[License-discuss] How can we as a community help empower authors outside license agreements?

[Russell McOrmond]

On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 6:28 PM Tobie Langel <tobie at unlockopen.com> wrote:

> Could you explain how the values I described were exclusionary to yours,
> though?
>

The "ethical" source folks wish authors to be able to discriminate against
who can use the software.  That is exclusionary of my values, as I believe
it is unethical for authors to be granted sufficient legal control to be
exclusionary.  I believe the most dangerous, unethical policy is for
software authors to have the ability to impose public policy on others.  I
believe that software authors should start to take responsibility for the
impacts that their software and licensing has on society, and reducing the
control that software authors have over society is required for what I
would consider to be ethical software.


I do not represent all, or likely even a majority, of the open source
community.  One of the core strengths has been that people who have
entirely different reasons for participating in software projects can work
together.  One of the reasons the Open Source brand has been more
successfull than the Free Software brand has been because it seeks to take
personal politics out of the equation.

Pretty much every thing of value of Open Source I can think of, from
commons-based peer production, to decentralized governance (fork without
permission), to ethics, to the ability to be globally successfull, is all
disabled by the types of discrimination the "ethical" source software folks
wish to implement.

I actually think members of this community have a lot more in common than
> you’re suggesting above.
>

It is possible (and unfortunately fairly common) for groups to have the
same goals, but be unable to work together because they disagree on whether
certain tactics are helpful or harmful to the stated goals.

The differences remain irreconcilable as long as the "ethical" source
movement is wishing to harness tactics that are seen as harmful even to its
own stated ethical goals, as well as harmful to the less political goals
which are compatable with traditional Open Source.



There  has always been the concept of a false-flag campaigns and agent
provocateurs, and I've been in marches where I've observed these types of
tactics.  If I were an opponent of Open Source I would have harnessed one
of its vulnerabilities as a way to decrease its effectiveness, and that is
its openness to discussing different ideas (even when they are clearly
opposing ideas).   I had to ensure the "Diversity of Tactics" movement in
the late 1990's and early 2000's which had the effect of disallowing
famiilies and more mainstream/engaged political participants from being
able to participate in many marches, as the inclusion of violence and
vandalism decreases the effectiveness of political movements.  (I tried to
co-found a group called SIGN -- Solidarity In Gandhian Non-violence, but
DOT won the debate and diminished the movements).

Being involved in a variety of political struggles for most of my life I no
longer spend in my older years so much time trying to differentiate between
naive political actors and agent provocateurs -- if naive political actors
refuse to open dialog and insist on pushing forward harmful tactics, then
treating both the same (as political opponents) becomes necessary.

The only "dialog" I've seen from the "ethical" source movement is the
insistance that it be the long-standing Open Source coalition of
communities that needs change in order to enable harmful tactics, and no
recognition at all of the possibility that the discriminatory tactics
chosen are in fact the problem.

It isn't my choice to treat some of the actors from the "ethical" source
movement as political opponents -- it is their choice.   When those harmful
tactics are off the table, then they won't be seen as political opponents.

-- 
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>

"The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware
manufacturers, can pry my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or portable
media player from my cold dead hands!" http://c11.ca/own
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