Without the mention of FOSS, these types of pro-market “solutions” will always end up dead in the water.
This is not just a matter of competition for its own sake. This is about guaranteeing users the fundamental right to technological self-determination, a right that corporate monopolists will not yield willingly. This is nothing less than empowering users to seize the means of computation.
Can’t have tech self-determination if everything’s a black box controlled by corporate entities.
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Had some related thoughts I wrote about here https://justiceinternationale.com/articles/2020-12-02-we-must-own-our-tools/
Frankly I’m hesitant about FOSS as a movement these days. It has a libertarian bent a mile wide (actually giving your license clauses that stop people from doing harm with your software in various ways makes it “no longer free”), is poorly applicable to the actual user, and doesn’t care about anything other than itself (free software should be intersectional but the FSF continues to champion and cater to white men and sex pests)
There are a lot of liberals and libertarians involved in FOSS, to the point where some FOSS and FOSS-adjacent media (ie ‘Slashdot’) is practically unreadable. Even the most (in)famous FOSS advocate, Richard Stallman, has appeared on Infowars and is reportedly a sex pest. But there are comrades involved in FOSS too, and there are obvious benefits from avoiding corpo lock-in and corpo spyware (what they call ‘telemetry’), so… there’s that.
Richard Stallman, has appeared on Infowars and is reportedly a sex pest.
He was kicked out of MIT for defending Epstein so yeah. Classic libertarian.
Besides how fucked up that is, that is the quintessence of “weird hill to die on”.
He also reportedly told female students he’d kill himself if they don’t go out with him and had a mattress in his office specifically for the insinuation women could come and have sex with him on it. As far as I’m concerned he shouldn’t be trusted with the FOSS movement at all, much less be an idolized leader within it.
Well the mattress was because he lived in his office. But yeah I’ve heard similar things. Really don’t think you gotta hand it to him like some commentators do. Kind of a disgrace that the FSF brought him back
