3 ms·

One attempt was open source. Or perhaps libre software? I guess it is not a success since only one of these looks mainstream.

by thih9 5mo ago

krupan 5mo ago
Free/Open Source software is very mainstream now I'm not sure what you mean, but maybe we are taking too much of it for granted?
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- thih9 5mo ago
  I meant that “open source” achieved pop culture level recognition. Libre software never did, most people are still unaware of the difference or don’t care. A popular claim against open source is that it alone is insufficient to prevent abuse (here: accumulation of power). Recent decade has shown many cases of that, with corporations adopting open source projects without giving power to their users; e.g.: Android or cloud services. Perhaps if we understood open source less as a process and more as a movement (so: if libre software movement was more popular) things would be different.
  - krupan 5mo ago
    I can agree that the original aims of the movement haven't fully caught on, especially the subtle difference between Open Source and Free/Libre software. The pragmatic side of better security, low-bureaucracy standardization, and low price won out over Freedom for freedom's sake. To me that's most apparent today with LLMs. Those are completely proprietary and privately controlled, yet the software world now LOVES them.
bamboozled 5mo ago
Open source is still around ? It would be vastly improving your life even though you can’t see it.
hamdingers 5mo ago
It is curious how successful AI developers have been in trying to redefine "open source" as "the binary is free to download"
- echelon 5mo ago
  The OSI is garbage, and "open source" outside of the most viral licenses is too. I'll go further and say that it accelerated getting us into this mess we're in today. The OSI is owned and controlled by the tech titan hyperscalers who benefit from free labor. Useful "open source software" always gets encrusted by the big titans that then build means to control the tech, and then the means to control us. And just to rub salt in the wounds, they rarely compensate the original authors. Android is Linux, right? Then why can't we install our own software? Why does it spy on us? Open source is so great, right? 95% of humans will never own a phone that gives them freedom. And we enabled that. Everything we as tech people own is also getting locked down. We're going to have to start providing our state ID to access the internet soon. But OMG, Year of Linux on the Desktop 2012!!12 Pretty soon you won't even be able to use your Linux. Everything will be attested. Open source hasn't stopped power from accruing to the titans. It's accelerated their domination. People rush to defend Google and Amazon when you criticize how they profit off of Redis, Elasticsearch, etc. The teams that build the tech aren't becoming wealthy, and most of the bytes flowing through those systems are doing so behind closed source AWS/GCP/Azure offerings. These companies then use their insane reach to tax everything that moves. Google owns 92% (yes, 92%!) of URL bars and they tax every search, especially searches for other companies' trademarks. They do even better - they turn it into a bidding war. Almost nothing that exists in the world today can make it to you without being taxed by them. If they don't like your content, you just disappear. Mobile platforms have never been ours. We can't install what we want. We're soon going to be locked at the firmware level to just Google and Apple and forced to use their adblocking-free, tracker-enabled "browsers" (1984 telescreens). Any competition can't get started due to the massive scale required, meanwhile Apple and Google tax everything at 30% and start correlating everything you do, everyone you talk to, everywhere you go in their panopticon. "Open source" was wool pulled over our eyes so that we happily built, supported, and enabled this. Open source should be replaced with "our proletariat users and small businesses can have this for free, but businesses listed on any stock exchange cannot commercialize this ever unless they pay out the nose for it". "Source available" / shareware is peak. Give your users the thing, and the means to maintain it after you're gone, but tell Google et al. to go away. "Fuck you, pay me" as the artists frequently say. But also, let's stop giving the Death Star free labor. (edit: I'd love a feedback sampling of the heavy downvotes. OSI purists? Goog employees? Surely MIT/BSD fans and not anyone who follows Stallman.)

One attempt was open source. Or perhaps libre software? I guess it is not a success since only one of these looks mainstream.

by thih9 5mo ago

One attempt was open source. Or perhaps libre software? I guess it is not a success since only one of these looks mainstream.

krupan 5mo ago

Free/Open Source software is very mainstream now I'm not sure what you mean, but maybe we are taking too much of it for granted?

deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
thih9 5mo ago
I meant that “open source” achieved pop culture level recognition. Libre software never did, most people are still unaware of the difference or don’t care. A popular claim against open source is that it alone is insufficient to prevent abuse (here: accumulation of power). Recent decade has shown many cases of that, with corporations adopting open source projects without giving power to their users; e.g.: Android or cloud services. Perhaps if we understood open source less as a process and more as a movement (so: if libre software movement was more popular) things would be different.
- krupan 5mo ago
  I can agree that the original aims of the movement haven't fully caught on, especially the subtle difference between Open Source and Free/Libre software. The pragmatic side of better security, low-bureaucracy standardization, and low price won out over Freedom for freedom's sake. To me that's most apparent today with LLMs. Those are completely proprietary and privately controlled, yet the software world now LOVES them.

bamboozled 5mo ago

Open source is still around ? It would be vastly improving your life even though you can’t see it.

hamdingers 5mo ago

It is curious how successful AI developers have been in trying to redefine "open source" as "the binary is free to download"

echelon 5mo ago
The OSI is garbage, and "open source" outside of the most viral licenses is too. I'll go further and say that it accelerated getting us into this mess we're in today. The OSI is owned and controlled by the tech titan hyperscalers who benefit from free labor. Useful "open source software" always gets encrusted by the big titans that then build means to control the tech, and then the means to control us. And just to rub salt in the wounds, they rarely compensate the original authors. Android is Linux, right? Then why can't we install our own software? Why does it spy on us? Open source is so great, right? 95% of humans will never own a phone that gives them freedom. And we enabled that. Everything we as tech people own is also getting locked down. We're going to have to start providing our state ID to access the internet soon. But OMG, Year of Linux on the Desktop 2012!!12 Pretty soon you won't even be able to use your Linux. Everything will be attested. Open source hasn't stopped power from accruing to the titans. It's accelerated their domination. People rush to defend Google and Amazon when you criticize how they profit off of Redis, Elasticsearch, etc. The teams that build the tech aren't becoming wealthy, and most of the bytes flowing through those systems are doing so behind closed source AWS/GCP/Azure offerings. These companies then use their insane reach to tax everything that moves. Google owns 92% (yes, 92%!) of URL bars and they tax every search, especially searches for other companies' trademarks. They do even better - they turn it into a bidding war. Almost nothing that exists in the world today can make it to you without being taxed by them. If they don't like your content, you just disappear. Mobile platforms have never been ours. We can't install what we want. We're soon going to be locked at the firmware level to just Google and Apple and forced to use their adblocking-free, tracker-enabled "browsers" (1984 telescreens). Any competition can't get started due to the massive scale required, meanwhile Apple and Google tax everything at 30% and start correlating everything you do, everyone you talk to, everywhere you go in their panopticon. "Open source" was wool pulled over our eyes so that we happily built, supported, and enabled this. Open source should be replaced with "our proletariat users and small businesses can have this for free, but businesses listed on any stock exchange cannot commercialize this ever unless they pay out the nose for it". "Source available" / shareware is peak. Give your users the thing, and the means to maintain it after you're gone, but tell Google et al. to go away. "Fuck you, pay me" as the artists frequently say. But also, let's stop giving the Death Star free labor. (edit: I'd love a feedback sampling of the heavy downvotes. OSI purists? Goog employees? Surely MIT/BSD fans and not anyone who follows Stallman.)