4 ms·

> there was this enormous revolutionary fervor around free software I miss those times, and places like HN are far from it. Join mastodon if you want to breath

> there was this enormous revolutionary fervor around free software I miss those times, and places like HN are far from it. Join mastodon if you want to breathe a similar atmosphere again. > Were we hopelessly naive? No, Linux won hands down. Also, a lot of people warned about the coopting of FOSS from software freedom into unpaid labor. We saw it coming and couldn't stop it.

sramsay 5y ago
As always, I wish there was a way to DM on HN. :)
dmfb 5y ago
Marxists would argue that naive is exactly what you were, and Marxists would reference history both to show you why and what you could have done about it. Liberalism and capitalism have always been loving bedfellows.
- sramsay 5y ago
  No argument from me at all. Just a bit of sadness.
  - teknopaul 5y ago
    If you help granny cross the road, are you better off getting paid?
    - morelisp 5y ago
      Spare a dime for poor Larry and Sergey?
- goodpoint 5y ago
  Care to explain what should have been done? Also, what were people naive about?
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    Not GP, but if I extend the “marxists warned” logic, what could have been done would be to own the means of production. In this case, as with a lot of other Marxist analysis, that means taking a different view of what freedom entails, tying permission to exploit labor to a commitment to serving that labor and sharing its spoils. To some extent later GNU licensing reflects similar thinking. I think what was naive was building OSS around service, support and consulting. Instead it could have been built around mutual benefit as a governing principle.
    - morelisp 5y ago
      See also https://www.boundary2.org/2018/07/mueller/ https://www.boundary2.org/2018/07/mueller/ Stallman (and others e.g. Lessig) had clear visions of where they wanted to be but were thoroughly stuck in an end-of-history mindset - "we'll do the work to get this small part of society from A to B, and then we'll be at B." Well, no, then someone is going to drag parts back to A, and another is going to drag a few over to C, and after a few steps of this your rhetoric around digital freedom is going to be half fueling the propaganda of the largest, most powerful corporations in American history, and half the weak intellectual justification for a right-wing populist riot.
      - dmfb 5y ago
        Awesome article!!! So glad I posted this comment and you replied. This article seriously rules!
        morelisp 5y ago
        Then you might also appreciate the other two entries in the trifecta of leftist writing about SV that usually get me greyed out: https://thebaffler.com/latest/capitalisms-new-clothes-morozov https://thebaffler.com/latest/capitalisms-new-clothes-morozo... https://www.e-flux.com/journal/70/60567/the-vectoralist-class-part-ii/ https://www.e-flux.com/journal/70/60567/the-vectoralist-clas...
    - 5y ago

sramsay 5y ago

As always, I wish there was a way to DM on HN. :)

dmfb 5y ago

Marxists would argue that naive is exactly what you were, and Marxists would reference history both to show you why and what you could have done about it. Liberalism and capitalism have always been loving bedfellows.

sramsay 5y ago
No argument from me at all. Just a bit of sadness.
- teknopaul 5y ago
  If you help granny cross the road, are you better off getting paid?
  - morelisp 5y ago
    Spare a dime for poor Larry and Sergey?
goodpoint 5y ago
Care to explain what should have been done? Also, what were people naive about?
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  Not GP, but if I extend the “marxists warned” logic, what could have been done would be to own the means of production. In this case, as with a lot of other Marxist analysis, that means taking a different view of what freedom entails, tying permission to exploit labor to a commitment to serving that labor and sharing its spoils. To some extent later GNU licensing reflects similar thinking. I think what was naive was building OSS around service, support and consulting. Instead it could have been built around mutual benefit as a governing principle.
  - morelisp 5y ago
    See also https://www.boundary2.org/2018/07/mueller/ https://www.boundary2.org/2018/07/mueller/ Stallman (and others e.g. Lessig) had clear visions of where they wanted to be but were thoroughly stuck in an end-of-history mindset - "we'll do the work to get this small part of society from A to B, and then we'll be at B." Well, no, then someone is going to drag parts back to A, and another is going to drag a few over to C, and after a few steps of this your rhetoric around digital freedom is going to be half fueling the propaganda of the largest, most powerful corporations in American history, and half the weak intellectual justification for a right-wing populist riot.
    - dmfb 5y ago
      Awesome article!!! So glad I posted this comment and you replied. This article seriously rules!
      - morelisp 5y ago
        Then you might also appreciate the other two entries in the trifecta of leftist writing about SV that usually get me greyed out: https://thebaffler.com/latest/capitalisms-new-clothes-morozov https://thebaffler.com/latest/capitalisms-new-clothes-morozo... https://www.e-flux.com/journal/70/60567/the-vectoralist-class-part-ii/ https://www.e-flux.com/journal/70/60567/the-vectoralist-clas...
  - 5y ago