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Copyleft is a compromise, and one of the most clever, honestly: ideally, the law should compel everyone to have the ability to change the devices they own and d
by shadowgovt 2y ago
Copyleft is a compromise, and one of the most clever, honestly: ideally, the law should compel everyone to have the ability to change the devices they own and directly tell the authors of software that if they try to interfere with that, they can pound sand; their intellectual property rights don't extend to telling other people what to do.
It does not. But it does allow for the author to set the terms of the protection of their intellectual property.
That's the kind of compromise I'm talking about. And the FS movement hasn't figured out how to recapture that lightning in a bottle for the new Cloud era. Cloud is somewhat incompatible with the hardware-ownership-based philosophy of the Four Freedoms; something new and more fundamental is needed and the calcified, old movement can't seem to find it.
And they certainly don't seem to be trying, keeping the old leadership at the cost of turning away new members (with the implication that they value historical accomplishment more than new people). I've seen multiple people suggest that the right solution is to just abandon the FS movement qua the people running it and embrace new approaches; I think there's meat on those bones. It's a longer, harder fight if the old guard is left behind, but if they won't change they can't help.
- fsflover 2y agoWhy do you think AGPLv3 isn't good enough for that? I've never seen Google and Co using it, while small companies do.
- shadowgovt 2y agoI think your statement answers itself.
- fsflover 2y agoNo, it's a win for users that large corporations avoid this license.
- shadowgovt 2y agoMost users use those large corporations. I'm afraid I don't follow your thinking on this topic.
- fsflover 2y agoNothing actually prevents those corporations from using AGPLv3. The are only afraid that they can't create a walled garden with it. So users are protected from that, as designed.
- immibis 2y agoUsers are protected from interacting with the big corporations they exclusively interact with?
- fsflover 2y agoThis particular way of creating a walled garden, which relies on free work of free software volunteers, doesn't work thanks to AGPLv3. Whenever this license is involved, it works.
- shadowgovt 2y agoIt unfortunately does nothing to prevent creation of a walled garden via creation of proprietary content in a proprietary network fabric on proprietary infrastructure, which... Seems to be all you need, given the popularity of Facebook, X, YouTube, and the multiple cloud service providers supporting something like (depending on who's crunching the numbers) 74% of enterprises. If the goal was to change behavior... Behavior refuses to change.
- fsflover 2y agoWhoever wants, can use Mastodon and others just fine. AGPLv3 works flawlessly here.
- tourmalinetaco 2y ago