Free Software started as a political movement about the rights of computer users to learn, share, and improve the systems we use. Open Source was the business-friendly depoliticized version.
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
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Right but I wouldn't say its seen as such in the general discourse of society (at least not yet). Maybe that could change more in the next years?
In the tech biz, this has already happened. You're living in the aftermath of it.
The Open Source movement created a strong shared infrastructure for the modern tech industry, all derived from Free Software components like Linux, gcc, and Python.
Linux caught on. It took over huge swaths of the tech world in the late '90s and early 2000s; displacing not only Windows servers but also SGI, Solaris, and most of the rest of proprietary Unix.
Companies learned how to build proprietary systems on top of a common open-source core; contributing certain elements back to that core while developing other components privately.
This is what almost all modern datacenters are built out of. Most servers providing most well-known Internet services are running Linux.
In consumer devices, it's what Android, Chromebook, and Steam Deck are built out of. The modern Mac is a cousin: the Darwin core inherits from BSD. Your wifi router probably runs a Linux or BSD kernel.
You've seen the jokes about "the year of Linux on the desktop". Thing is, Linux on the desktop has been an easily available option for decades. The joke is that most people don't choose that option; they choose proprietary systems because that's slightly easier at first ... and then they normalize enduring all sorts of bullshit from those systems' proprietors. (I mean, seriously! Windows XP didn't run ads on your desktop, but today's Windows does. Why? Because they know you'll put up with it.)
For me Lemmy, mastodon etc are tools, like email or http. People which use these tools are very different and have very different political views. So, for me the answer to your question is "no".
On the main fediverse you can really see it -- the thing everyone has in common is a back-end protocol. That's about it. You get trans instances and terf instances and no, they won't be joining hands to sing kumbaya.
The World Wide Web is another example of this that's much older. How many people reading this agree with Stormfront? Probably not that many. And yet both you and them are sharing the use of a variety of TCP/IP, HTTP, and HTML protocols and platforms.
The term "open source" was created to distance itself from the moral and political aspects of the already established term "free software" (free as in freedom). There are coordinated efforts to promote user's software freedoms and the developers of copyleft, free software.
Lemmy is not your army
Yet
Anyone want to join a radical militia btw?
We have cookies.
Well, we will have cookies. Unless you guys are more a pizza crowd.
I would much rather eat pizza than have cookies, cookies are nice (but your data gets sold)
How about a cookie pizza?
Damn that's the kind of thinking this militia needs, consider yourself promoted.
You mean like Trump and Twitter?
Why must you politicize/weaponize the Fediverse?
with Lemmy and Mastodon the opensource community has a place to really try itself out
Sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about.
What? No, lol.
Haha as a guy who definitely believed open source was the political force gathering steam to replace George W Bush back in the day...no.
Oh God I hope not. I'm oh-so-fucking-weary of everything being politicized.
Meme Commando
Reporting for duty
Some people, communities or instances will. Others will not. That's kind of the nature of the fediverse, it's not homogenous but diverse.
I mean private movement is a thing. Of course it could be turned into a political movement if we're vocal about it. As long as we keep the public inform about the movement's vision, I'm pretty optimistic about we'll gain public support
It is fundamentally political. Political means advocating for policy, and decentralization is our policy we advocate for. The question is will it actually amount to anything.
That's the whole point.. hackliberty.org!