Post ArsLWs2jFqlCBKIXdw by ignaloidas@not.acu.lt
(DIR) More posts by ignaloidas@not.acu.lt
(DIR) Post #ArqJJUgKDCX5jrOPKK by mcc@mastodon.social
2025-03-07T22:26:21Z
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Also re https://mastodon.social/@mcc/114123472141667076 i gotta get real for a second- Open Source: In English, this is a generic term for software following the Open Source Definition, such as would facilitate community development of a piece of code- Free Software: These words communicate nothing at all. No one uses this phrase for any reason, and if you attempt to use this phrase, no one will correctly understand what you mean.I'm not quite as serious about this as I am the other post. But also, I am right.
(DIR) Post #ArqJJW1dDTAbuEMwAy by lunarood@mastodon.gamedev.place
2025-03-07T22:52:23Z
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@mcc I have *thoughts*.I've recently been writing endlessly in this general area, but still haven't been able to turn it into something cohesive and digestible.I think a core issue with *both* these terms and the surrounding frameworks is that:- The apparent objectives are not the actual objectives.- The frameworks don't accomplish the apparent objectives.- The frameworks don't accomplish the actual objectives either.
(DIR) Post #ArqJJXEQjN0BeDMflQ by leon@peoplemaking.games
2025-03-08T00:34:30Z
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@lunarood @mcc šÆItās increasingly clear to me that the ādealā of open source was written by folks who vastly overvalue the worth of source code and is used to dodge considering the morality of irrevocably donating money, aid, and weaponry to the worst people you can imagine giving them to
(DIR) Post #ArqJJYFWwlTanut47M by whitequark@mastodon.social
2025-03-08T06:19:12Z
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@leon @lunarood @mcc are you opposed to academic publishing (and in particular sci-hub) on the same grounds? why/why not?
(DIR) Post #ArqJJYrSfjokhYdMEy by leon@peoplemaking.games
2025-03-08T10:49:51Z
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@whitequark @lunarood @mcc iām certainly opposed to academic publishingās business and IP model and the resulting perverse incentives for academiabut no, Iām not concerned about the free and unchecked spread of peer reviewed *information*, especially between experts. What I think we need to be more careful about is the spread of *products*. Products should be considered immediately applicable as weapons and/or revenue sources to the worst people the authors can imagine and licensing decisions should go from there.
(DIR) Post #ArqJJZLarhv8D0jQCu by ignaloidas@not.acu.lt
2025-03-08T11:05:22.490Z
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@leon@peoplemaking.games @whitequark@mastodon.social @lunarood@mastodon.gamedev.place @mcc@mastodon.social programs are arguably just condensed information - arguably, they wouldn't be protectable as they are if they weren't deemed to be as such (copyright doesn't apply to designs, physical goods, etc.)A ton of software research ends up as software, with the papers essentially boiling down to "hey, look at this software we created, here's some comparisons with other stuff".
(DIR) Post #ArqJJZYi4wPcrgrteS by mcc@mastodon.social
2025-03-07T22:27:59Z
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"Free Software" has a Noam Chomsky problem. You know Noam Chomsky? He's written reams of long, eloquent, *correct* material on the importance of how modes of communication frame people's thought. And yet he can't fucking communicate to save his life. Every time he forms a sentence or phrase it will simply not penetrate the skull of anyone not already disposed to his message.That's "free software". It's trying so hard to be clever you have to think for 20 seconds before you see why they said it
(DIR) Post #ArqJJe8J4XGN3FYNgu by mcc@mastodon.social
2025-03-07T22:34:55Z
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When I say thisā I do believe there is an important, interesting distinction between the broad category of "open source" containing permissive licenses, and the copyleft-by-design licenses/communities the FSF crew *meant by* the phrase "free software". Maybe that kind of "free software" is even important! Wow it's too bad that crowd wasn't able to come up with either licenses that endured, phrasing to describe the licenses anyone understood, or a community-connected institution to promote them
(DIR) Post #Arr4zWZ8IEz1adZWvQ by leon@peoplemaking.games
2025-03-08T18:20:38Z
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@ignaloidas @whitequark @lunarood @mcc While it's certainly true that academics write software programs, they generally do not have the education, interest, and/or funding to turn those software programs into commercially valuable products with high utility and usability. This is perfectly normal; their research questions tend to begin 'is it possible to make a system that' rather than āis it possible to launch a product that achievesā.The more general open source community on the other hand continually creates software that is useful, usable and commercially viable, often directly competing with commercial products, like OpenOffice or Wordpress. This is good for everyone, unfortunately, 'everyone' includes *everyone*.Additionally, academia has a much, much more mature understanding and relationship with ethics than most FOSS projects ā this is the real source of my concern, the misconception that you are helpless but to give good stuff to bad people so you can participate in the gift economy.
(DIR) Post #Arr4zXk9ujOhF7jqka by ignaloidas@not.acu.lt
2025-03-08T19:59:44.584Z
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@leon@peoplemaking.games @whitequark@mastodon.social @lunarood@mastodon.gamedev.place @mcc@mastodon.social Let me understand this clearly - your argument for why academics are fine to release their stuff, but other people aren't, is because academics are bad at making good software?Also, lol, lmao on ethics. There's a classic joke about that: in physics conference people are chatting about what are they focused on. One guy says that he's doing research on cylindrical objects in hypersonic flows. Another guy asks "oh, like missiles?", and the first guy revolts and responds "no, this is purely researching novel physics just for the sake of it, no military things here, I would never do anything like that".
(DIR) Post #ArrQwQUEdVoArKD1cG by leon@peoplemaking.games
2025-03-08T22:47:40Z
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@ignaloidas @whitequark @lunarood @mcc I am concerned with freely and irrevocably distributing turnkey software products, apps, usable or sellable by non-expert outsiders to do or finance harm. I just think it would deeply suck to be hurt by someone using work I made and gave to them, with my blessing to do whatever they want with forever, provided they shared the modifications they made to the source code. It keeps happening with increasing regularity and it sucks and we could stop it as a community with a very minor cultural shift.Academia does make important breakthroughs, but academics publish proofs of concepts to other academics, around their speciality, typically not broadly applicable products to the general public which hateful morons can immediately and freely exploit and weaponise en masse. I can't think of any counterexamples off the top of my head, and the funding model wouldn't make sense, but if they exist I think they should absolutely consider their productsā risk profile.
(DIR) Post #ArrQwReuHJwGUiD3tA by ignaloidas@not.acu.lt
2025-03-09T00:05:40.937Z
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@leon@peoplemaking.games @whitequark@mastodon.social @lunarood@mastodon.gamedev.place @mcc@mastodon.social Academia does absolutely do things that are broadly applicable products which hateful morons can immediately and freely exploit and weaponise en masse and people have quit research over it https://x.com/pjreddie/status/1230524770350817280And like in general, I personally like to work on software distributed freely and without any limitations on who can use it, because in any other way, you are only discriminating the people with few resources, and never the other way around. It is impossible to "stop the bad guys from having it but keep the good guys in". It's like backdoors in encryption, you can't keep only the good guys in. We already have plenty of evidence of companies disregarding the terms of open source software licenses, which don't even restrict use, just require attribution or release of modifications. Why would anyone think that if hobbyists started to use such licenses, companies would suddenly be scared of the potential legal repercussions (because we all know no company has seriously backed any ethical source thing). By going that route, you're also essentially giving up any opportunity from getting any kind of help from companies, leaving only hobbyists on the line. And I can assure you, wast majority of FOSS work is done with company sponsorship these days. It's the way for those companies to commoditize their complements, implicitly share development costs between them, and improve their image as an employer. Most of open development will continue in precisely that way, even if no hobbyist participates in that. So would such hobbyist exodus really change things?
(DIR) Post #ArsLWngbSAgWfXuobI by leon@peoplemaking.games
2025-03-09T08:48:40Z
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@ignaloidas @whitequark @lunarood @mcc If someone is hurting people with your stuff, you shoud be able to opt out of complicity. With pretty much every other type of licence, if someone is doing bad things, you can terminate the licence. If I choose to use a licence where I canāt do it, like it or not, itās effectively the same as me volunteering for them. While you canāt stop someone using software by just revoking a licence, there is a world of difference between being an accomplice and having your work illegally used against your permission. And you in turn change their stance to criminal, against the rule of law and corporate interests, which for a certain type of baddie fights against their image.Corporations use software with and enter into revocable agreements all the time. Every single one of them are, from sales contracts to employment contracts. Eternal, globally sublicensable, transferable, irrevocable are freakishly rare terms even on their own, let alone all together.
(DIR) Post #ArsLWpB7uAh9IVChoe by whitequark@mastodon.social
2025-03-09T08:50:02Z
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@leon @ignaloidas @lunarood @mcc I'm trans, disabled, an immigrant. The law doesn't protect someone like me; it protects capital. You could convince yourself that it does, but I don't have this privilege available to me, and I know exactly what happens if I make the mistake of believing it otherwise.
(DIR) Post #ArsLWqA6FTT4LbjOr2 by leon@peoplemaking.games
2025-03-09T08:56:24Z
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@whitequark @ignaloidas @lunarood @mcc Iām not making any claims as to legal efficacy. I am suggesting that I feel there there is a difference between volunteering your work, and having it stolen
(DIR) Post #ArsLWr0Z6PR2yKHIdE by whitequark@mastodon.social
2025-03-09T09:06:14Z
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@leon @ignaloidas @lunarood @mcc I don't feel the same way: the end result is the same, and I only care about the end result.
(DIR) Post #ArsLWrW7D6fkYB2UoC by leon@peoplemaking.games
2025-03-09T09:14:47Z
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@whitequark @ignaloidas @lunarood @mcc Imagine I wrote a song, and released it under CC0, and it was picked up and used by facists as an anthem. If they stole it because I kept it ARR, I could issue takedowns everywhere they posted it. I could use the platform they are giving me by their violation to call them out publically as criminals who are against the rule of law and property. But they didnāt steal it, I gave it to them. They might even thank me, like how Truth Social thanked the Mastodon authors.I donāt feel thatās the same result at all.
(DIR) Post #ArsLWs2jFqlCBKIXdw by ignaloidas@not.acu.lt
2025-03-09T10:39:40.388Z
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@leon@peoplemaking.games @whitequark@mastodon.social @lunarood@mastodon.gamedev.place @mcc@mastodon.social You're deluding yourself if you believe that copyright claims would stop that. We have real life examples of that, e.g. Pepe the frog, which got appropriated by alt-right, and the artist tried suing a bunch of people who used it in that way, and changed nothing. Because you know, nobody truly cares who made it.
(DIR) Post #ArsLgYYiYCrEeHsYnw by whitequark@mastodon.social
2025-03-09T04:28:20Z
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@ignaloidas @mcc @leon @lunarood so this makes sense, but also I feel that a small slice of academic research has already done vastly more harm than all FOSS development combined. specifically, the AI bullshit, which *does* have some FOSS projects but which would never in a million years exist without academia