this post argues that stallman is not the "root" cause of bad things, and that he is being publicly "whipped" and "cancelled" with analogy to when marginalized people are ganged up on, and that he should be made "irrelevant".

d@nny "disc@" mc²

@FinalOverdrive @sidereal @foolishowl have pondered this before; i think copyleft should be a clause and not an end in itself https://circumstances.run/@hipsterelectron/112475230792340206

FinalOverdrive

@hipsterelectron @sidereal @foolishowl Again I am not seeing what good could come of doing that.

FinalOverdrive

@hipsterelectron @sidereal @foolishowl I also don't think it is fair to accuse GPL of being some kind of neoliberal document. It is clearly at odds with OSI, which can be called neoliberal with more justice

d@nny "disc@" mc²

@FinalOverdrive @sidereal @foolishowl it's not neoliberal but i do think it is libertarian

FinalOverdrive

@hipsterelectron @sidereal @foolishowl Again, given how many restrictions are in the GPL for commercial use, I don't see wharmt you mean? Libetarian in what sense? American? How it has been used in anarchism, which I remind you is a socialist movement.

Every time I bring up the "no using code for military, police, or espionage purposes" as a union demand...do you really have that little faith in programmers ability to organize collectively? Why must we undermine a key freedom in the license, a valuable one for programmers and users? What is wrong with placing an exception clause to freedom 0? Why be hostile to freedom at all?

d@nny "disc@" mc²

@FinalOverdrive @sidereal @foolishowl i'm fully aware that libertarian refers to anarchism in most of the world and in the US where free software originated it refers to a form of cosplay that redounds to capitalist extractivism by virtue of anarchism's negative but no positive liberties, so that's how i use the term here. a license is literally a contract and is governed by the terms of contract law, while copyright law only governs the applicability of the license as a contract. the framing of "freedom" as if exacting terms within a contract becomes problematic when backed by copyright law but not by labor law is confusing to me.

d@nny "disc@" mc²

@FinalOverdrive @sidereal @foolishowl if we're doing contracts, we're doing work within the law, and i don't see why copyright is off limits to exact freedoms. the anti-capitalist software license is prior art that anarchists have used in the past; i think a copyleft clause on top would be useful. i don't really see where we disagree except in the idea that the software license contract should be disparate from other labor contracts. i think one resounding failure of free software was not to use the power of copyright to bolster other freedoms.

d@nny "disc@" mc²

@FinalOverdrive @sidereal @foolishowl i don't at all like the hippocratic license because of its checkboxes which don't allow the code to be intermixed freely and seem like a bit of a cop out to avoid building a unified movement of solidarity. i do like the ACSL for doing the exact opposite and want to learn more about its history and background.

d@nny "disc@" mc²

@FinalOverdrive @sidereal @foolishowl i think "why not to use the LGPL" is extremely instructive on the precedent we can follow that would actually achieve meaningful freedoms:

If we amass a collection of powerful GPL-covered libraries that have no parallel available to proprietary software, they will provide a range of useful modules to serve as building blocks in new free programs. This will be a significant advantage for further free software development, and some projects will decide to make software free in order to use these libraries. University projects can easily be influenced; nowadays, as companies begin to consider making software free, even some commercial projects can be influenced in this way.

d@nny "disc@" mc²

@FinalOverdrive @sidereal @foolishowl is your concern that the splintering of license compatibility doesn't seem as likely to succeed in gathering widespread support as the GPL? i assume it's more than that, but that's one concern i can imagine. people have always used different licenses for different tasks and for software which already exists under other licenses, then sure we can use the GPL for that. but if it's something resoundingly new and people might truly be ready to accept restrictions against surveillance/apartheid in order to use the software, i think we should be open to the possibility that a license contract can fill that role

FinalOverdrive

@hipsterelectron @sidereal @foolishowl Okay reading all that helps me understand your position better. I need some time to process all of this.

FinalOverdrive

@hipsterelectron @sidereal @foolishowl I may even drop the subject all together. I just have one question: has GPL code been found in military, police, espionage, or surveillance equipment? I was under the impression that these entities avoid the GPL and related licenses because of the disclosure requirements. Now stuff under the MIT license, that might be more complicit.

d@nny "disc@" mc²

@FinalOverdrive @sidereal @foolishowl not that i'm aware of and that's a good question

FinalOverdrive

@hipsterelectron @sidereal @foolishowl it may turn out you're worrying over nothing with the GPL. The disclosure requirements themselves may render GPL code Kryptonite for the military industrial complex. Now the permissive MIT license...that may be more cause for concern.

d@nny "disc@" mc²

@FinalOverdrive @sidereal @foolishowl i use the GPL to protect my own labor for vaguely similar reasons even though it encodes no labor protections. i'm worried however especially with the discussion of "open source" "AI" that we may find corporate use of A?GPL code in e.g. a missile where (like nvidia's "open source" driver) the hardware/firmware remains a secret

d@nny "disc@" mc²

@FinalOverdrive @sidereal @foolishowl i grant that it is extremely difficult to codify this in license clauses though and this is why i consider the ACSL very difficult to enforce and why instead of looking for legal advice at this stage i was looking precisely to your earlier suggestion of aligning with labor movements

FinalOverdrive

@hipsterelectron @sidereal @foolishowl Basically I see the "don't make me code for missiles" as a union demand. So put together a programmers union and make that a key demand

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] no surprise that tech companies seem to love hunting down and firing anyone who signs anything deriding military contracts. It doubt it falls under the narrow auspices of labor organising (although it really should; mind you, these companies union bust all the fucking time, so I’m not sure it would matter anyway), but is in effect a demand by an organised group of laborers about how their output is used and I’m sure the companies view it that way.