The JSON License famously includes a provision stating that “The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil”. This article explores why such provisions are not useful or meaningful in the greater software licensing conversation. “Evil” is largely part of the software licensing conversation today because of a much earlier line drawn in the sand by open source software licensing proponents demanding that compliant licenses permit use for “Evil” (and consequently, placing a hard restriction on the individual freedom to refuse).
  • toothbrush@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    51·
    2 days ago

    The ideas we explore in concrete work should be informed by what open source licensing proponents seek to restrict (the individual freedom to refuse), the tools they employ (software licensing), the language they attempt to monopolize (“Free as in Freedom”), and what the established systems and cultural norms do in practice

    The article doesnt use the wording “Free Software Movement” it uses “open source licensing proponents” which includes the Free Software Movement.

    As for the genocide per default part: Its nonsense to believe that if open source didnt exist or was different that it would somehow lead to less genocide.

    • chobeat@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      22·
      2 days ago

      I don’t know what understanding you have of this topic, but historically and presently, the Free Software movement and the Open Source movement are ideological opposites, with the latter spawning off of the first to accomodate pro-corporate, pro-capitalist positions.

      Both of these are also different from the totality of entities proposing “open source licensing”, which is a much broader set.

      Then nowadays the Free Software Movement lost its momentum and it has been subsumed into the idea of “FOSS”, but still, it should be treated as its own, dinstinct entity.

      As for the genocide per default part: Its nonsense to believe that if open source didnt exist or was different that it would somehow lead to less genocide.

      Open source is just a technical and legal reflection of a world and a time where Imperial venture capital benefited from the free flow of information. I think the author would agree that, if open source didn’t exist, something else would have enabled similar or different forms of Imperial oppression, including genocide. Same for the start-up ecosystem, digital capital taking over the financial economy and Western democracies and so on. Open Source enabled that? For sure. But if we want to play “what if”, any serious materialist analysis would conclude that Open Source was just a tool for digital capital to express itself and exploit workers. A tool that could have been replaced by something else.