A lot of open source software is written by people working for corporations. Red Hat may have started out as a plucky co-op but it’s now part of IBM. MySQL is written primarily by Oracle. The fact that the source is open doesn’t mean it’s all volunteer work.
That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a massive transfer of wealth, just that for a lot of it people were paid a fraction of the wealth they created rather than none at all.
Sidenote: Here’s a good article about how software developers can wage class warfare. Some tips are: Don’t help other people learn things, never write documentation, and make your code as opaque as possible so your boss doesn’t get anything from you for free.
Valve probably stands at the company who has “given back” the most in recent history (making Desktop Linux viable for the first time ever, mostly through gaming), but even Valve has corporate America skeletons in their closet. (Like the only reason they have a decent refund option now is because Australia basically forced them, and they had to change their flash sales for European laws.)
Valve’s bigger, and unforgivable crime, is their failure to release Half Life 3.
Valve still is a corporation, decently good at open source, but still a corporation that develops and distributes a lot of closed source software. Like the github ceo once wrote: open source the engine not the car, that’s what drives open source development for them. When many use their software and contribute patches and more importantly report bugs, everyone wins.
I don’t hate Valve, but let’s be real, they’re not adding to Linux out of the goodness of their hearts: They’re doing it to protect their profits because they see that Windows is quickly becoming more closed and has its own Xbox gaming storefront. It isn’t about belief in Linux as a product, it isn’t about improving it for everyone, it’s about improving it enough for gamers so that Steam won’t be eventually locked out of the digital games sales market by Microsoft. They’re basically just buying their way out of the vendor-lock-in of putting their store on someone else’s proprietary operating system.
I don’t think Linux desktop usage jumping from 1% to nearly 3% equals “everybody wins.” Sounds like to me a lot of fuckin people are still losing. Like 97% of them at least.
I don’t get what you try to say with your last paragraph. It sounds like you are worried that the poor 97% of Windows and Mac users are losing something because Linux is rising. Which makes absolutely no sense.
It sounds like they’re implying most people are losing because they use windows and Mac, instead of Linux, which I don’t completely disagree with because of the insane monopoly they have. Just look at all the ads and bloat on windows 11 for a brief example.
Computers must suck for the average user. I’d assume most people on this site would have no issue disabling annoyances in Windows. But most people probably just leave the defaults enabled, which is terrible.
I’ve been watching old episodes of Computer Chronicles lately - it’s amazing how much more user friendly Microsoft products were back in the day.
Enshittification is hitting windows hard these days. Windows 10 was okay in my book. I‘m probably not going to use windows 11. Currently preparing an ubuntu daily driver for operation.
But as doctorow said here, we are crawling back to old anti trust standards which we lost. It’s going to take a long time but it’s going.
I’m not the one who said “everybody wins” in regards to private corporations adding to open source projects while also not making clear what people are “winning” from it.
I don’t get your point at all. I know that you do not say that, but you don’t even have any counter argument.
The point is the claim was “everybody wins.” My point is “everybody” at best is 3% of the population who gives a shit about having control of their own software. No, mostly corporations win. Consumers get some fringe benefits at best. I’m not seeing regular people become multimillionaires simply because they use Linux instead of Windows. Mostly its weird fucking shut-ins.
I don’t see the problem there. If someone is doing a good thing because it is profitable for them to do that good thing that’s fine.
The utter irony of this being a monetized medium.com article
An interesting read. The advocated actions have many similarities with the guild system.
I think we’d have fewer security problems if we had a tech guild. It would keep unqualified people from becoming sysadmins, for one.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. -Adam Smith
If you think Guilds would solve security problems instead of just propping up security theater, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
I’ve seen too many systems left wide open for me not to think we need some way of having actual experts vet people’s resumes and not a bunch of HR people.
I don’t disagree, but a “guild” is not it. Engineers in other disciplines have to actually have “engineering” credentials. Software engineers do not, but it sounds like they probably should considering other engineers are held to standards. The States have their own engineering boards to give out and monitor engineer license status. Why isn’t there one for software engineering? There needs to be, but it need not be a guild.
The States have their own engineering boards to give out and monitor engineer license status. Why isn’t there one for software engineering?
Because unlike developers, engineers from poor countries can’t build stuff remotely.
In case there’s requirement to hire only software engineers with licence then companies will just outsource as much as they can.
That’s not an opinion, that’s a fact.
On the other side, Free and Open Source Software leveled the playing field for software development by quite a lot. Before FOSS you had proprietary databases, proprietary OSes, proprietary web servers, etc, at every level of the chain. Without FOSS Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office would rule the roost. Without FOSS smart phones might’ve taken years longer, and have far less choices. Without FOSS the web would be drastically different. Without FOSS development would be harder to break into, and anything you tried to produce would involve 15 different licensing fees.
Everyone can equally profit off it. And hopefully, everyone (that can) will contribute.
Without FOSS Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office would rule the roost. Without FOSS smart phones might’ve taken years longer, and have far less choices.
Uhhh, Google Workspace isn’t FOSS and the only FOSS Office project that has market share is Libre Office with a whopping…1%.
Chromium may be “open source” but Google is definitely trying to make a walled garden, especially in respect to ads, and Chrome rules the roost. Chrome itself has plenty of proprietary software in it.
How is this any argument for something else? Your examples are weak, MS Office does rule the roost, and Chrome only rules the roost due to it being a Google product, not because of its open source bona fides.
Without FOSS smart phones might’ve taken years longer, and have far less choices.
Android is literally the reason bloatware from phone developers made a resurgence. It made modern phones worse than the shitty proprietary OSes driven by shitty phone manufacturers from the 90’s to 2007. Google allows manufacturers to install applications you can’t uninstall without rooting the device and risking your security.
How did that benefit consumers? To get a decent Android phone, you’re paying a shitload of money, just like you would be for an iPhone (a completely closed source product) and iPhone at least doesn’t have software bloat from your phone carrier/phone manufacturer.
Further, Google is literally attempting to use their web dominance to make it nearly impossible to implement ad blocking with Manifest v3. Their ad profits are more important to them than FOSS. How is denying the ability to block ads a “benefit” to consumers?
I agree with your points. But you can just download Android studio, hook your phone up in dev mode, and remove the bloatware packages as well as DT to prevent them from coming back. I did and I’ve not seen any carrier crap since.
That requires some technical knowledge that most people simply don’t have.
That may be true, but there is (usually) also an upside. Any fixes and modifications must be shared back. Thank you copyleft licenses. Thank you GPL.
Man, I’m so glad that the Border Patrol is using my tech to violently abuse refugees! It’s extra awesome that they sent back some modifications! I love it when I get help from *checks notes… fucking Nazis.
This is a joke, right? Cool beans that the people who decided to use the code for nefarious purposes helped make it cleaner. /s
Seriously, that’s really pathetic for an “upside.”
While we might not agree with immigration policy and power abuse, it’s hard to put moral limitations on who gets to use our software. While the example you gave is far from trivial.
The second we say someone can’t use our software for whatever reason, that’s the second the software is no longer truly free. It’s same with Open data.
If you set in writing that your software can be used by anyone, then you also take away the power of those in high places to interpret the licence in a discriminatory way.
HPE for example write on every IPMI and Firmware page that they are not allowing the use of the software in fields related to ABC weapon systems.
Negativland helped create a Creative Commons license whose purpose was literally that. You didn’t have to give attribution to the original artist, but you were disallowed from using the work for profit/in advertisements/et cetera. The issue is backwards copyright law that says the only way copyright should be distributed is through ownership and capital. We need a copyright law that respects the original creators intent, if they don’t want it used commercially/in government. Not all of us are Tom Waits (who famously refused to license his work for commercial purposes) and happen to have the money to fight misuse of our creations in court.
Yes, I agree. And Creative Commons are a great example of peoples’ control over their work. My argument is that it wont be ‘the original artist’ who gets to interpret the licensing terms.
If I may take your example of border patrol abusing immigrants with your software. And I’m sorry for the trivial example beforehand.
Let’s say you put in licensing terms: “This software may not be used to endanger peoples lives and/or livelyhoods”. And software is used by both Border Patrol and the immigrants to protect/cross the border.
Both parties come before a judge, accusing the other party of misusing your software. Border patrol says the immigrants are endangering american people with crime etc. ,and the immigrants accuse the border patrol of violent beatings.
In whose favor would a judge decide?
P.S.: thanks for the link. I’m a huge Tom Waits fan, and had no idea about the voice-theft.
Both parties come before a judge, accusing the other party of misusing your software. Border patrol says the immigrants are endangering american people with crime etc. ,and the immigrants accuse the border patrol of violent beatings.
I agree with this except the refugees categorically aren’t using software if they’re at our borders with empty hands. The only argument that would matter in the court was whether or not the CBP was breaking the software license. The refugees aren’t in a position to use the technology, and as such, arguments about whether or not they’re violent are immaterial to the legal question of whether the Border Patrol broke the license and illegally used the software.
While I agree that in the end, it’s a decision by the courts, you’re still detailing the answers to how it would be handled based on how copyright currently functions and I’d wager with a re-organized and re-written copyright law, you’d have a lot fewer instances of being able to argue that.
I mean, we have court cases that never make it anywhere all the time based simply on the idea “standing.” Hell, our legal system doesn’t even respect the idea of it even though they reject it half the time. Conservatives wholesale made up someone refusing to make web pages for a “gay couple” who turned out to be a straight guy who never wrote such an email and the Supreme Court swallowed it and said “fuck standing, we’re giving him standing because we’re corrupt fucking assholes.”
So what I’m talking about includes legal system reform as well, which would preclude a lot of ability to waste developers time by illicitly using their work and then taking them to court over it.
Here’s an article all about how ‘open source’ coopted and recuperated ‘free software’ movement to the benefit of corps.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230703044529/https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-meme-hustler
The enduring emptiness of our technology debates has one main cause, and his name is Tim O’Reilly. The founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, a seemingly omnipotent publisher of technology books and a tireless organizer of trendy conferences, O’Reilly is one of the most influential thinkers in Silicon Valley. Entire fields of thought—from computing to management theory to public administration—have already surrendered to his buzzwordophilia, but O’Reilly keeps pressing on. Over the past fifteen years, he has given us such gems of analytical precision as “open source,” “Web 2.0,” “government as a platform,” and “architecture of participation.” O’Reilly doesn’t coin all of his favorite expressions, but he promotes them with religious zeal and enviable perseverance. While Washington prides itself on Frank Luntz, the Republican strategist who rebranded “global warming” as “climate change” and turned “estate tax” into “death tax,” Silicon Valley has found its own Frank Luntz in Tim O’Reilly.
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On the other hand, I’d wager that any given person who uses Linux daily at work is far more likely to own a stake in their company than the average worker.
My Linux laptop is also literally my means of production, which I own. Karl Marx never predicted this.
He also didn’t predict a class of people born with no labor to sell because so much of it has been automated away. How are they supposed to use their labor as a bargaining chip if they can’t find labor to do to begin with?
Tell me how the math works out on this one.
Because last I checked, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and Google still are the biggest companies and their wealth rests primarily on closed source software.
I would think for the “largest” transfer of wealth, we would be able to pinpoint some poor exploited geeks coding software juxtaposed against some rich fat cats making money off of it.
But Linus Torvalds doesn’t seem poor and IBM/Red Hat, while rich, is much smaller than Microsoft.
I agree with this take, but Google does stand pretty tall on Open Source. Android is technically the most widely used Linux variant in use.
Sure, they all use open source to varying degrees.
But most of Android is actually contributed by engineers who are being paid by Google.
We could argue that $300K in San Francisco is still exploitation, but there are worse forms of exploitation in any case.
This is why I don’t agree with the GPL. It’s perfect in every way, except for the allowance to utilize the licensed work or derivatives thereof for monetary gain. Fuck that shit. You got it for free, you give it away for free.
Exactly.
It only takes one paying customer to take the published FOSS code from the commercial software and re-distribute it for everyone to benefit from the commercial modifications made to it. That’s the point, a commercial use of the software can not make the source proprietary.
This is what Redhat recently found out when they tried to hide their RHEL source behind a paywall. Attempting to tie the hands of their customers with an additional license agreement forbidding distribution of the source is a violation of the GPL.
Doesn’t matter. You got it free, you give it away for free. You’re clearly missing the whole point of the OP.
Those of us who work in tech need to have a serious reckoning about our contributions to this sort of dynamic and the sort of social environment it incentivizes us to gravitate towards, maintain, and create.
There also needs to be some discussion of class in tech and how the bull pen tech support grunts are going to have very different incentives from the senior technician making 7 figures on top of mad stock options.
Nobody listened to Negativland enough when it mattered. They helped develop Creative Commons licenses and were pretty much the spearhead for the “no attribution but you can’t use it for commercial purposes” license. I’m not sure if that one even exists anymore, but it seems like Creative Commons is also pretty dead-in-the-water these days. They understood the need to define ownership and be able to say “No, corporations can’t just use it freely.”
TIHI.
This is absolutely not unpopular. Free software buys more porsches to incompetent business schools alumni than windows…
Well known, sad and frustrating
Capitalism is when money.
I thought AWS is built on hosting open source projects too.
So, don’t mistake this as me telling you you’re totally wrong, because you definitely do have a point and it gets under my skin too (that’s why I believe licenses like AGPL and, dare I say, SSPL should be used), but many of these companies actively contribute back to the open source software they’re using.
