this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2025
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Is that really your take? It's called FOSS because it's free and open for anyone to use, that's the whole fucking point. So seriously, what's your actual call-to-action here?
Edit: Let's say you leave your old couch on the curb with a "free couch" sign. It happens to get picked up by the local kkk for their little clubhouse. Whoops, now you're evil and dumb, so fuck you.
You're responsible for the technology you create. Unconstrained freedom is more often than not the freedom of the powerful to oppress the weak. Anything else is techbro ideology. FOSS ideology and techno-fascist ideology have the same roots in the freedom of information.
My call to action is unrelated to technological production, because technology doesn't solve social problems. Unionize workers in Microsoft. If you really want, build software to facilitate the construction and deployment of worker power, and stop playing around with the liberation of software. As long as it's "Free Software" instead of "Free people" you're playing on the side of the tech oligarchy.
So if I create a knife I'm responsible if someone uses it for murder?
Maybe I should implement a camera on the knife that records your kitchen 24/7 to make sure the knife wont be used for murder, is that OK with you?
If you "unionize" microsoft and keep windows non-free software, the employees get better wages, apart from that the users still get spied upon, and the means of production (windows source code) still under ownership of a small group of people, (and just like any other operating system or knife, can) still used for nefarious purposes.
Even if the workers at the microsoft commune decide to made windows non-spyware anymore, there is still no way to actually be sure since there's no way to verify it.
Also, proprietary software isn't only a prime example of private ownership of the means of production, but also a prime example of artificial scarcity.
Free software is a requirement for free people, if you don't understand that, then you really have no understanding of how technology works, of how people work and how freedom works.
I recommend reading the following article: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html
The Free Software movement over the last 30+ years failed at every single one of their political goals. It's effectively a political zombie which sometimes produces barely usable software for nerds. I know perfectly well what they advocated because at some point I was close to fall for it (more than 15 years ago), but it's delusional dogmatism. The world moved on and the FOSS movement failed so bad that their enemies are now in control of an Imperial fascist government.