The ongoing discussions about age-verification and changes in Free and Open-Source Software and GNU Linux and related OSs made me realize a gross misunderstanding on my part. I think many other users may have the same misunderstanding (seeing many comments using the word “traitors”), and it’s important that we become aware of it. We must understand that using or saying “FOSS” or “Linux” does not automatically mean to stand up for human rights, for the community, against corporations, and similar goals and values.
If we read the comments in those age-verification discussions we can see that many developers and possibly also users make statements like “the developers have no obligation towards the community”, “the law is the law, no matter what the community wants”, “we must comply”, and similar. It’s important to realize that many developers work on FOSS not out of consideration for the community, or for human rights, or against corporations. For them it’s just one kind of software development. We may have projects that are FOSS and pro-corporations or pro-surveillance. The “F” in FOSS stands for freedom to modify and distribute the software by/to anyone in the community. It doesn’t stand for “software that promotes / stands up for general human freedom and human rights". But of course there are also developers that work with FOSS because of such values.
So for anyone who, like me, wants to use and promote software as an assertion of, and a stand for, human rights and against corporations, it’s necessary not to stop at “FOSS” or “Linux” but apply more scrutiny and more careful choices. Probably it’s always been like this, but the present times require extra awareness.
I wish there was an acronym or other word that made this moral aspect of some FOSS development clear. This would help users to recognize software projects that share their values, and also those FOSS developers who do work for those values. Is there such a term already out there?
I feel “Free Software” is the closest we get. As that is associated with the Free Software movement and copyleft. In reality, we’re talking more about freedom of opportunity, though. We’re not really owed software that fits our use-case 100%, that’s not the kind of freedom we’re talking about.
FOSS provides a way to exercise digital freedom in a digitalized world.
For example the Canadian Charter of Rights considers these freedoms fundamental:
- freedom of conscience and religion;
- freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
- freedom of peaceful assembly; and
- freedom of association.
These can all be threatened through centralized, authoritarian digital mechanisms.
While FOSS can be used to oppress, FOSS is most importantly a useful tool to fight against oppression by escaping control and as such it is precious today.
The problem is that “human freedom” and “human rights” are very general and somewhat vague terms and some people’s freedoms and rights are sometimes in conflict with each other. So it’s also often meaningless to say that you support “human freedom” and “human rights” without asking what freedoms and rights and for whom.
FOSS is a very specific subset of human freedom and human rights, it’s the right to control, modify and distribute the software one uses. All other parts of human freedom and human rights aren’t something that the free software movement necessarily has a position on. (Free software can certainly be used to, at least arguably, violate human rights, for example armed forces can use free software too, and should be able to!)
Human rights tend to mean those agreed upon on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, so not very vague at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights
so not very vague at all.
Literally the first sentence is of the definition you posted is vague.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that codifies some of the rights and freedoms of all human beings.
Some of the rights and freedoms? So, yeah, “not very vague at all”.
Preamble: The following is only a extreme example to illustrate a core problem. It doesn’t show or represents my personal opinion.
Ok, the UDHR has the right to life, does that mean that no doctor or clinic who is pro-abortion should be allowed to use or work on FOSS Software? A lot of people would say that abortion is in hard conflict with the right to life and with that against the declaration of human rights.
Having a declaration of rights only helps with the groundwork but all the Details are a huge mess and often include lots of devils.
There are many more examples of this here: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freedom-to-run.html
Ok cool, I was not aware of that page. Thank you!
Okay, how would you connect the UDHR’s core principles to FOSS in a meaningful, concrete way?
It’s great as a set of guidelines, but their implementation is very much left as an exercise to the reader, which I think is what the GP is getting at.
FOSS projects tend to be nice with their communities because if you piss off enough tech savvy people, your project just gets forked. Sooner or later there is a fork that everybody will recommend instead of the original project.
Imo, “being against corporations” doesn’t make sense in this regard unless you are very very far left and think that there should be no private property at all.
Edit:
In short: do you want to add labels to software to indicate
- pro human rights
- being against corporations
How can software be pro human rights?
What’s your problem with corporations, in case you really think that there should be no property?
I disagree. You don’t have to be far left to oppose oligarchy, corruption and crime.
Corporations are the opposite of private property and that’s the problem. Their modern form was born in 19th century imperialist England and conviently evacuates all responsibility into the black void that is a moral entity or whatever that’s called. The ownership is zombified into a creature hungry for nothing but abstract profit, everything else be damned. I trust many businesses, but never a corporation.
Regarding “pro human rights”, what I mean is that software development can be (for some) a form of activism for human rights, just like it happens in the arts and in science.
Are you saying you don’t support FOSS projects that aren’t willing to engage in activism? A lot of us are morally aligned with you but aren’t willing to die on that hill. I think this age verification stuff is utter bullshit but if I were a maintainer of a project that was likely to be the target of one of these laws I would not be willing to put my livelihood on the line. Shaming people who are volunteering their time for being unwilling to endanger their livelihoods is pretty entitled IMO.
In the case of arts. Arts is the transmitter of the message “human’s have rights”. Usually art also depicts some sort of human right, like freedom.
I am not sure how this can be applied to code. There are some projects that use a ukrainian flag to indicate support for ukraine. Is that what you mean by that?
I think code should be free of politics. I don’t want my tennis club to support human rights either. I want to play tennis, not make politics.
In one sense, nothing is “free of politics”. Should your tennis club allow black people to join? There was a day and age when allowing them to join would have been considered a bold political statement. The rules and decisions your tennis club make are inherently political, whether you think of them that way or not.
That being said, more specific to software licenses, the question is whether we should be using verbage that restricts FOSS from being used for unethical purposes (such as military weaponry). There are cases to be made for and against that, and so far, it would seem most FOSS licenses tend toward a less restrictive policy.
So the “political” question in software licenses is: does it make sense to add restrictions in an attempt to promote societal well-being, or do we stick with the “free”-er approach? Both have political and societal ramifications.
Agreed, there’s a whole spectrum. On my part I’d more properly say against giving too much power to corporations.
What do you mean by giving too much power to corporations?
