Been thinking a lot about what comes after “free software” & “open source.” Both terms were coined when the tech industry (& the world) was a very different place. I think we’ve outgrown them.
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Early thoughts: both concepts are too code-centric and too license-oriented. Many things that we think of as indispensable to modern open source projects are not included in the formal definitions. This is a good sign that we have another, as-yet-unnamed concept in play.
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Things not included in either concept include: - community building - accepting contributions from other people - ethical use of software - distribution mechanisms - governance - use of paid vs free labor
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And many more - I’ve made a whole huge list. Perhaps I will even
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Open source & free software licenses were designed to correct the power imbalance that existed 30 years ago - when large companies selling proprietary software held power over their users. “Take this software for free!” the licenses said. “Fix it yourself if something breaks.”
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Open source and free software licenses gave power to the users - the individuals - at the expense of the companies.
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But that balance of power has shifted over the last 30 years. What we are noticing is that free and open source software is now accumulating power once again in the _companies_, since they’re the end the users of the software, rather than individuals.
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And so we are seeing calls for licenses that shift power back to the authors - who are often still individuals or collectives rather than companies.
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The OSI can persist in its insistence that “open source” means transferring power to the user, but if they do, I think they’re missing the larger point of their movement.
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If we want free and open source software to continue to be about giving power to individuals at the expense of companies, then it’s time for a change.
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I want to read more about the legal aspects of open source licensing - both generally in terms of what kind of case law exists, and specifically around what constitutes "distribution."
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But IANAL, so I've googled, but I don't know how to evaluate the trustworthiness of the results. I assume that in law, as in software development, there are a lot of bad takes out there.
Law and law-adjacent folks: any pointers?Show this thread
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I'd argue that a lot of this _is_ understood to be captured by the term "open source"... it's important to differentiate between open source software/licenses vs. development practices vs. community
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...and I was about to argue that much is incorporated in "software freedom"! I have been also using "ethical technology" & "digital autonomy". Our issues are big ones & they are inextricably intertwined with so many others in any fight for appreciable control & safety of our tech
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Inclusive Software
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I think code is going to rapidly become less special, we can already build more or less any information system that we want. We need a movement that focuses on what the choices mean to the people who are affected by them. ... it's a decade ago and I'm talking to
@zhitomirskiyiThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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I was having a discussion on my own thread about the OSD and if "regardless of purpose" still applies. (I was drawing the line between commercial and non-commercial.)
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Yes, there's so much more. At
@publiccodenet we try to capture some of it in a Standard for Public Code. https://standard.publiccode.netThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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If it uses paid labor it is not open source?
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Nobody said this at all, and this discussion goes beyond "open source".
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I understood
@sarahmei's tweet as implying that we should include "free vs paid labor" as part of the defining project of the new open source concept. -
It's a list of relevant things not accounted for in either FS/OSS movements. I can see why they didn't occur initially. As for €, it seems important to be able to classify some projects as "no paid labor" but I don't think anyone called for banning paid labor as you suggest.
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(reposted because I misquoted the original tweet)
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If anything, I think the misconception that OSS is purely written for free in people's spare time/weekends is incredibly damaging. This view is perpetuated because paid labor in OSS is often not publicly acknowledged enough. So this dimension should definitely be more prominent.
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I agree making it more prominent is a good thing. But characterizing some projects as "free as in labor costs" is definitely not something I'd like to see happening.
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It's be nice to have, like, low level crypto / security infrastructure be built without any companies or govts having leverage. That's what I was thinking there.
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