free software resistance

 the cost of computing freedom is eternal vigilance

### projecticide-and-overwork *originally posted:* dec 2023 *edited:* sep 2024 because im calling this "projecticide", you might think (or insist) that im trying to create or encourage a less-than-nuanced perspective. thats not how philosophical arguments really work though. you can have a less nuanced perspective about this, but if you do it will probably crumble. the only way you can make a good argument about the problem im describing is to look at it from more than one angle. i encourage anyone interested to try. projecticide is not hyperbole- it only applies to the destruction of a project. it denotes a deliberate element. it can be deliberate whether it is a result of a certain negative approach, similar to project manslaughter, or whether the absolute goal is destruction, more like murder. it does not denote problems that are due solely to incompetence or negligence, though failure to defend a project may be a factor. the first misconception you might derive from this idea is that a project has a right to exist. you may have a de facto or natural right to create a project, that isnt where im going with this, but this is one detour i can imagine the conversation taking so i want to clarify that the argument isnt intended to hinge on this point one way or the other. i will say there is not much point talking about how projects are destroyed, if we are not willing to look at history and admit that a number of large companies are willing to destroy competition by taking them over. this isnt a conspiracy theory, its a historical fact, reinforced by court cases and once-enforced laws against creating monopolies. its not just some hand-wavey hippie campfire discussion about wouldnt it be nice if we were all better people- though it probably would be nice. its okay to abandon a project. if not, im in trouble, because id be on the hook for a LOT of projects i just got bored with, or was unable to find a reason to keep working on them. some designs are simply doomed due to flaws. with the caveat that "science" is indeed abused as a buzzword in a "my dad can beat up yours" sort of way to defend extremely bad takes on a variety of issues, i do think actual science is good and a scientific approach where sometimes something JUST DOESNT WORK and we move on is also completely fine. just saying it doesnt work doesnt make it so, and a lot of heavy rhetoric is used to attack good projects. but, its true at least sometimes. and thats fine. lets start with an example where i dont care about the outcome: c coding style. there are projects that have a naive, outdated style that a lot of people dont want to work with, so im told-- and this argument seems to have at least some merit i guess, but if the majority of people working on the project are fine with the style maybe they should keep it. or, if the majority of people working on it dont like it, maybe it should change. i dont have the answer if the majority of people who WANT to work on it (but dont work on it) think it should change, id want more context. sometimes change is warranted. sometimes theres no merit in appeasing non-contributors. if both arguments can be made reasonably, then it seems like common sense that it would depend on other details. i think a lot of people would favour hard rules that just reinforce their ambitions in general, but this is why occams razor doesnt work very well on political issues. people arent rational by default, people do ridiculous things. you cant always find an explanation that is the simplest. if i dont start out with examples of what im NOT talking about, then ive already lost because immediately someone will take this in a direction that has nothing to do with what im saying. but again, its a moot point if no one is willing to admit that, yes, there are companies that see projects as competitors- and if they will buy a competitor to gut it after milking it for a couple years, they will do the same to free software projects and non-profit corporations to whatever degree they can get away with it. we cant defend projects if we ignore the fact that companies buy smaller competitors for the purpose of destroying competition in the marketplace. just because a project isnt in the marketplace, doesnt mean it is so modest and irrelevant that it wont be treated the same. we know for a fact that some companies have historically treated free software this way. it was confirmed by their behaviour, but it was also confirmed by leaked internal memos that were proven authentic as court evidence. these are facts, but when you have indisputable evidence of abuse, people who want such abuse to persist will act like the facts are in question. it has the tone of a theory, of a wild-eyed misfit yelling at a crowd, of mad speculation. so we ignore the thoroughly factual nature and resort to tone arguments. the tone arguments become popular argument, and the popular argument becomes the new consensus. this is exactly how marketing works. we know that some things are literally toxic but there are firms dedicated to saying "not really, only in high doses in rats", and yet decade after decade people get sick and- i mean the examples include cigarettes. and lead. there are always professionals willing to gaslight the world about the real costs of commercial exploitation of the public. and as ive said for years, one of the ways you can effectively kill a project is to load it with bloat. im not the only person who says this, but ive had people co-opt and twist things ive said about it, and then take the topic for themselves. i have no monopoly on this, im not likely the first person to ever talk about it, but i talk about it a lot and not everyone who does so is honest. sadly, this hurts credibility. it makes people associate the topic with other issues that can be debunked. im against the idea being co-opted dishonestly, in that way, because it has this effect. but theres only so much i can do about it. but beyond bloat as a quality that is extremely difficult to quantify, i want to go as far as to say that every feature you add to software carries potential liability. im not saying we should always be conservative, or always be minimal- we absolutely should do that more often, but im painted as being more absolute about this than i actually am. there are some applications where a minimal approach doesnt work. and there are different degrees of minimalism that work well for different projects. it misses the point to have an attitude of "anything goes" regarding bloat. bloat is the rule, and that makes software lousy. where bloat is found, "enshittification" is often not far behind. but the aspect of bloat i want to focus on right now is in terms of how difficult it is to maintain bloat. people are talking right now about volunteer burnout, and volunteer exploitation- and how relying on volunteers hurts diversity. and the proposed solution as far as i can tell, is to throw more money at bloat. in the short term thats going to work great, because more people get paid. its like a unifying standard- in the short term, a unifying standard just means more things work. in the future, a unifying standard often leads to further proliferation of alternatives, and a standard that is increasingly and more to the point- EFFECTIVELY impossible for anyone to implement or maintain. the web is a perfect example of that. its simply gone too far for any practical purpose. we keep fixing it and fixing it, which leads to it being more broken. and the solution isnt to not fix it, but to realise that weve made the web into a standard that is broken beyond repair. building on top of this mess like a jenga tower will lead invariably to more breakage. but ive railed against people for making this argument, so lets say exactly where that too will go: it will be done in a manner that further destroys the web. even the one thing that could fix it will be done in a way that breaks it further. and you can say im just being a naysayer, im just being obtuse, but when a standard (or a government) is as broken as this, the only future it has is various reforms followed by collapse. even "extreme" reforms will be implemented in a way that buys time, and leads to collapse. this isnt the end of the internet, but when the web collapses, this will be why. still, its a hell of a task to try to make a good argument about something that far in the future. as with global warming, many of us can see and talk about the problems now, but proving that destruction is inevitable takes decades, not just years. proof may take even longer than the destruction itself. i know someones thinking thats impossible, because destruction is proof. but its not, just because someones been murdered doesnt mean that the suspect was responsible, or that the motive is what its assumed to be- proof can come long after the destruction itself. i still hope humanity finds a way- regarding both climate change and the web. but i am more hopeful for human survival. what we can make a more convincing argument about is the costs of bad design. i know that the biggest resource-suck of anything i do on the computer is my web browser. that doesnt please me at all. what i want is a browser thats not github-based. that supports at least a useful subset of javascript. that gives me control (more or less like umatrix does) over what the browser is willing to accept from each website. and i could go much lighter if i was willing to give up javascript entirely, but browsers that dont support it are often buggy and crashy. they should be more stable, but they really arent designed to handle the thousands or tens of thousands of elements a web browser might be asked to deal with today. so i still get bloat. even so, this isnt about the web- the web is just being used as an example of bloat that will never be fixed. a simpler standard like gemini is very welcome, because it helps whenever gemini is used instead. gemini isnt "sold" as a solution to the webs problems, as in no reasonable person thinks it will replace the web. the web mostly replaced gopher. as someone who used to run a gopher server, im glad we have the option. you can maintain a gopher server as a non-commercial project- non-commercial as in zero paid people working on it. volunteer only. a web server? thats harder to do. a web browser? probably harder still. the harder it is to keep this going, the less of a viable solution it becomes. but heres what the talk about burnt-out volunteers and exploitation misses: a project that isnt constantly adding more features is far more possible for a small group of just volunteers to maintain. and if thats possible, it can be done without goals shifting from the desire of users and maintainers to the more ambitious (and bloated, and burnout-causing) goals of corporations. its not a problem PER SE that corporations hire people to work on free software. theres obviously a threshold, where it crosses over from occasional (and sometimes profitable) work to burnout. wherever there is too much work to be done, and no one who wants to do it, those who hold the pursestrings are going to try to find people who are cheap and exploitable- to "give them the opportunity" to work for free and "get recognition". i dont think those are bad things! but in the context of a for-profit corporation tapping the volunteers of a non-profit organisation, OF COURSE its a bad thing! at least its bad once it crosses that threshold, whether that threshold exists at the first example (probably not, but fine if you think so, im stating the threshold exists) or later when its actually taken over. i think there are examples where its not harmful, but i think examples of harm done are not rare. this distinction about large corporations is not going to be made often enough, because the people talking about the problem (which i agree, vehemently, is a problem) are going to be talking about the problem where it exists- in the corporate sector that keeps sucking volunteer projects into its domain. once a project that is modest enough to subsist on work BY volunteers, FOR volunteers is useful enough to a corporation, there is as much danger as there is to a small country with valuable "mineral" resources. these things get taken over all the time. but slap a free license on it, and suddenly all of this is a public good. corporations rhetorically sell exploitation of workers as a public good. and then they fund organisations who start inching towards the corporate rhetoric of "join us, support this public good" when that "good" looks like and is more and more like exploitation. in that context, the only solution is to pay more people. if you do that, more projects will die- this is already happening. the diversity of projects disappears (projects become bigger and more one-size-fits all, less tailored to the needs of users and more TAILORING USERS to the needs of big projects instead) and is replaced by corporate "support". but you say this and people will knee jerk and reply "ok, so you just want exploitation of"- NO, allowing people to do what they want is not exploitation. it becomes exploitation when people start getting paid differently because a company wants to exploit a project AND its developers. i DONT want companies exploiting people this way. its bad, actually. and because im defending volunteer work, because that is my focus, people make that out to "youre not talking about free software, maybe youre talking about volunteerware". but i already commented on that- there is clearly a threshold where this stops being about what users need or developers want, and it becomes more about the "needs" and ambitions of what has become the "occupying sponsor" who has hired volunteers. thats what this is about: hiring volunteers. and its a guess, but maybe this "occupying sponsor" is the very threshold we are looking for. how do we distinguish an "occupying" sponsor by non-occupying? i dont know- by degree? its tempting to say "because only the occupying sponsor exploits the project in a way that makes it unsustainable," but first thats a guess, and second if enough "non-occupying sponsors" stop by and derail the sustainability of the project, is that really much better? and i refer to such corporate occupation as free software becoming "sweatshop software". this isnt language that endorses the process. in a traditional setup you would have to pay workers, then youd get some interns (paid and unpaid) and some "consultants", and there are rules and laws for each category. the goal and m.o. for a large corporation is ALWAYS profit. profit means you will ALWAYS do as much as possible to EXPLOIT these categories: to pay less (whenever possible) to full-time workers, to make as many things part-time as possible, to have as many unpaid interns as possible, and yes, to exploit volunteers even if you have to throw some money at the organisations that herd the cats for you. the ENTIRE ARRANGEMENT is exploitation, and im against it. i dont think the solution is volunteer-only software, but treating volunteering as the problem itself is shifting the blame from people working to exploit all of us to people working for a better world. part of the reason the problem is so difficult to solve is not because the idea of volunteering is so flawed, but because capitalism is so fundamentally broken. we are being asked to find a strategy to win, when the rules essentially forbid winning. as usual, its the people doing the most to work for a better world who get the blame, and the people doing the most to destroy cooperation and reassert the status quo who are painted as being able to fix this. thats never going to work in the long run- its counterrevolution, and part of it is simply reactionary. but the problem still exists. its a real problem. it will simply be framed in a way that makes the perpetrators (the corporations) into our saviours, while those who made all the real progress possible in the first place- creating software that made LESS WORK for developers! NOT MORE! into the "real perpetrators" of this issue. this is the spin and rewriting of history that open source has enabled, and BOTH SIDES of this are problematic. the actual ROOT CAUSE however, is capitalism. and unfortunately, the problem itself is ultimately what we will be offered as the solution. and that will never fix this, but it will produce enough short term results to convince people to support a "fix" that is both impossible and fundamentally flawed. like all the software microsoft creates, this "fix" is a jenga tower that pulls stability from the base to build higher and higher. its only fair to say that all of this is unsustainable. but the people calling the exploitation of volunteers a problem? theyre not wrong, at least about that. "projecticide" is any deliberate act that predictably and (for the most part) routinely results in the end of a project. it does not include the normal abandonment of a project without interference. it particularly includes death-by-bloat (i only avoid and would discourage "project obesity" because people struggling to get healthier have enough problems without that as a metaphor- though i would still argue this IS a health issue for free software) and what amounts to death-by-features. this is not being against features per se, as people often make it out to be. ANYTHING a program does is a feature. simplicity is a feature. ANY good design, whether minimalist or appropriately elegant, is a feature. should we ONLY make software that is minimalist? a programming language for the math geniuses of the world may not look like the easiest scripting language for basic computing tasks, and thats okay. but for all the things where we CAN have tools that are NOT designed for monopolistic goals, we should get back to making those. and not having them taken over. and do i care if the needs of large corporations are met? NOT REALLY. because like the status quo regarding the survival of the species itself, the goals of large corporations are not sustainable- for the creation and maintenance of software, or for life itself. im not saying we cant have gift economy software- in fact im saying thats probably more sustainable in the long term. though id be crazy to think that every sponsor is bad. not every feature is bad and not every sponsor is bad, but every feature and every sponsor IS a potential liability. in the past we didnt have to be as careful, because fewer people were directly interested. once enough people are interested, we have to be more guarded against exploitation. the free software organisations have not remained vigilant- they make it clear they dont understand the nature of the problem. large scale incorporation leads to destruction. on the way to destruction is exploitation- these companies just use people, whether its workers at google or microsoft or people throwing themselves into nets at foxconn. none of this is going to work out, until people (users and workers) are running the show. and i dont think that will happen tomorrow, but it will have to happen soon, for the sake of the human race. none of this can refute or negate the concerns of those saying workers are being exploited. people are being exploited. volunteers are being exploited. it is necessary, only if we want things to get better and become sustainable, to frame these important issues in a way where accountability stays on the exploiters, and NOT on the seemingly naive people who "allowed this to happen" when really, the BIG PICTURE is they were unable to stave off the people taking over. theres a caveat of course. im not going to rubber stamp anyone who fights this just so corporations can take over even more. some are shills and traitors, and thats a fact of life. some really ARE naive, and some really are trying to fight the good fight. there are no easy answers here. framing the issue CORRECTLY is vital to fixing the problem sustainably. i dont pretend to have all the answers to that. what i have primarily is the objection to framing this in a way that exonerates the exploiters and blames the people who have done so much of the volunteering from the beginning. you CAN (and i do) blame them for pretending there is no problem- go ahead. what i want above all, is for people to stay on the big picture here. the details are important, provided they dont give the same people who are doing exploiting the ability to take over even more. thats my primary concern, and i think its warranted given the decades-long history we have to go on. no matter what happens, no matter what the consequences, the same people who gave us the horrible status quo weve spent decades fighting-- will use our efforts to change things for the better, against us. dont let them get away with such rhetoric. dont put the exploiters in charge of reform. and please, no matter how much you count on reform in the short run- do not settle for it, because it will always be turned against us until we step up all the way to sustainable change. right, i know- whatever THAT is. 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. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR # ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES # WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN # ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF # OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. ``` => https://freesoftwareresistance.neocities.org