Someone implied that people were evil if they gave away software with nothing asked in return. I didn't think the author deserved that. I'm also starting to think such people are at war with both private property and generosity for political reasons leaning toward socialism or communism. That segment also tries to pressure others to adopt their ideas.
So, I defended the author and the concept of generosity. I also tried to help FOSS people reframe what their doing as collective property or work so everyone understands the tradeoffs better. They confuse people by advocating for "free" or "freedom" with licenses that take away freedoms from authors. It's like they're redefining words to have non-standard meanings but get angry when people act on standard morals or word usages.
I'm also starting to think the confusion was intentional because many of their arguments look like socialism or communism disguised as software advice. We also see the same failure modes across most projects and products. Like communist nations (eg Shenzhen), we see the GPL projects succeed best when they relied on capitalists instead of communist principles for code contributions. So, I'll eventually look to see if people like Stallman were communist and if this was sneaky, ideological warfare or subversion. Like we see with critical theory ("woke") proponents constantly repacking their ideas (eg DEI, Codes of Conduct) to snesk them in where they'd be rejected after peer review. I feel like so much fighting online started with people doing something evil built on a conflict-oriented philosophy (Marxism/Communism) that causes the same destructive effects everywhere people promoted it.
There is a huge distinction between socialism/communism and Free Software.
1) the marginal cost of software is zero.
2) some software is becoming more like infrastructure that everyone uses.
In the physical world, some infrastructure is privatized, some is regulated, and some is provided by the government. But going back to point 1 we see that privatization makes even less sense (to society) with software.
So, I defended the author and the concept of generosity. I also tried to help FOSS people reframe what their doing as collective property or work so everyone understands the tradeoffs better. They confuse people by advocating for "free" or "freedom" with licenses that take away freedoms from authors. It's like they're redefining words to have non-standard meanings but get angry when people act on standard morals or word usages.
I'm also starting to think the confusion was intentional because many of their arguments look like socialism or communism disguised as software advice. We also see the same failure modes across most projects and products. Like communist nations (eg Shenzhen), we see the GPL projects succeed best when they relied on capitalists instead of communist principles for code contributions. So, I'll eventually look to see if people like Stallman were communist and if this was sneaky, ideological warfare or subversion. Like we see with critical theory ("woke") proponents constantly repacking their ideas (eg DEI, Codes of Conduct) to snesk them in where they'd be rejected after peer review. I feel like so much fighting online started with people doing something evil built on a conflict-oriented philosophy (Marxism/Communism) that causes the same destructive effects everywhere people promoted it.