Notices by Matt "msw" Wilson (msw@mstdn.social)

@ramsey @aral when I get replies constructed with narrative advancing framing like "we both know the reason", I regret trying to engage in a dialog in good faith.

@aral I can imagine why you may believe it's easy. You'll just have to trust me when I say it's not.

@aral data residency regulations are only making this problem worse, from my personal point of view.

@drewdevault everything that requires finite resources (such as the time and attention of both software users and maintainers) competes for them.

But in the FOSS world, we are (generally) free to collaborate and copy between projects, which is indeed a somewhat different competitive landscape compared to the proprietary world...

@lwriemen @alcinnz @lightweight @downey @skyfaller in my personal opinion, it is hard to differentiate TechRights and InfoWars.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfoWars

@doctormo @lightweight @alcinnz @skyfaller I generally agree, and have often advised caution to avoid inadvertantly putting thumbs on scales or overwhelming communities.

Some of the loudest critics demand more, but rushing in clumsily is rarely the best action for long term sustainability and community health.

@lightweight @alcinnz @downey @skyfaller I generally try to be a humble person, but I am quite confident that my being at Amazon (along with my colleagues who have been FOSS advocates for decades and accepted offers to join) has been a positive influence in how others at Amazon think and act regarding FOSS matters.

Now, I won't be able to change Amazon and the rest of the industry to return to the "DRM free MP3" days of old. But there are other things I can try to do.

@lightweight @alcinnz @downey @skyfaller if you keep pulling at that thread, FOSS projects will reject valuable contributions from developers that just happen to work for a company that many in the community find repugnant.

I think that we should accept that charities often needed to take funding from wherever they can get it, and we should expect them stand firm that their charitable charter must show no favor in return.

@alcinnz @lightweight @downey @skyfaller I have not given up on the OSI either.

Unfortunately I think that @downey's "call out" does harm toward a charity that actually has a governance structure that gives individual members a voice.

I do not see any actions that are designed to "appease" corporate sponsors (who do not get a voice in governance for their gifts).

@mor10 @aral the OSI is not the only FOSS-supporting organization with a mission to serve the public (I'm trying to distinguish from trade associations / consortia) that has a position against so-called ethical license restrictions.

@mor10 @aral the FSF has the same policy position for Free Software licenses.

(To be clear, historically FSF policy has been exclusively set by RMS...)

See for example https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#JSON

@mor10 @aral there is no difference in core ideology between Free Software and Open Source. The only differences are in what the main messages in a social movement should be.

Both Free Software advocates and Open Source advocates try to highlight the hazards of "ethical licenses" and how they are incompatible with #FOSS.

https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2019/fall/building-ethical-software-based-on-the-four-freedoms

@ramsey @alcinnz in my personal opinion, there is a bit of a self-fulfilling cycle when it comes to the license compliance industrial complex.

@mark @ramsey @alcinnz even AWS releases new works under GPLv2 license from time to time. ;-)

https://github.com/aws/clock-bound/tree/main/clock-bound-d

@ramsey @alcinnz I think the list of companies that have "absolutely no" policies that prohibit use of copyleft licensed software is shorter than many believe.

@sjvn @webmink I (personally) also think that it isn't a big deal.

If Software Freedom advocates make a big deal of it, it may become more difficult to implement #FOSS versions of proprietary software that interoperates with it and/or allows knowledge reuse.

But it reinforces the belief in my mind that reducing the amount of copyleft software in Android was a goal...

@webmink @sjvn but, worse than that, the chatter at the time was that Sun was controlling access to the TCK so that one couldn't even build an Apache licensed implementation of Java® that would target mobile device use cases.

Once again, copyleft (among other tools) was used by a company to advance their own agenda, and as a weapon to rein users of software into paying royalties, rather than protecting freedoms.
https://ianskerrett.wordpress.com/2007/11/13/what-does-android-mean-for-suns-openjdk/

@pchestek @webmink @sjvn if it was only that, then much time was wasted and digital ink was spilled about the TCK terms.

@timbray @pchestek @webmink @sjvn as a copyleft advocate, I agree it is the right license.

You can choose the right license, and then use it as a basis for wrong arguments, or as part of a multi-product / multi-license business model that targets certain types of use ("production", "mobile devices", "in a cloud service").

I have no doubt that Oracle (and Sun before it) would enforce copyleft licenses in ways that are not aligned with the community.
https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.html

@webmink @sjvn I have some words. 🤬