2026-11-08 13:49 UTC
Replies (40)
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@faket@veganism.social 2026-11-08 13:58
@Gargron@mastodon.social That’s the whole difference between free software and open source, we can thank Eric Raymond…
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@ErikUden@mastodon.de 2026-11-08 13:59
@Gargron@mastodon.social Eugen Rochko being on the right side of history counter: ∞
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@stux@mstdn.social 2026-11-08 14:00
@Gargron@mastodon.social How is that a ‘yes’.. “We could shoot ourself in the foot but we could also choose not too. We chose yes.”
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@dr_laemmerbein@mastodon.social 2026-11-08 14:03
@Gargron@mastodon.social Depends on who defines the ethics. I like free software and, personally, I would like to see everything released under more permissive licenses which also includes usage in commercial software without attribution.
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@astrashe@mas.to 2026-11-08 14:09
@Gargron@mastodon.social Ethics are central, but I like using it more than I like using commercial software. It tends to be better, and you don't have to worry about a company taking it away or breaking it.
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@mrkeen@mastodon.social 2026-11-08 14:18
@Gargron@mastodon.social It's recognition that this shit is all deeply personal and subjective. Sometimes people in power don't think Jews get to do science. Some people in power don't think that Palestians can argue against genocide on campus. No-one allowed Denmark to publish a political cartoon. When Yale wrote up the investigation, they weren't allowed to publish the cartoon. They're all doing it for their own moral reasons.
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@weddige@gruene.social 2026-11-08 14:24
What @Gargron@mastodon.social says ☝️ One can use free software because of the ethics, or because it's free. But never forget: it is only free BECAUSE OF THE FUCKING ETHICS!
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@acf@masto.alancfrancis.com 2026-11-08 14:23
@Gargron@mastodon.social @sstephenson@indieweb.social The reply is illuminating. "i went back and read the gnu manifesto and the sections on philosophy at the fsf website, something i haven't done for quite some time. i was convinced I would find something to support the idea that the fsf's mission, while focused on software, is in support of the greater mission of human liberty. but you are right. i was gravely mistaken." https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2026-11/msg00197.html
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@bujiraso@fosstodon.org 2026-11-08 14:26
@Gargron@mastodon.social have GNU totally lost the thread in some contrived positive and negative rights thought experiment? [1] That's the only way I can see them attempting to defend consistency here, and believe me I am not in ANY way encouraging whatever nonsense of theirs that I'm reading. I re-state: have GNU *lost the thread* in some sort of positive/negative rights rabbit hole? Find the sky again, GNU. And for the rest of us, clearly we need a new GNU. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights
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@jpeisach@ubuntu.social 2026-11-08 13:59
@Gargron@mastodon.social for me free software has been, can we make a world where everyone has free, same access to software? and an ecosystem where if you don’t like what you see, you can change it. but if the software you use is built off of trash morals why use it?
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@pkal@social.sdfeu.org 2026-11-08 14:40
@Gargron@mastodon.social Liberty? I mean this quite seriously, it is about the "It is better for ten guilty people to go free than for an innocent person to be convicted"-type of classically liberal and institution sceptical mode of thinking, where you intentionally do not assume to be able to know/express what is right or wrong with certainty that would legitimise extending power in ways that could be abused.
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@TimWardCam@c.im 2026-11-08 14:42
@Gargron@mastodon.social When people grow up a bit - and it doesn't take most people very long! - they learn not to answer contorted convoluted hypothetical questions like that. You're always going to get less grief by refusing to answer than by trying to contort yourself to fit the question. HMRC is a classic example of this. If you ask them "what would happen if I do X" the answer will always be "we're not telling you; you'll have to actually do it and then see how we decide to respond".
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@isacdaavid@mathstodon.xyz 2026-11-08 14:42
@Gargron@mastodon.social clearly unethical, but isn't his point that GNU's ethical mission has a limited scope (namely, software freedom, copyright, user privacy, etc)? If you filtered source code contributions along every single moral dimension, you would end up with pretty much nothing at the intersection. Think of all the scientific discoveries and tech invented by horrible people or horrible regimes. What matters to scientists is that the science is good. Historians and tribunals can judge the rest.
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@Gargron@mastodon.social 2026-11-08 14:51
"Software should be free. The people... not so much"
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@MissAemilia@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-11-08 14:57
@Gargron@mastodon.social I'm not all that surprised to see this come out of FSF-space unfortunately. Their dominant belief in that place at this point, whether they realise it or not, is that FOSS exists to service corporate interests. As a gift! As a treat! They've spent the last few years proving that one.
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@double_a_runi@mastodon.edufor.me 2026-11-08 15:15
@badrihippo@fosstodon.org looks like somoene discovered the same metaphor I like to use....., and then answered wrong!
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@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai 2026-11-08 15:19
@Gargron@mastodon.social The people who call themselves Libertarian these days don’t have ethics. It’s a left-wing word and it’s origin expropriated like so many other words and concepts by power hungry evil people. Libertarianism requires the discipline that one abstain from harming other people. This aspect is completely ignored by the right wing. Freedom for me to hell with thee
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@lethe@digitalcourage.social 2026-11-08 15:24
@Gargron@mastodon.social This is bad, but the shitheads here legitimately trying to excuse this make it even worse.
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@numodular@c.im 2026-11-08 15:46
@Gargron@mastodon.social There are a Range of solves - not just single-solve mindset "points". Equally, it's extremely rare for a solve to be too large of a Range, to be justly applied. Therefore, it's more productive to scale ethics as part of a 'higher/better' solve, than its predecessor. Call it 'evolution', but teach it as Behavioral Science, which should be Core Education instead of too many deRanged.
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@yiorgos@techhub.social 2026-11-08 16:15
@Gargron@mastodon.social ethics and humanity do not go together
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@bynkii@mastodon.social 2026-11-08 16:20
@Gargron@mastodon.social @Mabande@mastodon.social @ariadne@social.treehouse.systems is anyone actually surprised? Tech people, especially in the FOSS arena, have been relentlessly ethics-free forever. Look at the pressure it took to make Torvalds realize “HOLY SHIT, those non-white males are *people*!!” Their attitude towards even basic accessibility shows how much they still fuck ayn rand’s corpse.
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@closeted_unionist@mastodon.social 2026-11-08 16:38
@Gargron@mastodon.social Well, assuming it's logically correct, what can you do? Reject it and wait for the next guy to come up with the same solution? Maybe blacklist the user from future contributions but you can't blacklist ideas/ solutions?
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@GOD666@hear-me.social 2026-11-08 17:08
@Gargron@mastodon.social It must be more. Without debating philosophy and solely focusing on practicality and ease of use — the two things that actually will make the majority of people choose most things — explain to everyone why they should choose a project? Just because something is free or open source, does not mean the people will choose it.
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@ryebreadnyc@fosstodon.org 2026-11-08 17:20
@Gargron@mastodon.social @ariadne@social.treehouse.systems 1. LLMs are conscious minds 2. LLM contributions are a net good Therefore, slavery is ok. 🤯WTF?! When your assumptions lead to a bad outcome or conclusion you gotta need to rethink. GIGO
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@yora@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-11-08 17:32
@Gargron@mastodon.social Is it money? Somehow it has to be amount money. Many free softwares are collecting a lot of donations that I assume "reimburse" the managers of the project.
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@spdrnl@sigmoid.social 2026-11-08 17:37
@Gargron@mastodon.social Click bait coming to FOSS. The same tactics as in politics. I am seeing too much of this lately. For sure, it is the same ol' crowd benefitting. Beware!
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@quixote@mastodon.nz 2026-11-08 17:39
@Gargron@mastodon.social Yes, FOSS should include ethics. But. For individuals, there's a problem. We are all embedded in societies. We don't live without them. If the societies have unethical structural components, individuals can do what they can but on a day-to-day level it's never much. It's like telling people to boycott the transit system because it uses fossil fuels and make their own. You can't. So do you never go anywhere? That doesn't change the system either. The question about slavery is not hypothetical. It's embedded all over the place. There was a web site maybe 15 years ago that would estimate for you how many enslaved people globally were supporting your life. So we've all answered the GNU maintainer's question and answered it the same way. Yes, we go on making contributions and accepting them. Mainly by being unaware of the slavery. But the fact remains that we can either do nothing because our societies have grossly criminal components, or we can do what's possible for us in the moment and maybe all the invisible molecules of change eventually make a less criminal system. Obviously, it would be better if we did that without lying to ourselves.
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@Davide_Sandini@mastodon.uno 2026-11-08 18:21
@Gargron@mastodon.social AI- abuse make easy to recognise the addicted. Just like fentanyl.
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@craignicol@glasgow.social 2026-11-08 18:38
@Gargron@mastodon.social @onepict@chaos.social given it comes from free as in freedom, and slavery was rife in "the land of the free", at least they're consistent. Absolutely morally wrong, but consistent.
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@tofu@is-a.cat 2026-11-08 18:58
@Gargron@mastodon.social GNU GPL doesn't ban contributions from slaves forced to work on software, so it is… fine?
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@Newhereish@mastodon.social 2026-11-08 19:03
@Gargron@mastodon.social This whole thread needs a dose of "I don't argue with people John Brown would have shot" stapled to it, JFC.
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@rzeta0@mastodon.world 2026-11-08 19:41
@Gargron@mastodon.social so no contributions from the genocidal apartheid war-criminal fascist state of israel ?
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@vonxylofon@witter.cz 2026-11-08 20:07
@Gargron@mastodon.social I don't know, but FSF says freedom means freedom to do anything. Literally anything. Regardless of anything.
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@graywolf@fosstodon.org 2026-11-08 21:44
@Gargron@mastodon.social I think this problem is less black and white than this thread tries to make it. For example, Saudi Arabia basically runs on slave labor (see Kafala system). Does that mean we, as a FOSS community, should reject all pull requests from citizens & residents of Saudi Arabia? What about Chinese citizens & residents? Re-education camps in China use forced labor, should we reject all FOSS contributions from Chinese people? I am curious where do you draw the line.
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@wa__em@framapiaf.org 2026-11-08 21:55
@Gargron@mastodon.social are we going to ignore that computers are built with products of child labor in conditions more akin to slavery than anything else?
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@slyborg@ohai.social 2026-11-08 22:29
@Gargron@mastodon.social It turned out to be about corporations getting a lot of people to work for free ... it's not a big leap from that to actually owning the means of production outright and making them work for free.
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@frobozz@tty0.social 2026-11-09 00:43
@Gargron@mastodon.social I want every contribution I ever made to the FSF when I was young and naive back, adjusted for inflation, with interest.
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@rperezrosario@mastodon.social 2026-11-09 01:12
@Gargron@mastodon.social While the scenario hypothesized by the GNU maintainer is unfortunate, and quite tone deaf at that, it is also important to note that the use of LLMs is nothing like participating in actual slavery. Also, systems of ethics are relativistic in nature, so unless one wants to fall into a "my ethics are better than yours" trap, one must keep this in mind. "Free software" means different things to different people.
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@Sassinake@mastodon.social 2026-11-09 03:13
@Gargron@mastodon.social have corps started putting lead in paint and gasoline again?
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@octarine_wiggle@mastodon.au 2026-11-09 04:47
@Gargron@mastodon.social it confuses me as to why this is surprising to prominent people. Capital-letter Free Software is about the paramount ethic to respect rights of the *user*, not the developer. It's entirely agnostic about the mode of production, in the frame that software exists as the products of labour under employment and is not necessarily the intellectual property of the contributor at the moment of creation. Now the various vehicles for people who make software together, in the open, for each other, that's a different story. But copyleft and Free Software is plain and simple a libertarian's hack to extend the right to private thought further to cover private computation. That doesn't make it a bad frame intrinsically, but it's failure to deliver beyond that is merely disappointed hopes, not a conceptual flaw. The fine print of Free Software never promised solidarity on which to build community. It only defined what happened when solidarity and goodwill was lost, which allowed people to go along for a time. We need other ways to articulate real solidarity to avoid the enmity of frustrated natural alliances.