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Freedom is never won forever. Every generation has to fight to keep it back. We got great gifts from our elders: an internet that is based on open specs. Open s
by Iv 7y ago
Freedom is never won forever. Every generation has to fight to keep it back. We got great gifts from our elders: an internet that is based on open specs. Open source licenses that are legally tested. An ethos of sharing. Organizations with real power. Cryptography.
We have to continue on new fronts. Right now people are making open source silicon, but it is still in its infancy, it is to Intel as Linux 1.0 was to Microsoft: a laughable threat.
We need to find better licenses for AI models, promote the Affero GPL. Forge new tools to protect privacy. Maybe work more closely with governments that have understood that privacy is not just a geek's concern?
Enjoy your freedoms, but don't take them for granted. Fighting for them, forging the tools to preserve them, it is worth a bit of your money and a bit of your time.
- whenchamenia 7y agoAnd freedom of speech. Without that, code will become the domain of only big industry. Code is speech. And when speech is free, even when dangerous, so is code.
- CodeMage 7y agoYou can see the same patterns in the society, in the erosion of workers' rights that our ancestors bought literally with their blood and suffering. It's the same force acting on all fronts.
- pathseeker 7y agoWhich workers rights laws have been repealed?
- capdeck 7y agoGig economy and driving an Uber are good examples. The latter doesn't even recognize you as an employee -- hence no rights.
- pathseeker 7y agoIt's been that way forever. Contractors/individual proprietors/whatever are not employees.
- narag 7y agoThose guys are no contractors. There are laws with different treatment based on telling signs that a worker is an employee. I can't tell about the USA, but around here you're an employee when you work for one employer that decides the hours and other details, and provides the basic means for the job (the app in this case).
- cunac 7y agobasic means/tools -> car you set your time and drive whenever you please or not at all so in conclusion even by your test you are not employee
- thekyle 7y agoPretty sure that Uber/Lyft drivers set their own hours and many of them use many different ride sharing apps.
- narag 7y agoThe guys that deliver food have been declared covert employees recently here in lower jurisdiction. Not sure about taxi apps, there must exist a loophole at least to start. The question is you are very dependent of some party.
- pjmlp 7y agoThe are still subject to work law. If the work law in US does not protect them, that is another matter.
- chrisco255 7y agoThis is no different than handyman services, plumbers, tile layers, etc. When you work as a subcontractor, you are employed on a per job basis. Same goes for Uber and Lyft. I've heard far too many stories from these drivers about how their life has improved from the often supplemental income to be against it.
- panopticon 7y agoThere have been a number of laws that diminish collective bargaining. Things like "right to work" laws ostensibly give individual workers more rights, but they have a devastating effect on union membership and collective action. Sure, you might have more "rights" if you were to tally them up. But human psychology is easily gamed, and things like this end up hurting employees on the whole.
- yummypaint 7y agoIm sick of seeing these sorts of nonsense questionons on HN. This isnt a question at all, it's an assertion which offers no evidence. This sort of thing wastes everyone's time and draws attention away from fruitful discussion, perhaps even by design. People who earnestly want to engage should avoid falling into the trap of responding and thereby increasing the visibility of these bad faith comments.
- IOT_Apprentice 7y agoYou also had Reagan bust the Air Traffic Controller's Union.
- konschubert 7y agoNo particular change in laws, the corporations just got better at exploiting loopholes. For example by hiring contractors in place of employees.
- justizin 7y agop sure GPLv3 does anything the Affero GPL would do, the problem is that absolutely fucking everyone is terrified of it.
- Iv 7y agoI don't think so. If you build the next gmail with GPLv3 software, you don't have to share your code as you are not selling any binary. The Affero mandates that you share the code with clients who use the service, not just people who execute the binary.
- seisvelas 7y ago>Freedom is never won forever. Every generation has to fight to keep it back. This reminds me of the Daniel Kahn song 'Freedom is a Verb'. Great listen that argues exactly this.