reading the news 

time to read https://anarchistnews.org/content/totw-free-stuff since I am behind the times

For less tangible stuff, anarchists have said a few things about computer and internet stuff like free software, open-source, and the likes:

The Poverty of Post-Open Source by Gnuxie Lulamoon and Hayley Patton On cyber syndicalism: From Hacktivism to Workers’ Control by Jeff Shantz

finally, mainstream* recognition!!

However, a lot of these ideas seem like antiques now.

wait WHAT that was only 2021 how is that antique, Shantz was 2016 which is still not that old (and “antique” is a weird one coming from the greens, and and that’s surely the most postie applied-langua.ge has gone)

Crimethinc later decided that their time focusing on these things had come to an end.

good for them, do they still dislike deoderant

Some of the best free resources around – libgen, scihub, Buy Nothing Project, etc. – they don’t have much in the way of anarchist messaging and anarchists don’t often refer to them as examples of anarchist practice.

tell me you did not actually read the applied-langua.ge backlog without saying you did not actually read the applied-langua.ge backlog

*close enough

reading not the news, this one is actually long 

For more on the topic, see Seven Theses On The Fediverse and The Becoming Of FLOSS.

alright then, I honestly don’t care for moral opining about the Fediverse for some strange reason so no reading #1-6 for me, but #7 is:

The Fediverse as the End of Free/Libre and Open Source Software as We Know It

bold statement, not sure what it has to do with the Fediverse, but alright; skipping forward because the relation is buried nearer the end than the start:

With its relatively diverse constituency of users, developers, agenda, software, and ideologies, the Fediverse is gradually becoming the most relevant system for the articulation of new forms of FLOSS critique. The Fediverse has become a site where traditional notions about FLOSS are confronted and revised by people who understand its use as part of a wider set of practices that challenge the status quo.

yeah alright I suppose that happened there, unfortunately Sturgeon’s law applies to critiques but sure that did in fact happen and it was partly on the Fediverse, yours truly wrote some things back in the day*, but I’m not sure that sending a snarky email gives SMTP revolutionary potential or whatnot

Whether motivated by ethics or economics, both free software and open source software share the ideal that their position is superior to closed source and proprietary modes of production.

yeah

This drive is deeply rooted in a Western context that over the past few decades has favored individual freedom in the form of liberalism and libertarianism at the expense of equality and care. However in both cases, the foundational liberal drive at the base of these ethical and economic perspectives is rarely challenged.

equality and care are when you hide your source materials and make everything unauditable, absolutely; in their defense the applied-langua.ge backlog was not written at the time this was written

I dunno, frankly I’ve no clue about philosophy but pinning individualism as a Western thing comes off odd; my only guess is that this is a simple narrative and simple narratives tend to be wrong (as was the previous dichotomy between “individual freedom” and “equality and care”). I’d love to hear from anyone who can comment with any certainty on Western versus Eastern philosophy, but since I am unqualified let’s instead talk organisation

Questioning this drive is a pivotal step, as this would open up discussions about other ways to approach the writing and circulation of, and access to, source code.

ways such as? I really dislike when people leave their grand claims open like this, there are so many things which are not the thing that you are critiquing, and I don’t know what you actually want

Unfortunately, such discussions have been difficult to facilitate for reasons that go beyond the dogmatic nature of both free and open source software agendas.

well I can’t imagine the orientalism is helping

Consequently, several long-standing FLOSS projects have been pressured to adopt accountability structures and migrate to community-oriented forms of governance such as co-ops or associations.

I burnt through my Bordigaposting quota for the year and it wasn’t even about any firms then, how foolish of me

Second, licenses now tend to be combined with other textual documents like copyright transfer agreements, terms of services, and codes of conduct.

(emphasis mine) internet sez is a CTA is strictly stronger than a CLA, and both have famously been used to maintain wholesome cooperative communities, and not to enclose the commons by surprise-relicensing to something non-free. Unrelated but something I think about - I like that I learned Terraform in devops class and then it got relicensed, I don’t keep up to date with actually employable tech and so I’ve no clue if that affected how many people still use it

in summary, thank you Guy L. Steele Jr that I did not become this kind of academic weenie; you know people say applied-langua.ge reads like academic weenieing but I don’t think they’ve had to read something like this for a while — actually I never checked if they are academics or what

For over thirty years, the annual festival for art and digital culture has been bringing together international artists, researchers, activists, and thinkers with the goal of developing new outlooks on our technological era through the entanglement of different genres and curatorial approaches.

artists YET AGAIN

*we have already established 2021 is ancient, so 2020 is even more olde

re: reading not the news, this one is actually long 

@nyx don't suppose you'd have any references w.r.t "frankly I’ve no clue about philosophy but pinning individualism as a Western thing comes off odd" i.e. any not-Western stuff to read in the area?

re: reading not the news, this one is actually long 

@hayley honestly this is a question I'm gonna direct to @0utside0utsider because I'll bet she would know more about this than me. nothing comes to mind but I also haven't thought much in awhile about individualism/egoism. also lol getting posted on anews rip 💀

re: reading not the news, this one is actually long 

@nyx @hayley hi hey hello hi,

So, for sure, what is typically called "individualism", is embedded in modes of evaluation that trend outwards from "the enlightenment" in the west- but these are particular, not encompassing of all the modes of individualistic outlooks, including ones in the west. Things like individuals atomized by a social order that is held together rights under law, or notions of freedom being equivalent with property without any relation to some other ordering entity, and the régime of needing to "develop" the individual self to take on inheriting and guarding that, or acting on that without reference to common situations.

But like, notions of individuality, individuation, and individual freedom is totally not encompassed by that; yangism was a school of thought in the "100 schools of thought" era of Chinese history that is really close to egoism, elements of vedanta in its non-dualism between the ephemeral self and the higher self trend towards a notion similar to self-apotheosis, and similarly with carvaka which has a atomistic and materialist outlook which also takes the individual as its social starting point, or certainly many different "esoteric" meditative philosophical schools of thought geared towards becoming a mystic have the practiced personal individuation of both perspective and actions relative to the social context as a central tennet, things like ''crazy wisdom'' express a kind of intense, tabbo breaking individual orientation of the student of enlightment. I'm sure there are more one could draw from.

Also, many different social orientations have as part of their philosophic foundation of mutual respect that one never bosses around another, or should never demand a self-accounting or justification from another, as it impedes on personal autonomy, such as in indegenous Malaysian communities

And further, there are notions that go behind that distinction, such as vf Cordova's contention that indigenous north amerikkkan cultures have a shared philosophical framework of a non-self monisms, whereby persons are individualized entirely by the kinds of relationships and experiences they have had in a direct sense, which allows for a culture of highly free individual choice of action, which she ascribes as the foundation for cultural pluralism and non-adherence to strict conceptual roles for women and what is now called two-spirit people

I don't think this person understands how free open source software develops amongst communities; reading between the lines and honestly just guessing from some of their particular verbiage, they seem to be implying that its only a world for elitle code writers to speak amongst each other and apply to their personal situation, as opposed to something, such as say riseup, that is maintained for open ended use without specialized knowledge, or perhaps more conceptually, that free software doesn't change the context for users, users are expected to modify for their own purpose, which is atomized.

I'll ask a friend of mine who is way more invested in egoism and individualist anarchism if she has any other non-western philosophies she knows of that are individualist; personally, while i do find these persistent ideas of "oh only westerners do individualism" really deeply annoying, im not that invested in it as a outlook either
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re: reading not the news, this one is actually long 

@0utside0utsider @hayley @nyx when I was a Buddhist for a few years I really dove into the history and suttas and there was a lot of individualist philosophy in the late Vedic/Second Urbanization period. I saw more references to untranslated works than I saw translated or preserved works, though. But much of it still resides in the Pali Canon.

re: reading not the news, this one is actually long 

@destroy @hayley @nyx interesting! I mostly looked into the pali cannon thru the influence of a friend who was very into Mahayana, so I didn't really get much of any sense of a individualist strain in it, but I'm open to the idea that other interpretations are present

re: reading not the news, this one is actually long 

@0utside0utsider @hayley @nyx

Mahayana are famously critical of Theravada for being self-absorbed! Generally if you’re looking for *the* individualist religion east of the Alps, it’s gonna be a Theravada school of thought. The focus on individual cultivation and enlightenment for its own sake is the basis of Theravada and is criticized as selfish or at the very least, narrow. The Pali Canon is so huge that you can find just about any argument if you look long enough, though.

re: reading not the news, this one is actually long 

@0utside0utsider @destroy @hayley @nyx Pali Canon also mentions Charvaka for the sole purpose of dunking on it, I think it could be considered "individualistic"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charvaka
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