what a sad, cynical take as we sit here, enjoying an explosion of popularity in a new FOSS platform and a suite of applications-- as I, myself, participate in a team of devs creating a new FOSS app for Lemmy, to think the FOSS movement is over just because corporations happen to take advantage of it.
Don’t like your FOSS project being used for profit? Change your licensing scheme. but bemoaning that the philosophy, the religion of FOSS is somehow sullied by a departure from some purist vision once held is a conceit. It never belonged to you, nor, really, to anyone. That’s the point. That’s what we all signed up for. And it’s naive to think it might not ever be used in a way to which we might object. When we let our code out into the wild for anyone to use and re-use, that’s the risk we all take.
You might think that’s easy for me to say, what, with my Lemmy app that can’t be used to kill people in far-off places, and while that’s true, just as easily, someone could come along, fork our project, and make a far superior version and shut my project down overnight.
My point is that this isn’t a flaw with FOSS or even the FOSS community, it’s a societal flaw called capitalism. and, rather than distressing over who abides by some abstract philosophy of how FOSS should be used, we should focus our energies on combating the cause of the problem, not its symptoms-- and certainly not each other.
what a sad, cynical take as we sit here, enjoying an explosion of popularity in a new FOSS platform and a suite of applications-- as I, myself, participate in a team of devs creating a new FOSS app for Lemmy, to think the FOSS movement is over just because corporations happen to take advantage of it.
Don’t like your FOSS project being used for profit? Change your licensing scheme. but bemoaning that the philosophy, the religion of FOSS is somehow sullied by a departure from some purist vision once held is a conceit. It never belonged to you, nor, really, to anyone. That’s the point. That’s what we all signed up for. And it’s naive to think it might not ever be used in a way to which we might object. When we let our code out into the wild for anyone to use and re-use, that’s the risk we all take.
You might think that’s easy for me to say, what, with my Lemmy app that can’t be used to kill people in far-off places, and while that’s true, just as easily, someone could come along, fork our project, and make a far superior version and shut my project down overnight.
My point is that this isn’t a flaw with FOSS or even the FOSS community, it’s a societal flaw called capitalism. and, rather than distressing over who abides by some abstract philosophy of how FOSS should be used, we should focus our energies on combating the cause of the problem, not its symptoms-- and certainly not each other.