Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Nathan Schneider (ntnsndr@social.coop)'s status on Monday, 01-Apr-2024 04:20:09 JST Nathan Schneider

   • Robin Berjon

   I'm really appreciating this idea on FOSS from my colleague Bo Waggoner—not just "free as in speech" or "free as in beer" but "free as in way." Increasingly, that is, FOSS acts like a freeway.

   It is infrastructure for business—free for all, but a means of profit for some. And that affects how we should build economies around it.

   I especially appreciate this in light of @robin's account of web browser financing as a tax on search: https://darobin.github.io/wise/

   We need economy to reflect ontology.

   • Embed this notice
     Nathan Schneider (ntnsndr@social.coop)'s status on Monday, 01-Apr-2024 04:20:55 JST Nathan Schneider

     in reply to

     • Robin Berjon

     I especially appreciate this in light of @robin's account of web browser financing as a tax on search: https://darobin.github.io/wise/

     We need economy to reflect ontology.

   • Embed this notice
     JK (jamienk@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 01-Apr-2024 06:25:49 JST JK

     in reply to

     @ntnsndr

     I agree with you.

     But why emphasize "economies" in this way? Do we talk about books like this?

     Practical benefits have to flow from the ethical ones or else we're in danger of playing a game where economy is on top of freedom. See China: in the 1990s there was thought that democracy would follow capitalism. But no. You can have capitalism with no Freedom.

     This book https://cloudempires.org/ is pretty good about this issue (though doesn't discuss FOSS directly)

   • Embed this notice
     Nathan Schneider (ntnsndr@social.coop)'s status on Monday, 01-Apr-2024 06:25:49 JST Nathan Schneider

     in reply to

     • JK

     @jamienk You don't have freeways without having an appropriate way to pay for them. Similarly, I think it matters how we pay for FOSS freeways—especially if we want to ensure that they don't become captured by those who currently pay for them.