Software consultant. Bestselling Author. Loves rum, alt culture, games & metal.
Formerly Head of engineering, chief technical architect, head principal engineer, lead dev, etc.
Location
London, UK
Work
Independent Software Consultant at Electric Head Software
The central point of the piece is my disagreement with this:
It doesn't matter if the one being shared with is a billion dollar company or a dirt poor kid in Dirthole, Nowhere, software should be free as in freedom for all.
It does matter. It should matter. And the lassiez fair attitude that suggests software freedom is more important than freedom from exploitation is wrongheaded.
I appreciate your well reasoned reply, but I (obviously) disagree. Buying people coffee isn't the same as paying rent, and if the prevailing attitude (gratis) is tyrannical, it has to change.
The FSF fundamentally understood this at the very start, before the open-source movement tried to open up free software to corporate exploitation.
It does matter. It should matter. And the lassiez fair attitude that suggests software freedom is more important than freedom from exploitation is wrongheaded.
And that is what I don't understand. Where is the line that makes it exploitation? If I make a for-profit app using an open source piece of software, that's not exploitation, but if Microsoft or Amazon make the same app it is exploitation? Or am I wrong and it would also be exploitation if I made the app since my company was successful enough for me to retire in my thirties? What is the deciding factor between exploiting and not explointing?
Software consultant. Bestselling Author. Loves rum, alt culture, games & metal.
Formerly Head of engineering, chief technical architect, head principal engineer, lead dev, etc.
Location
London, UK
Work
Independent Software Consultant at Electric Head Software
Exploitation is all about a power imbalance (in almost every context).
When the organisation exploiting your work is several orders of magnitude more equipped to do so than you are, your choice and agency is removed. In those very specific examples - a small for-profit organisation may well be literally exploiting your work, but they are much more likely to interact in reasonable / good faith than a large organisation that's able to litigate you out of existence, or replace your entire position in the market on a whim.
It's not cut and dry, but the larger the imbalance of power, the more it trends towards exploitation by the original metric - "the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work".
Folks that work in software are often deeply uncomfortable with that non-absolute, grey ambiguity, but it doesn't make it any less true. The scale of exploitation available to the largest organisations on earth who have the might to do as they wish, is vastly different than a small vague co-operative sibling org adding value to your work.
Even as a trite example "totally free, unless your company makes more than $3m a year" would probably be a better licensing term than anything that exists at the moment w.r.t exploitation. Sharing supports nobody, in that relationship.
So from your perspective it is the existence of the power imbalance that makes it exploitation regardless of the actions actually taken, or perhaps because of that actions that the more powerful party could take in the future. That's interesting, I've never considered it from that angle.
Folks that work in software are often deeply uncomfortable with that non-absolute, grey ambiguity
Yep, that describes my feeling of it to a tee. I'm much more comfortable with an absolute stance, ala anyone can make money or no one can make money type of license.
Thanks for your response. I still don't agree, but you have given me some things worth thinking about. :)
Software consultant. Bestselling Author. Loves rum, alt culture, games & metal.
Formerly Head of engineering, chief technical architect, head principal engineer, lead dev, etc.
Location
London, UK
Work
Independent Software Consultant at Electric Head Software
The central point of the piece is my disagreement with this:
It does matter. It should matter. And the lassiez fair attitude that suggests software freedom is more important than freedom from exploitation is wrongheaded.
I appreciate your well reasoned reply, but I (obviously) disagree. Buying people coffee isn't the same as paying rent, and if the prevailing attitude (gratis) is tyrannical, it has to change.
The FSF fundamentally understood this at the very start, before the open-source movement tried to open up free software to corporate exploitation.
And that is what I don't understand. Where is the line that makes it exploitation? If I make a for-profit app using an open source piece of software, that's not exploitation, but if Microsoft or Amazon make the same app it is exploitation? Or am I wrong and it would also be exploitation if I made the app since my company was successful enough for me to retire in my thirties? What is the deciding factor between exploiting and not explointing?
Exploitation is all about a power imbalance (in almost every context).
When the organisation exploiting your work is several orders of magnitude more equipped to do so than you are, your choice and agency is removed. In those very specific examples - a small for-profit organisation may well be literally exploiting your work, but they are much more likely to interact in reasonable / good faith than a large organisation that's able to litigate you out of existence, or replace your entire position in the market on a whim.
It's not cut and dry, but the larger the imbalance of power, the more it trends towards exploitation by the original metric - "the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work".
Folks that work in software are often deeply uncomfortable with that non-absolute, grey ambiguity, but it doesn't make it any less true. The scale of exploitation available to the largest organisations on earth who have the might to do as they wish, is vastly different than a small vague co-operative sibling org adding value to your work.
Even as a trite example "totally free, unless your company makes more than $3m a year" would probably be a better licensing term than anything that exists at the moment w.r.t exploitation. Sharing supports nobody, in that relationship.
So from your perspective it is the existence of the power imbalance that makes it exploitation regardless of the actions actually taken, or perhaps because of that actions that the more powerful party could take in the future. That's interesting, I've never considered it from that angle.
Yep, that describes my feeling of it to a tee. I'm much more comfortable with an absolute stance, ala anyone can make money or no one can make money type of license.
Thanks for your response. I still don't agree, but you have given me some things worth thinking about. :)
This is the kind of good faith conversation I'm here for 🖤