Remember yesterday’s news about TikTok releasing a go live platform? Turns out it’s a fork of @OBSProject Shoutout to @HunterAP23 for pointing this outSTOP STEALING FROM OBS JESUS pic.twitter.com/kx8ckK3MXS— Naaackers (@Naaackers) December 16, 2021
Yes, this is why FOSS is not as perfectly aligned with socialism as we'd like it to be. Its idea of freedom is generally aligned with American libertarian capitalism, not challenging capitalist power structures or economic systems.
Socialist programmers producing work for socialism should arguably rally around a different licensing strategy and keep things relatively closed, with more explicit permissions required and barring use for various purposes. Example: socialist software products should not be a free resource for the US military.
May I introduce you to this excellent FOSS license? https://anticapitalist.software/
But in all seriousness, you have to be explicit about which kind of free license you speak of. If TikTok takes OBS and doesn't grant the source back to people it distributes its software to, then that's the problem. But if they respect the GPL I don't see what the issue is. Whatever improvements or changes they make are readily available to anyone. This, of course, is not how non-copyleft free licenses work (the raison d'être of the OSI is to promote these sorts of licenses, like the MIT or BSD ones). And companies hate the GPL as is.
IMO GPL of course doesn't go far enough and AGPL is really the best license to balance business interests (businesses would disagree, I have no doubt) and public interest.
I usually push AGPL in my own projects since I need to convince libs, it's a good rec!
I've looked into anti-capitalist licenses and I like them, but I also know that FOSS groups label them as non-free software because of said libertarian capitalist tendencies. I also want there to be a legal entity to go sue people for violations, since a license is only as good as its enforceability.
Oh absolutely. And to be clear I'm not trying to sit on my hands or whine about anti-capitalist licenses, just thinking about how we could realize efficacious ones and what we can do before revolution.
As the article points out, most important "FOSS" is funded entirely by corporations these days anyways. Lots of well-maintained software libraries have people working for tech companies who's jobs are to work on that stuff.
The money hose, combined with free or subsidised services, is a control mechanism that lets big tech companies control the OSS ecosystem. Projects they want to promote will get the money spigot.
That's just how things work. The alternative would be to either make libraries all closed-source and have paid licenses (and have far fewer o them), or have software libraries be government funded with grants or whatever (another subsidy to tech companies). Capitalism has companies that provide services, there's no system that would make it not benefit them more than they benefit the software. Most software doesn't even have much of a use outside of services implemented by companies.
I think something else they don't mention is that open source software is also a good way to not pay for people's job training. I see lots of positions that require experience with different frameworks and stuff. It reduces costs and training redundancy that way as much as it's about making companies' products more valuable.
This is fine when the project in question is directly funded by a tech multinational. Less so when the project is something specialised, a little bit niche, or inventive, and therefore not financed by a gigantic corporation.
Smaller companies contribute money as well. But I'm sure they're right that there are lots of companies that use free software libraries without sponsoring them, which is kinda breaking an unspoken rule.
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Yes, this is why FOSS is not as perfectly aligned with socialism as we'd like it to be. Its idea of freedom is generally aligned with American libertarian capitalism, not challenging capitalist power structures or economic systems.
Socialist programmers producing work for socialism should arguably rally around a different licensing strategy and keep things relatively closed, with more explicit permissions required and barring use for various purposes. Example: socialist software products should not be a free resource for the US military.
May I introduce you to this excellent FOSS license? https://anticapitalist.software/
But in all seriousness, you have to be explicit about which kind of free license you speak of. If TikTok takes OBS and doesn't grant the source back to people it distributes its software to, then that's the problem. But if they respect the GPL I don't see what the issue is. Whatever improvements or changes they make are readily available to anyone. This, of course, is not how non-copyleft free licenses work (the raison d'être of the OSI is to promote these sorts of licenses, like the MIT or BSD ones). And companies hate the GPL as is.
IMO GPL of course doesn't go far enough and AGPL is really the best license to balance business interests (businesses would disagree, I have no doubt) and public interest.
I usually push AGPL in my own projects since I need to convince libs, it's a good rec!
I've looked into anti-capitalist licenses and I like them, but I also know that FOSS groups label them as non-free software because of said libertarian capitalist tendencies. I also want there to be a legal entity to go sue people for violations, since a license is only as good as its enforceability.
Unfortunately that legal entity has to sue in bourgeois courts, so it's necessarily disadvantaged.
The people need FOSS but software licenses aren't liberatory vehicles in their own right.
Oh absolutely. And to be clear I'm not trying to sit on my hands or whine about anti-capitalist licenses, just thinking about how we could realize efficacious ones and what we can do before revolution.
Lol I am whining about the anti-cap licenses.
They're well meaning but infinitely more utopian than the various flavors of GPL which are already incredibly utopian.
And yet nobody ever hears about it, since it's in capitalism's best interest that nobody realizes that it runs on the back of human generosity.
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As the article points out, most important "FOSS" is funded entirely by corporations these days anyways. Lots of well-maintained software libraries have people working for tech companies who's jobs are to work on that stuff.
That's just how things work. The alternative would be to either make libraries all closed-source and have paid licenses (and have far fewer o them), or have software libraries be government funded with grants or whatever (another subsidy to tech companies). Capitalism has companies that provide services, there's no system that would make it not benefit them more than they benefit the software. Most software doesn't even have much of a use outside of services implemented by companies.
I think something else they don't mention is that open source software is also a good way to not pay for people's job training. I see lots of positions that require experience with different frameworks and stuff. It reduces costs and training redundancy that way as much as it's about making companies' products more valuable.
Smaller companies contribute money as well. But I'm sure they're right that there are lots of companies that use free software libraries without sponsoring them, which is kinda breaking an unspoken rule.