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1. Embed this notice
   e. hashman (ehashman@toot.cat)'s status on Thursday, 08-Dec-2022 15:11:06 JST e. hashman

   Anyone comparing the philosophy of "open source" to "free software" without acknowledging the harmful stagnation and single-mindedness in the latter community is not making a thoughtful critique in the year 2022.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 08-Dec-2022 15:11:01 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Simon Phipps
     OSS and OSI were born as an attack on FS; pretending they're equivalent or fighting against the same injustice is another attack;
     frequent demeaning of the founder of the FSM and the recent attempted decapitating the movement with tons of lies have been very mean ad-hominem attacks on FS
     seriously, what did OSS expect for initiating, sustaining and escalating attacks on us?
     翠星石 likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Simon Phipps (webmink@meshed.cloud)'s status on Thursday, 08-Dec-2022 15:11:02 JST Simon Phipps

     in reply to

     • Open Source Initiative :osi:

     @ehashman
     FYI @osi on Mastodon is routinely getting replies to posts that at best unreasonably promote FSF and at worst are ... well, ugly.

     This generally did not happen on Twitter. It's quite upsetting given how positive the rest of the experience here is. I'm not quite sure how to deal with them.

     翠星石 repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     e. hashman (ehashman@toot.cat)'s status on Thursday, 08-Dec-2022 15:11:03 JST e. hashman

     in reply to

     If I cannot recommend your movement to anyone other than able-bodied cishet white dudes in western countries, and on top of that I have to caveat it with "it's prickly, hostile, and everyone does what Dear Leader says", then who the fuck is it for? That demographic is the *least* harmed by proprietary software.

     The manifestos of free software got me in the mindset of serving users and protecting fundamental rights. But the practice of free software is just like open source, with more hostility.

   • Embed this notice
     e. hashman (ehashman@toot.cat)'s status on Thursday, 08-Dec-2022 15:11:04 JST e. hashman

     in reply to

     The FSF and free software movement have failed because they prioritized the hero worship of a single individual over the actual furthering of their ideology. They have had nothing new or useful to contribute to the public conversation in over a decade.

     So I can't believe people are still parroting "open source is about efficiency, free software is about ethics" or similar. Free software is about the ethics of one man, it's not a movement. They have spent all their energy alienating new blood.

   • Embed this notice
     e. hashman (ehashman@toot.cat)'s status on Thursday, 08-Dec-2022 15:11:05 JST e. hashman

     in reply to

     To the vast majority of people these terms do not mean different things. Semantically, free software and open source mean the same thing and agree on the same software licenses.

     The philosophical differences people attribute to "open source" vs. "free software" are usually a combination of development practices (dependent on the individual author) and arguing about copyleft licenses (even though the FSF agrees "permissive licenses" still make "free software").

   • Embed this notice
     e. hashman (ehashman@toot.cat)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 22:11:20 JST e. hashman

     in reply to

     So let's drop the "open source vs. free software" debate please. What has it accomplished? Whether it's open source or free software, the software licensing movement alone is not enough to achieve any of these movements' stated goals.

     FOSS is necessary but not sufficient to ensure digital autonomy. https://techautonomy.org/

     翠星石 repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     neo (neo@pl.comfysnug.space)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 22:11:20 JST neo

     in reply to
     @ehashman """open source""" is at best a corporate knockoff of truly free software
   • Embed this notice
     neo (neo@pl.comfysnug.space)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 22:22:32 JST neo

     in reply to
     @ehashman
     Because sometimes it's stupid to license a short python script as full GPL.
     
     Sometimes it's easier to incorporate someone else's non-GPL code into yours and they WONT license it as GPL
   • Embed this notice
     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 22:22:32 JST 翠星石

     in reply to

     • neo
     @ehashman >why does the FSF list permissive licenses as free software?
     Simply because certain permissive licenses respect the 4 freedoms, so those licenses are listed.
     
     I haven't yet read a single permissive license that is decently written mind you.
     
     
     @neo >sometimes it's stupid to license a short python script as full GPL.
     It is never "stupid" to license a short script under the GPLv3 - I license almost all of my software under the GPLv3 even if it is trivial.
     
     
     There still is some very rare cases where it is more optimal to use a weaker license like the Lesser GPLv2.1+.
     Once example is glibc - there was plenty of proprietary libc's already, plus support for software under non-GPLv2 compatible free software licenses was wanted, so it was decided to use the LGPLv2.1+ (which isn't a pushover license either).
     
     Another case where some small changes are to be made in a larger existing free software package under a certain license and it's just easier to license under the same license.
   • Embed this notice
     neo (neo@pl.comfysnug.space)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 22:22:34 JST neo

     in reply to
     @ehashman strong preference for weak pushover licensing rather than the tried and true GPLv3 and AGPL
   • Embed this notice
     e. hashman (ehashman@toot.cat)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 22:22:34 JST e. hashman

     in reply to

     • neo

     @neo then why does the FSF list permissive licenses as free software?

   • Embed this notice
     e. hashman (ehashman@toot.cat)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 22:22:35 JST e. hashman

     in reply to

     • neo

     @neo how

   • Embed this notice
     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 22:27:47 JST 翠星石

     in reply to
     @ehashman >The FSF and free software movement have failed
     I don't see any failure really - more free software exists today than in the past, so we're winning.
     
     >They have had nothing new or useful to contribute to the public conversation in over a decade.
     The public conversation rarely has been about anything meaningful for over a decade, while I've seen a nice stream of articles from the FSF and GNU over the past decade.
     
     >They have spent all their energy alienating new blood.
     They got me, so the alienation isn't very successful.
     
     Of course those who love proprietary software are going to be alienated hard by pure freedom.
     
     
     Don't worry, I will continue the GNU/Jihad against "open source" and proprietary software just as hard.
   • Embed this notice
     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Saturday, 10-Dec-2022 15:39:47 JST 翠星石

     in reply to
     @ehashman >you've constructed your identity around free software "extremism".
     Except I haven't.
     
     >How long have you felt this way?
     I've felt the need for freedom since birth, but such has been hidden from me until recently.
     
     >What are you trying to convince *me* of?
     Nothing.
     
     >That I should care more about the inanimate tool, software, than how it affects the people using it?
     Software is a tool.
     You can have a terrible proprietary tool that doesn't respect your freedom or a decent tool that respects your freedom.
     
     If the software is free, then the people using it are able to work together in rectifying anything seen to be non-ideal, or even do so themselves.
     
     
     If you care about what people do to other people, go ahead, but that doesn't have anything to do with software freedom.
   • Embed this notice
     e. hashman (ehashman@toot.cat)'s status on Saturday, 10-Dec-2022 15:39:48 JST e. hashman

     in reply to

     • 翠星石

     @Suiseiseki it's clear you are not convinced by anything I have to say here. That's fine; I can't imagine it's easy to consider this deeply when you've constructed your identity around free software "extremism". How long have you felt this way?

     What are you trying to convince *me* of? That I should care more about the inanimate tool, software, than how it affects the people using it?

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Monday, 12-Dec-2022 13:49:48 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • tech? no! man, see...
     while OSS has celebrated and welcomed the business opportunities of clown computing, FS has long campaigned that SaaSS is even worse for your autonomy than running a nonfree program on your own computer. maybe the problem is that our advice isn't heard or listened to, and it gets buried by others who've long been working at silencing us?
   • Embed this notice
     Kat Marchán 🐈 (zkat@toot.cat)'s status on Monday, 12-Dec-2022 13:49:50 JST Kat Marchán 🐈

     in reply to

     @ehashman what does "stagnation" mean for a community whose goal wasn't corporate uptake to begin with?

   • Embed this notice
     tech? no! man, see... (technomancy@icosahedron.website)'s status on Monday, 12-Dec-2022 13:49:50 JST tech? no! man, see...

     in reply to

     • Kat Marchán 🐈

     @zkat @ehashman the goal was user empowerment, but user empowerment accomplished by software running on your own computer

     it's been obvious for a long time how companies can do an end run around that by making you use their computers instead of yours, but the free software movement just ... hasn't noticed at all? or at least hasn't adapted

     翠星石 repeated this.