Someone linked this talk in another thread, this is how I found it. I highly recommend it and want to share more material that share similar values, because I think they are more relevant then ever.
The battle against Coercionware is only beginning, and we find ourselves on the frontlines whether we like it or not.
But we are not alone, and computers truly are magic. Do not mistake lost ground for lost hope. We are the ones who make computers do what they do. We can win this thing if we collectively choose to believe it and bet on it.
All in.
The signs of MITāappearance in the community is based on the circle of complexity introduced into the minds of libre software programmers by their oppressors transferring money to their bank accounts every month.
Your software is used in war machines to kill people and the companies will never give back. So enforce GPLv3, itās needed.
Do Not Hate Your Userbase
Corporations start to hate their users, sell their data, reduce features to make profit.
Projects adhering to the bitreich principles do not follow this.
Just to add to that, if Permacomputing scratches anyoneās itch and youād like to learn more about it, Iād recommend going after 100rās resources on the topic. Besides being informative, their content is pleasing to the eyes!
It might be pretty radical if the topic is new to you and you come from more mainstream tech perspectives like I did. But, thereās a lot of gold in Permacomputing circles, a lot of folks in the community are doing deep research and going back to older/forgotten tech to ask āwhat if?ā. I find that very valuable and has potential to bring in new perspectives to the way we all build software.
Just watched it and I love it, Iām from France and I totally agree with Andrew everyone should strive and work for a strong unionized workforce, because I can tell you first hand it bloody works, just recently, Dassault which is another big defense company in France gave a raise to their employees through some mandatory bonus that we have each years (Prime de participation, Prime dāinteressement). And because of our union we got a 34% raised to ours to match what Dassaultās employees were getting, because of the threat of a social movements. This is one example out of thousands in France were the people through their union and representative got the final word.
He points to Steam as a problem for gamedevs as it takes 30% from them and probably more if it got sold. The solution Andrew suggest is open source their software. At least gamedevs gets 70% via Steam, while they will get 0 % when they open source their game. Letās face it, itās Utopian and unhealthy if itās not a hobby.
Edit: ok Andrew adds some nuance to it later, fair enough.
The solution Andrew suggest is open source their software
Do you mean 2:49:08 when he says āā¦[about Steam] how long do you think thatās gonna last? The solution is free software, we are gonna pay the cost to the fact that we are on someone elseās platform, renting their land, when we could have been on a communal space this whole timeā¦ā ?
Iām a big fan of 100r and the Weathering Software Winter article! Absolutely recommend reading it.
Adding to the topic in general, I feel like there is an overemphasis on licenses rather than incentive and power structures. I have an interest in Worker Cooperative Licenses ā i.e. licensing that is cheaper or free for worker cooperatives ā but itās pointless to think much about it since there isnāt an international legal structure that will make it easy to enforce something like that.
In practical terms, I would like to see more Free Software that does both:
Dual licensing ā free license for individuals, free for non-profit structures, paid for corporations.
Software that corporations wonāt ever make ā imo Blenderās success comes from having a cultural status that Autodesk canāt achieve with paid software, and for blender being a all-in-one application, rather than many separate applications.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) focused a lot on āExisting Commercial Software, but Free ā:
GIMP ā Photoshop, but free ;
LibreOffice ā Microsoft Office, but free .
Modularity and ābespokenessā are two values that you rarely see in proprietary software, as there is always more profit in walled gardens and minimal-common-factor products ā so it would be advantageous to design with these values rather than playing a losing game by releasing Temu version of SomeSoftwareā¢.
Another aspect that Free Software development has lacked is the involvement from non-programmers, get to know your user, get designers involved, talk to a government worker copy pasting things from a Google Spreadsheet into another and learn their day to day, a.k.a touching grass is a good idea after all.
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