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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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 like “community project”. A lot of software already has “community editions” or are “community-supported”. The keyword that comes up time and again is “community”.
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Drupal slogan jumps to mind (of course...): "come for the software, stay for the community". So maybe instead of "free software" -- "community software"?
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I am super interested in this list and any terminology you can come up with. I'm extremely interested in beginning to drive software projects to explicitly pursue this holistic approach instead of "just" OSS.
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It does all feel legalistic but how to avoid exploration without that?
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Exploitation. I really hate phones.
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It would be really interesting to interview Christine Peterson about this, as she was the one who came up with the term "open source". I wonder how she sees it all now?
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Please? I really don't even know where to start with this, besides being proactive with helping bring about change.
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I've been thinking the same thing, likely because of your tweets. I was never a big FSF fan. I'm happy to have the source available, but I still want humans to keep working on the software. "Funded Open Source Systems" Like it's not even just software these days, it's systems.
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