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Freedom Ladder: Share your free software story
- p4bl0 4y agoThis is what I wrote in response to the "What is your biggest frustration with free software?" question: > I would have to say my biggest frustration is not with the software but with some people in the free software community, who take the four freedoms as a religion, to the point where they cannot see when these software freedoms can be a problem for people. For example, the CoopCycle project is developing a bike delivery platform, allowing its users to organize as a cooperative company, and their license disallow usage in other company settings. I strongly believe this is a good decision on their part, otherwise they would just be developing software that some people with a bit of technical knowledge could use to exploit others, just like companies as Uber do. But some free software zealots disagree with this choice because it is contrary to the freedom to use the software for whatever purpose. These people forget that what's important, the goal of the free software movement, is the freedom of people, and certainly not the freedom of software, which is only a mean, not the goal. Sometimes those people make me wonder if maybe we should just stop talking about free software and start talking about "emancipatory" software instead. But I really would prefer if we could just, as a community, grow and adapt to our society, to take into account the evolution of capitalism and what are the requirement for software to support freedom, to help us be free.