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FOSS isn't a business model. It never was and never will be. What Free Software always was is an ethical movement—one which didn't need to prioritize income st

FOSS isn't a business model. It never was and never will be. What Free Software always was is an ethical movement—one which didn't need to prioritize income streams because the point wasn't sustainable development, it was user freedom. Nowhere in "users should have the freedom to do what they want with software" does it say "and we should be able to pay a few developers a salary for their work towards that fundamentally ethical goal". Under the original paradigm and goals, any income streams are just cream on top of doing the right thing. According to the OSI's history of itself [0], at some point people got it into their heads that the open development model was inherently a good one for business, too—Netscape jumped on board, and then some people got together and decided to rebrand Free Software: > The conferees decided it was time to dump the moralizing and confrontational attitude that had been associated with "free software" in the past and sell the idea strictly on the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape. They brainstormed about tactics and a new label. "Open source", contributed by Chris Peterson, was the best thing they came up with. The word FOSS reminds me a lot of American corporate Buddhism—mindfulness and meditation totally removed from its original deeply religious context and turned into some sort of self-help program, with the result being something that would be barely recognizable to the original practitioners. Free Software was never about sustainable development. It was about doing the right thing—enabling user freedom—because it is right. Everything else was just means to that end, but at some point along the line the means became the end and we started wondering why FOSS wasn't paying the bills like it was supposed to. [0] http://web.archive.org/web/20071115150105/https://opensource.org/history/ http://web.archive.org/web/20071115150105/https://opensource...

notdiaphone 2y ago
> FOSS isn't a business model. It never was and never will be. This seems an interesting point and one I share. Yet it seems equally unethical to enable the corporate extractavism that we now see. It's time the "users should have the freedom to do what they want with software" be updated to something like 'users and makers should be free of coercion and exploitation by software.' What, after all, are the grounds for such freedoms? Are they issues of property? Or are they ones of the dignity of the persons involved? It doesn't seem controversial that we tend to find it problematic if another uses us as means to their ends without our consent. In personal actions, many act as if they believe this. Yet corporations consistently do not act with those values. You're right: we should strive toward a system not in which it's viable to create businesses out of FOSS but in which both users and developers are not exploited or used unwillingly.
- fluoridation 2y ago
  >Yet it seems equally unethical to enable the corporate extractavism that we now see. If someone uses and benefits from your product, at what point does it become "unethical extractivism"? If I as an individual figure out a way to build a business centered around your product that you make for free, is that already unethical, or is it at a later point? >It doesn't seem controversial that we tend to find it problematic if another uses us as means to their ends without our consent. But you gave your consent by publishing software for anyone to use.
KingMob 2y ago
> What Free Software always was is an ethical movement—one which didn't need to prioritize income streams because the point wasn't sustainable development, it was user freedom. This actually illustrates the key flaw in Stallman's understanding. To him, "user" encompassed both humans and megacorporations. But a corporation is an abstract legal convenience, cannot feel the pain of being "thwarted" in its use of software, and thus, want freedom. Freedom is only an ethical good for humans. Further, I would argue that providing megacorporations with unpaid labor is deeply misguided, if not actually unethical itself. Encouraging otherwise borders on encouraging exploitation. tl;dr Nobody should go broke to enrich Bezos in their spare time, and encouraging THAT is unethical.
- asddubs 2y ago
  Well, stallman would probably advocate for the AGPL in such cases, which the megacorps are still wary of.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  Stallman's reasoning wasn't flawed (at least, not in the respect you state). Corporations are simply a group of humans. I don't think there's a good argument to be made that humans should have a right to X, but suddenly lose that right when they get together as a group. > Further, I would argue that providing megacorporations with unpaid labor is deeply misguided, if not actually unethical itself. Nobody is "providing megacorporations with unpaid labor". People are making an effort to put something out there for the benefit of the entire human race, and if that includes corporations that's fine. Not one person is harmed if Amazon takes my open source project and uses it to turn a profit, even if they make it into closed source. My project remains freely available for the benefit of all, just as it was before Amazon used it. So who exactly has been harmed? Not me, I'm in the same state as I was before. Not my (non-Amazon) users, they are in the same state as they were before. Not Amazon, of course. If every single person is no worse off or even better off than before, I don't see how you can argue that the corporate users are doing something unethical. It seems to me that really this isn't about ethics, but is about "we don't like those icky people" masquerading in pretty sounding language. > tl;dr Nobody should go broke to enrich Bezos in their spare time... Nobody should go broke to make open source software, period.
spookie 2y ago
Sometimes I wish I could upvote twice in replies like this.

notdiaphone 2y ago

> FOSS isn't a business model. It never was and never will be. This seems an interesting point and one I share. Yet it seems equally unethical to enable the corporate extractavism that we now see. It's time the "users should have the freedom to do what they want with software" be updated to something like 'users and makers should be free of coercion and exploitation by software.' What, after all, are the grounds for such freedoms? Are they issues of property? Or are they ones of the dignity of the persons involved? It doesn't seem controversial that we tend to find it problematic if another uses us as means to their ends without our consent. In personal actions, many act as if they believe this. Yet corporations consistently do not act with those values. You're right: we should strive toward a system not in which it's viable to create businesses out of FOSS but in which both users and developers are not exploited or used unwillingly.

fluoridation 2y ago
>Yet it seems equally unethical to enable the corporate extractavism that we now see. If someone uses and benefits from your product, at what point does it become "unethical extractivism"? If I as an individual figure out a way to build a business centered around your product that you make for free, is that already unethical, or is it at a later point? >It doesn't seem controversial that we tend to find it problematic if another uses us as means to their ends without our consent. But you gave your consent by publishing software for anyone to use.

KingMob 2y ago

> What Free Software always was is an ethical movement—one which didn't need to prioritize income streams because the point wasn't sustainable development, it was user freedom. This actually illustrates the key flaw in Stallman's understanding. To him, "user" encompassed both humans and megacorporations. But a corporation is an abstract legal convenience, cannot feel the pain of being "thwarted" in its use of software, and thus, want freedom. Freedom is only an ethical good for humans. Further, I would argue that providing megacorporations with unpaid labor is deeply misguided, if not actually unethical itself. Encouraging otherwise borders on encouraging exploitation. tl;dr Nobody should go broke to enrich Bezos in their spare time, and encouraging THAT is unethical.

asddubs 2y ago
Well, stallman would probably advocate for the AGPL in such cases, which the megacorps are still wary of.
bigstrat2003 2y ago
Stallman's reasoning wasn't flawed (at least, not in the respect you state). Corporations are simply a group of humans. I don't think there's a good argument to be made that humans should have a right to X, but suddenly lose that right when they get together as a group. > Further, I would argue that providing megacorporations with unpaid labor is deeply misguided, if not actually unethical itself. Nobody is "providing megacorporations with unpaid labor". People are making an effort to put something out there for the benefit of the entire human race, and if that includes corporations that's fine. Not one person is harmed if Amazon takes my open source project and uses it to turn a profit, even if they make it into closed source. My project remains freely available for the benefit of all, just as it was before Amazon used it. So who exactly has been harmed? Not me, I'm in the same state as I was before. Not my (non-Amazon) users, they are in the same state as they were before. Not Amazon, of course. If every single person is no worse off or even better off than before, I don't see how you can argue that the corporate users are doing something unethical. It seems to me that really this isn't about ethics, but is about "we don't like those icky people" masquerading in pretty sounding language. > tl;dr Nobody should go broke to enrich Bezos in their spare time... Nobody should go broke to make open source software, period.

spookie 2y ago

Sometimes I wish I could upvote twice in replies like this.