free Software Movement was very steeped in liberalism from its onset, and that explains many of of its present shortcomings. Its biggest failing was to believe that Free Software would ultimately win on its merits. In the early days this was understandable, when free software was often playing catch-up to replicate the functionality of established commercial offerings. When the GNU project was just a C compiler you could install on proprietary UNIX systems to dick around with.

          Today though, Free Software is more often than not superior to commercially available offerings, with the exception of some niche industrial segments. But still, Free Software adoption by end users remains incredibly marginal. No matter how many merits Free Software stacks in its favor, the “Year of Linux on the Desktop” never comes. We are still drowning in proprietary iOS and Android phones. The overwhelming majority of PCs still ship with Windows. All of it deliberately engineered to become E-waste in a couple of years.

          Folks, this won’t change unless we take over the factories where these PCs and phones are manufactured.

          • God
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            211 months ago

            Hmmm. Ad machine maybe. For profit has bigger advertisement budgets than donation based.

      • @nbailey@lemmy.ca
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        411 months ago

        Sadly, there’s an entire generation of libertarian anti-GPL “open source” developers that think the preservation of free software goes too far.

        • God
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          111 months ago

          … What? I may be dumb. I don’t see how libertarianism is compatible with being anti FOSS.

          • @lntl@lemmy.ml
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            111 months ago

            The idea is that for code to truly be free, you should be able to make it proprietary. If you can’t do that, then it isn’t really free. That’s how I understand the idea anyway

            • God
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              311 months ago

              But that’s not being anti, just accepting the possibility of it. Like i consider myself a libertarian and if you wanna make it close source, ok, I may dislike it but I won’t regulate against it. But being anti would imply I would go out of my way to censor your ability to do close source.

              • @lntl@lemmy.ml
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                311 months ago

                It’s a GPL license thing. If you make a derivative work of GPL code, you’re NOT free to do what you want with it. This is where the 'anti come from.

                • God
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                  311 months ago

                  Ah. Well I’m pro theft so just use it and close it if you want and pray for the best! Hide the evidence to not get sued.

                  • @lntl@lemmy.ml
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                    111 months ago

                    This happens from time to time. The offending party either removes the GPL code or they GPL the work. That’s life ;)

                • @sydneybrokeit@beehaw.org
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                  211 months ago

                  There are two parts to this. On one side, you have the “please follow the GPL if you’re using GPL code” – which is really just asking someone to honor a contract, more or less.

                  Then you have people like RMS, who believe that there should not be such a thing as proprietary software. They don’t care if you aren’t using the GPL – no software should be proprietary, period.

                  • @lntl@lemmy.ml
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                    211 months ago

                    I admire that RMS has a vision for the world and fights for it. World needs more people like this.