"He said the Linux Foundation’s adoption of Open Tofu raised serious questions. 'What does it say for the future of open source, if foundations will just take it and give it a home. That is tragic for open source innovation. I will tell you, if that were to happen, there'll be no more open source companies in Silicon Valley.' "
Uh, well, you're just making the argument for copyleft right there, dude.
@jens hehe, the CEO is mixing up a lot of things, and then does a nostradamus on the future of opensource 😀
Sounds more like investors getting impatient.
@jens Why do all these guys’ looks take me to the Uncanny Valley? Could it be that these awful tech bros are actually AIs. Is Silicon Valley already the Matrix?
@jens I sure love when a company can just take my work, give me nothing in return and not even release their own thing that they did with my work publicly 👌
@hazelnot Yeah, well. I can't blame you. But I also think it's not as homogeneous as doomscrolling would lead us to believe. At least I'm holding on to that a little.
@jens well, no, they do some good things sometimes, occasionally also affecting other places like the iPhone USB-C stuff but... then they murder refugees in the Mediterranean and that's some extremely vile fucking shit >.>
@jens
I think the fact that we see silicon valley types complaining is a good sign. It indicates that the power relation between tech companies and open source is not entirely one way. @hazelnot
@samweingamgee It isn't... but for the time being, a lot of foundations such as Linux foundation are also backed by companies. It can go bad rather quickly.
@RyunoKi@jens@hazelnot
The short term goal I think is clear: Work to preserve an identity for Open Source outside of it being useful to corps. Keep fighting the good fight to make clear that we are not subservient. The long term goal is less obvious. I strongly suspect that as Moore's law dies the whole tech space is gonna get shaken up, and I think Open Source being there as an alternative in a world of slower development cycles is key. 1/2
@RyunoKi@jens@hazelnot
What I hope is that we can offer more value added (and exert more control) in a post-"move fast and break things" world. So much proprietary software today gets away with its sins because no matter how shitty your code is, new silicon is gonna come along and rescue you. No (or slower) new silicon means good code is more imporant. 2/2
Having read https://ghuntley.com/fracture/ just now, developing individual pieces of software appears not to be enough. Their integration with each other isn't covered.
In either case, the companies switched from an OSI approved FLOSS license to a "source somehow available" license which messes with third-party communities.
The only explanation that has surfaced so far is that messing with third-party communities is the intention, so that the companies can better tie their customers to themselves.
@RyunoKi Analogies are always difficult. But let's start with this: if a community is a self-governing body of sorts, you can call it sovereign.
Property exists in many forms, including land. So the intellectual property of a FLOSS community can be likened conceptually to sovereign land.
These companies first contribute to the flourishing of this land, only to then take what the land produces without consulting the sovereign body governing it.
@RyunoKi So they break the laws of that sovereign community, effectively, and misappropriate its gains.
From here you can find all sorts of colourful historical examples of similar things happening; call it theft, piracy, colonialism, etc. All of those will be inaccurate to some degree, but illustrate one thing: they're harmful to the community and exploitative.
@jens
I think the colonialism is probably the closest to the mark here. But I also don't think it's entirety accurate. Corporate entities exist to maximise shareholder value. Open source communities exist for a wide variety of reasons, but chiefly to produce something that they care about. There are and will continue to be areas where the interests of both align. Hence my earlier comment about the power relationship not being strictly one way. 1/x @RyunoKi@simon_brooke@hazelnot
@jens
Contributions to open source projects from corporate entities have made many open source products better. So I don't think it's a solely extractive relationship. I do see a shift in the amount of value they are contributing versus what they are extracting, and I think we need to make it really damn clear to them that this is not okay, and to use their language that it will decrease value to their shareholders. 2/x @RyunoKi@simon_brooke@hazelnot
Because I do not think that FLOSS communities exist "to produce something they care about" at all. I think FLOSS communities exist to share something they care about.
Sharing is both production and consumption. This is necessarily both true, otherwise there would be far less reason to adopt a FLOSS license.
And while it is true that corporations can participate in this sharing - and there are examples of ...
@samweingamgee ... them doing so - the very reason that corporations exist, namely to maximize shareholder value, necessarily requires that they produce only as much as is necessary to consume what they need.
Because production is cost, and cost does not maximize shareholder value.
So any alignment you can find is at best temporary. To admit it exists IMHO distracts from the fact that it will turn exploitative sooner or later.
@samweingamgee And unfortunately, IP laws that allow forking by the community also allow forking by businesses (TL;DR, don't want to get dragged into the details of that).
I'm really not content with how current legal frameworks for FLOSS do not guarantee a commons approach, but are little more than an armistice.
@jens
I agree with you about the IP law framework and I think that sharing is a more complete description of what communities are trying to do. But I'm not sure that I see the fact that alignment is temporary as a blocker. Certainly we should always keep in mind that any "we love open source" rhetoric from corps is at best only true for the individuals in the company, and at worst complete fiction, and guard our institutions against takeover. 1/2
@jens
But I think at the same time we can benefit from contributions from the corp, and from the inclusion of employees (who have distinct goals and motivations from the corp) as part of the community.
@samweingamgee Oh yes, the part that we can benefit from this I agree with. It's the guarding of our institutions that worries me, because we've IMHO clearly entered an age where corporations try new ways to undermine this.
It's part of why I think we need to renegotiate "the FLOSS contract", which will likely involve a new generation of licenses that are neither permissive nor copyleft in the traditional senses, but some communal alternative.
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