Re:Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2016)
by stcredzero on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @12:18PM
(#17239163)
Thinking that the essay leads to isolation is a dangerous oversimplification.
That's fair. My motivation is primarily my 30 years of watching the FSF, going from fanboy to skeptic, and less about the essay specifically.
It is actually very important that some individuals speak out and do "strikes" (eg perform "unbeneficial actions" for ethical reasons) because it's the starting point to bring unsuspecting people to think that there might be something wrong with the service they use.
The dramatic "actions" need to be done from a place of philosophical and moral integrity. The actions themselves need to be executed ethically. What I've encountered is the leaking-in of groupthink, in such a way as to other and turn away outsiders. This seems to have infected our society's view of activism as a whole.
The root idea here is to make people think about new questions and open new doors into stuff that they didn't think was questionable
The potential downside is to make people think, "Well, there go those nutcases again!" How much of that potential downside has the FSF accomplished? Way more than you'd like, from where I'm sitting.
You won't have done the step where you healthily criticize every single part of some service, deconstructing deeper and deeper the model it projected.
Critiques are valuable, but they will never easily reach any but a small fraction of the populace who like to analyze things as a general interest. Everyone analyzes things at that level, but usually only when they directly have something to lose or to gain. Also, it's easy to critique and deconstruct. It's harder by far to build. People should be highly skeptical of those who critique, but cannot support or substantiate their prescriptions for the future. (Particularly if those are utopian in nature.) Where free software and open source have won, it is through building. I think that is rightly so, because it's building and flourishing which is the only legitimate proof of ideology.
Look to the scene from the Gandhi movie, where he led the march to gather salt. Show by doing. Address a simple and stark injustice. Act constructively. (If possible tactically elicit a response that highlights the injustice.) That is how you reach people.
Too much of what I see around free software seems to be more about posturing.
That's fair. My motivation is primarily my 30 years of watching the FSF, going from fanboy to skeptic, and less about the essay specifically.
It is actually very important that some individuals speak out and do "strikes" (eg perform "unbeneficial actions" for ethical reasons) because it's the starting point to bring unsuspecting people to think that there might be something wrong with the service they use.
The dramatic "actions" need to be done from a place of philosophical and moral integrity. The actions themselves need to be executed ethically. What I've encountered is the leaking-in of groupthink, in such a way as to other and turn away outsiders. This seems to have infected our society's view of activism as a whole.
The root idea here is to make people think about new questions and open new doors into stuff that they didn't think was questionable
The potential downside is to make people think, "Well, there go those nutcases again!" How much of that potential downside has the FSF accomplished? Way more than you'd like, from where I'm sitting.
You won't have done the step where you healthily criticize every single part of some service, deconstructing deeper and deeper the model it projected.
Critiques are valuable, but they will never easily reach any but a small fraction of the populace who like to analyze things as a general interest. Everyone analyzes things at that level, but usually only when they directly have something to lose or to gain. Also, it's easy to critique and deconstruct. It's harder by far to build. People should be highly skeptical of those who critique, but cannot support or substantiate their prescriptions for the future. (Particularly if those are utopian in nature.) Where free software and open source have won, it is through building. I think that is rightly so, because it's building and flourishing which is the only legitimate proof of ideology.
Look to the scene from the Gandhi movie, where he led the march to gather salt. Show by doing. Address a simple and stark injustice. Act constructively. (If possible tactically elicit a response that highlights the injustice.) That is how you reach people.
Too much of what I see around free software seems to be more about posturing.