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Yeah I understand the reality of the situation, I probably shouldn't have said "I don't understand" in my comment. I just think it's a shame. I don't contribute

Yeah I understand the reality of the situation, I probably shouldn't have said "I don't understand" in my comment. I just think it's a shame. I don't contribute to OSS, but I also think it's more than a "hobby". I'd rather see it as an international movement. I hope that one day the UN or something similar provides an equivalent service to Github without commercial interests. Even the UN is heavily politicised, but I don't like that the US alone gets to dictate what happens to some of the most important repositories of shared human technological knowledge when those repositories have been heavily contributed to by citizens of countries other than the US.

stonogo 7y ago
Very few people have listened when the minority raised alarms about so much "open source" development concentrated into one privately-owned closed-source service. You, and many others, have said you don't like the US government controlling this information, but people rarely seem to be interested in doing anything about it. Nothing is stopping this person from sending email patches like they do in the Linux kernel project. No sanctions are involved in this person hosting a Git installation in Crimea that the rest of the world can access. The problem isn't politics. The problem is that programmer culture currently conflates "access to Github" (which is a service run at the whims of an American defense contractor) with "free or open-source software" (which is a spectrum of opinions about copyright law). They are not related concepts, no matter what Github's marketing team has convinced the world.
eesmith 7y ago
"Open source" started in part as a political shift from the older free software movement. One justification was that companies were avoiding free software because they considered its ideological basis as incompatible with profit. Instead, "open source" focused on the development benefits, eg, others may find bugs and contribute code. I therefore agree with the view that 'free software' is a social movement, while 'open source' is a development methodology. OSS is full of commercial interests well beyond hobby interests. Joel Spolsky pointed that out in https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ : > I noticed something interesting about open source software, which is this: most of the companies spending big money to develop open source software are doing it because it’s a good business strategy for them, not because they suddenly stopped believing in capitalism and fell in love with freedom-as-in-speech. The free software movement is itself political - as are all social movements. For example, the emphasis on end-user freedoms related to copyright protection conflict with the emphasis on worker rights embodied in the Anti 996 License.

stonogo 7y ago

Very few people have listened when the minority raised alarms about so much "open source" development concentrated into one privately-owned closed-source service. You, and many others, have said you don't like the US government controlling this information, but people rarely seem to be interested in doing anything about it. Nothing is stopping this person from sending email patches like they do in the Linux kernel project. No sanctions are involved in this person hosting a Git installation in Crimea that the rest of the world can access. The problem isn't politics. The problem is that programmer culture currently conflates "access to Github" (which is a service run at the whims of an American defense contractor) with "free or open-source software" (which is a spectrum of opinions about copyright law). They are not related concepts, no matter what Github's marketing team has convinced the world.

eesmith 7y ago

"Open source" started in part as a political shift from the older free software movement. One justification was that companies were avoiding free software because they considered its ideological basis as incompatible with profit. Instead, "open source" focused on the development benefits, eg, others may find bugs and contribute code. I therefore agree with the view that 'free software' is a social movement, while 'open source' is a development methodology. OSS is full of commercial interests well beyond hobby interests. Joel Spolsky pointed that out in https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ : > I noticed something interesting about open source software, which is this: most of the companies spending big money to develop open source software are doing it because it’s a good business strategy for them, not because they suddenly stopped believing in capitalism and fell in love with freedom-as-in-speech. The free software movement is itself political - as are all social movements. For example, the emphasis on end-user freedoms related to copyright protection conflict with the emphasis on worker rights embodied in the Anti 996 License.