Only read about half the article when I realized this rant is misplaced. It is not about Open Source. It is about what people do with Open Source.
Commercial entities were initially reluctant to jump on the bandwagon of Open Source, even before it was called Open Source, and they fought tooth and nail against it. If they could not make money they weren't interested. The community was always reasonably good to one another. Until, that is, commercial entities realized they could exploit Open Source to reduce costs which is like making money. So the problem of Open Source is and has always been people. By focusing on the thing that Open Source is this article has placed the blame on the thing it set out to attack rather than the actual people who are being immoral in their use of said thing. People are getting a pass!
Open Source is not any more broken than any other thing because it is a thing. People are broken. The community fooled themselves into thinking commercial entities would use their code both morally and ethically. But such expectations were always naive. This is the reason such a strong emphasis was placed on stopping monetary transfers and requiring the viral Copyleft! Perhaps those measures also failed to realize cost savings equals making money.
But we're still talking about people here. People are immoral and will continue to be immoral no matter what actions we take nor what restrictions we attempt to impose. The only thing we can control is whether we continue to support obviously immoral and unethical enterprises. Don't try to force enterprises to be moral, instead stop working for them. And if you continue to work on Open Source, then require a Copyleft.
Don's follow up post gets into this more, looking at what people can do both via licencing and through ethical organisations to take positive moral actions rather than abdicate responsibility entirely (and losing their agency over their creations). As he mentions here, there is a lot more to this than code and licenses, and it's in need of more thought :)
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Only read about half the article when I realized this rant is misplaced. It is not about Open Source. It is about what people do with Open Source.
Commercial entities were initially reluctant to jump on the bandwagon of Open Source, even before it was called Open Source, and they fought tooth and nail against it. If they could not make money they weren't interested. The community was always reasonably good to one another. Until, that is, commercial entities realized they could exploit Open Source to reduce costs which is like making money. So the problem of Open Source is and has always been people. By focusing on the thing that Open Source is this article has placed the blame on the thing it set out to attack rather than the actual people who are being immoral in their use of said thing. People are getting a pass!
Open Source is not any more broken than any other thing because it is a thing. People are broken. The community fooled themselves into thinking commercial entities would use their code both morally and ethically. But such expectations were always naive. This is the reason such a strong emphasis was placed on stopping monetary transfers and requiring the viral Copyleft! Perhaps those measures also failed to realize cost savings equals making money.
But we're still talking about people here. People are immoral and will continue to be immoral no matter what actions we take nor what restrictions we attempt to impose. The only thing we can control is whether we continue to support obviously immoral and unethical enterprises. Don't try to force enterprises to be moral, instead stop working for them. And if you continue to work on Open Source, then require a Copyleft.
Don's follow up post gets into this more, looking at what people can do both via licencing and through ethical organisations to take positive moral actions rather than abdicate responsibility entirely (and losing their agency over their creations). As he mentions here, there is a lot more to this than code and licenses, and it's in need of more thought :)