@yogthos damnnn!!!

@yogthos given that Open Source was intentionally capitalist, and Free Software has repeatedly failed to position itself as anti-capitalist, I'm not sure this is a bug in those system…

@yogthos well, it makes about as much sense as thinking that unlicensed copying is stealing…

i guess it would also mean that public goods are impossible.

@yogthos Having dealt with the corporate world, they actually are somewhat averse to free-as-in-beer software, paying Linux distros such as Red Hat and Ubnuntu for supported systems. Still, it's a valid point that many programmers donated free labor to the profit of others.

@yogthos I think a nonzero amount of this, is that talent dried up in the paid-for sector.

Solaris was huge in the early days of the web; but all the "cool kids" ran Linux at home. It got harder and harder to find sysadmins skilled with Solaris, whereas Linux experience was everywhere.

Because of this, the Linux admins were cheaper to hire.

Software licensing isn't the biggest IT budget item anymore, salary is.

@yogthos And FOSS enthusiasts *lose their minds* if you suggest maybe a noncommercial license is okay.

@yogthos 70-90% of WEB SERVERS run linux. so many corporate servers run windows but are behind intranets.

I bought a few HPE servers new, and guess what: they all had a windows boot manager entry.

It's also that linux is the choice of load balancer, even at MSFT: netcraft shows microsoft.com as running linux. They may in fact be running windows, or maybe freebsd (e.g. 4chan/HN).

Disclaimer: I work at microsoft but not windows or azure.

@yogthos also https://j3s.sh/thought/drones-run-linux-free-software-isnt-enough.html

@yogthos Open Source is the playground of the rich.

https://sfba.social/@drahardja/110626599633506095

@yogthos

Using Free Software in commercial applications is a thing, but it's not a theft or transfer of assets, because software is zero marginal cost. The inverse of this argument was made by Microsoft in the 1990s arguing why government use of FLOSS was bad for the American economy.

I worked as a sys-admin for the government for over a decade and our use of Free Software saved the taxpayers enormous amounts of money.

@meena FSF has been explicitly anti-capitalist and this is the whole reason GPL was shunned by companies, then the corporate world started making a big push for permissive licenses that allowed companies to freeload

@sofia the issue is with freeloading, pirating content and then selling it is equally morally wrong

@sofia @yogthos boosting this reply in agreement even while still convinced that OP is right and yet another example of the Freedom Monster at work

@sofia private companies using public/common goods is transfer of wealth…
I wonder how their huge brains ever fit in their apparently normal skulls~

@emacsen @yogthos

Indeed.

You have to consider what the labour actually *is* before you can make LaVar Burton tell us there was a transfer.

Programmers make things based on instructions. If the instructions come from the corporation, or if they gate keep repository, then you have a labour problem. If you threw some things over a wall and never so much as answered a support ticket; sorry no, that's just loss-aversion anxiety and conspiratorial thinking.

#PayForFreeSoftware

@yogthos I dislike with this framing not because it is inaccurate but because it robs me of the last vestige of purpose

@yogthos This can be argued the other way...the vast majority of Linux kernel development is done by people who are paid, often quite well, for that work. Companies have paid for this and have then given it all away. It could be said to be one of the largest transfers from corporations to a common resource ever.

I'm not entirely fond of how free software has become, to many, a way to shed maintenance costs. There are a lot of problems with how things work. But the situation is not quite as portrayed in this cute little image, IMO.

@corbet Linux kernel was doing just fine before corporations got involved, and obviously companies aren't contributing out of altruism.

Companies contribute because it's cheaper than using a commercial product.

The other aspect here is that companies now have influence over projects like the Linux kernel and influence their evolution.

@yogthos Linux was doing OK before the companies showed up...I was there, after all. But an awful lot of things didn't work very well, we lacked support for a lot of hardware, and so on. If you're getting >90% of your code from companies, they are clearly adding something.

No, it's not altruism on their part, but does that matter?

Anyway, I was challenging the assertion that free software is a transfer of wealth from volunteers to companies; I don't think you've said anything to change minds on that.

@yogthos the #linux meme applies

@yogthos "unintentionally" as in: the #copyleft of the #GPL does not have teeth when it’s just used on a server, and too few people chose the #AGPL to preserve copyleft.

See what Google has to say about it: https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl-policy

AGPL has been available since 2002: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License

#gnu

@ArneBab @yogthos

> WARNING: Code licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) MUST NOT be used at Google.

I didn't know it was this easy to make big tech leave their fingers from your software.

@Jummit that’s what I wanted to say ☺ @yogthos

@Jummit @ArneBab @yogthos that also means that nobody working there can ever contribute to it either.

Take that into account.

https://flameeyes.blog/2020/04/16/making-it-easy-to-contribute-code/

@ArneBab @yogthos Yeah, thanks for the info! I'll definitely keep this in mind in my future licensing decissions.

@flameeyes @ArneBab @yogthos Interesting. That is one downside, although it does protect you from the embrace-extend-extinguish cycle.

@Jummit @ArneBab @yogthos though it means you can't complain why things like Apple deciding to rewrite everything in a more permissive license.