Dave Lane 🇳🇿
The fact you're looking at this on an ActivityPub-enabled Fediverse app demonstrates that a community of focused individuals can create a global-scale network around an open standard that rivals (or, frankly, beats) pretty much anything capitalism could create, even at its 'best'.
And these communities create without profit motive - just because they share a vision and think it'd be a good thing. All they require is sustainability, not exploitative profit.
I think that's worth celebrating.
Aral Balkan
@lightweight Exacrly. And now put yourself in the place of wealthy capitalists reading this, knowing it’s true, and hell bent on proving it otherwise with billions in their war chest and the threat we and these spaces face becomes clear. (And yet I still see folks celebrating every billionaire, venture capitalist, and Silicon Valley corporation that joins or otherwise expresses an interest in the fediverse as a win… like sheep celebrating the arrival of the wolves.)
Aral Balkan
@lightweight Darn thing is, they can easily write their own tools. Cloudflare’s already doing it. And I’m sure there are a number of embrace, extend, extinguish-based plans floating around (if not being implemented) as we speak.
We must, at the very least, ensure these folks aren’t legitimised. The only time we have any power whatsoever to fight these attempts is at the start, when they don’t yet have scale/network effects. That’s the only time you can kill a Silicon Valley startup.
Dave Lane 🇳🇿
@aral yup, agreed. I guess I have to have faith that people like Eugen and others will mostly recognise the need to keep these tools open. It'll be interesting to see the reaction when someone in the community 'blinks' and sells out.
Dave Lane 🇳🇿
@post @nilesh @aral I agree. #Copyleft is by far our best defence, although it's just *part* of the equation. Weak #FOSS licenses are not a good fit - they are predicated on the idea that all software value is derived from proprietary code, and make it easy to close what was originally open. And that's dumb.
Post
Well Free Software movement addressed this with the GPL license, then came the Open Source™ guys that tried to rebrand FS but accidentally opened the door to “give-away” licenses.
nilesh
@lightweight @aral It's futile. It requires educating the masses about such risks, and nobody has the incentives to do that at scale.
I now think that the FOSS licenses themselves are problematic. Don't "gift" things to the already powerful. FOSS gets us network effect for "usage (without restrictions)". What we need is network effect for "good usage".
Dave Lane 🇳🇿
@aral yes, I agree that it's best to stomp on them early.
Aral Balkan
@post It was not accidental.
Charliebrownau
@lightweight Has anyone clearly defined Captialism
Is it
State mandated min wage
State mandated certifcation
state mandated time off
state mandated 'safety'
state mandated paid holidays
state mandated prego pay
state mandated super funds
state mandated digital payments
Dave Lane 🇳🇿
I should note, too (with gratitude!) that the same community can a) recognise the value of and then, b) design the open standard they need for such an endeavour. In the capitalist system, that sort of cooperation for the greater good is almost unheard of. In most cases open standards only occur under duress because of external regulation. And even then, most of the time, the vested interests require royalties and other barriers to participation.
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