free software resistance

 the cost of computing freedom is eternal vigilance

### capitalism-wont-save-us-or-open-source *originally posted:* dec 2023 i think bruce perens has good intentions. like an election candidate who cant possibly win but will use the platform to make people think about new ideas, perens has said once again that he envisions a third option for free software and open source. i think he has failed to grasp the problems hes trying to solve. im certain he will propose interesting ways of fixing some of them. those ideas may even inspire others who want to actually fix free software. just the fact that we are having a conversation about how what we have now is flawed is a start- but like with an election, i dont have high expectations. the biggest problem in free software is the tension between big companies and small developers. actually no, its between big companies and literally everyone else. free software is about freedom, and open source is about development, and perens is trying to fix development without understanding that even the focus on developers helps create this fundamental misunderstanding. of course we cant just ignore development, but i compare this to first peoples vs. colonists and their relationship with the land. capitalism exists to extract value from resources- everything is a resource, and extraction leads to gain. so we go about extracting value from land, we extract it from soil, water, sunlight, we extract it from mines, we extract it from people, from labour- we use everything and then we take what we gain. we make a big deal about giving back- but we give back so little, and take nearly everything. people who live in harmony with land treat nature itself like their own family. and i dont mean "family" in the dysfunctional corporate sense, where every relationship has a power dynamic and the "family leaders" have a responsibility to the company to exploit other members of their "family"- i mean that people are actually people, and the land is a companion, and a certain mutual respect is the law. the law may be broken, but at least the culture begins with something other than an obligation to use everything possible. although i will illustrate this idea, it is only an introduction to what is fundamentally wrong with open source, as well as the ideas that bruce perens will try to fix it with. open source is fundamentally about using people. its about extracting the value of free software as a resource, so that industry can gain from it. i realise theres another side of the coin- when industry is trying to extract labour, it always sells the arrangement to the workforce. open source does too- it promises many of the things that free software does, in exchange for extracting value from labour- from people. the problem here is industry will NEVER see people the way you or i think of people. industry does not see us the way that first peoples see the world and its inhabitants. we are not sacred to industry, our freedom does not matter to industry, our rights and well being only matter when its more cost-saving to throw us concessions than it is to plow through more fresh labour thats easier to extract value from. maybe you think im being cynical, and that the entire arrangement is not. but the entire arrangement is both cynical, and unsustainable. perens is treating this cynical arragement as a given, as a fact of life, which is such a common point of view that picking on perens for it almost seems unfair. but he isnt being picked on for this view, its being pointed out as the reason he doesnt understand free software. i wish i could tell you that free software is anti-capitalist. that would help. you should also know that forbidding commercial use, whether in software or cultural works, not only makes software non-free, i personally think it makes things so tedious and confusing that its incredibly wasteful to worry about commercial use of software. the real problem is commercial interference and commercial takeover. as long as people have to do things commercially, they should be able to use free software to do it. free software is not really capitalist or anti-capitalist, but open source truly is. free software is NOT about extracting value from labour, its about users being free and having control of their computing. that wasnt good enough for open source, which is why it split off from free software. having access to corporate resources was definitely great for open source and its goals, but like capitalism itself open source wants to pretend that it benefits everyone. it doesnt. open source benefits industry more than it benefits users, and it benefits industry more than it benefits developers who see actually see users as people- not as resources. open source benefits industry more than freedom, because freedom itself just becomes a resource (a brand, a gimmick) that it can extract value from. i fully understand that perens will never see this. thats exactly why perens will never fix open source. but hes probably equipped to make reforms that will make the unsustainable mess called "open source" into some different thing that works better than open source for years to come. free software meanwhile, underestimated the problem. free software at least, defined its goals towards something people actually need. some people will say- oh, but people need money. yes, they need money because capitalism requires them to have it. human life was more sustainable for billions of years without money, and open source- as perens famously noted, did too much to overshadow the message and importance of free software within just a year of osi existing. im not negating that people are required to have money, im stating that the tension between this and software freedom will not be sufficiently addressed by the leadership of either major faction. whether you subscribe to free software, or to open source, both are more beholden to another thing that stands against our freedom, and neither will have this addressed by the leadership. they do not see it that way. with open source the priorities shifted, as required- and they have never shifted back. perens may intend or expect the priorities to shift back to free software, though open source was always about dodging the importance of freedom, or people having control of their software. it did that in the 90s, and it does the same today- to the point where the neutrality of free software has increased, while the empty utilitarian insipidness bleeds into free software and the organisations that claim to fight for you. the fsf isnt allowed to go anti-capitalist now. and stallman never would have done so anyway. actually, i think in the beginning stallman did toy with some ideas about that, but a non-commercial license is the wrong way towards anti-capitalist software. unlike perens and devault, i think we have enough licenses. i wont be surprised when people make more, though i think perens said it was a problem more than 20 years ago, and it hasnt really improved. osi attacked cc0 over nonsense, and red hat attacked it further. the problem with that is that cc0 is a free software license that meets the criteria of the open source definition, but osi played politics and favourites and double standards. so you have free software that osi says isnt open, and the industry listens to open source. perens complains that open source doesnt talk about freedom. but even if i disagree with what he did about it, raymond was still correct that for-profit corporations dont care about that, and are turned off by it. whether perens intends to be as cynical and morally bankrupt as raymond- which i doubt actually, or whether he intends to do a better job of selling freedom to the industry, the industry is going to continue not caring and exploiting free software. sadly, i dont think stallman will say much more about this than perens or raymond. again, i do not have any delusion that free software is anti-capitalist. its clearly intended to be compatible with for-profit use. i dont have a problem with for-profit use. the problem is expecting industry to interface with free software in a way that doesnt involve exploiting developers (capitalism always will) or exploiting free software itself (capitalism always will) and like raymond and ultimately stallman, perens intends to somehow game this in our favour. this is a game where if you play, you lose. if you play, you make it unsustainable. if perens didnt think free software failed, he wouldnt need to fix it with a third option. if he didnt think open source failed, he wouldnt need to fix that either. both have failed to get industry to cooperate. heres my take: industry is always going to play dirty. we are not friends, we are opponents. we are not collaborating, we are offering ourselves for exploitation in exchange for the resources that industry monopolises. those resources do not belong to industry- they belong to all of humanity, and ultimately, if you believe this, to the land itself. industry takes everything it can get- INCLUDING our freedom! it directly lobbies money it made from extracting wealth from labour AGAINST causes that would benefit the people it extracts wealth from. so this idea that we are going to somehow trick industry into being an ally is sort of the core belief, the very premise of open source. its a fundamental flaw- it will never happen, and because of this open source will never work. at least as long as you expect it to keep its promises. what perens does not yet see, is that his new idea has the same fundamental problem, only he probably cares enough to hope that the details of the idea can fix the flaw at its core. thats the anatomy of a broken theory, and the idea reminds me of billionaire logic, if billionaires were given souls. i think perens probably still has his soul, and hes certainly no billionaire, he just thinks a little too much like one occasionally. i think its the crowd he hangs out with. i appreciate that not all his ideas are about wealth or power, but i think his best ideas are tainted by bad influences. you may think this is an entirely ideological position on my part- perens and i dont agree, so he must be wrong, etc. i can certainly see how many will take my argument that way, but that misses exactly what stallman does while companies take over gcc and libc, and other parts of gnu move further towards microsoft github. the movement needs to decide whether freedom comes first or industry does, because until that happens the industry is going to continue extracting value from lobbying and developing software against our freedom. licenses are the definitive step that transforms software into free software- they are necessary, but i agree that they are not enough. it takes people to stand up to industry abuse, whether youre driving freight or going to daily board meetings, or selling computer support via your personal website. the license cannot do that, and i dont think a contract can either. like free software and like richard stallman, perens hopes to square the circle without saying too much about this abuse, the flaws inherent in this commercial arrangement, or what really went so wrong with open source. i think his solution will demonstrate that he doesnt understand the problem- or, that he does understand, and hopes that some fancy footwork will get around the fact that not enough people care about their own freedom, and industry will never care at all. it means that this is entirely up to us. the fsf wont do it, stallman wont do it, and the industry wont do it. i guess that sounds defeatist to perens. i dont care, if hes not going to fully admit how open source was defeated, he may be closer to on track to recreating the same problems with a new brand than he realises. sadly, that argument most likely applies to why free software isnt making progress either. if you dont understand or admit the real problems, then your solution is relying either on luck, or a delusion. i really dont blame perens for that, its exactly the sort of thing capitalism does to most of us. license: 0-clause bsd ``` # 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 # # Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any # purpose with or without fee is hereby granted. # # THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES # WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF # MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. 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