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

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