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.
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.