Re: Corporate Conspiracy Open-Source Theory

On 2025-07-03, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Wed, 2 Jul 2025 11:35:21 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
>

"Cui bono?" presumes that other people are motivated by the same things
you are.  Not everythign is about money, not when ideology is involved.

>
You really think amoral megacorporates are motivated by anything other
than money? What agenda do you think they have? Are they just secretly
wishing for the ordinary public to set up fan clubs in their honour? Run
screaming after their executives, demanding their autographs? Maybe they
just want to appear in fashion-magazine spreads alongside the beautiful
people? What?
>

Yes, I do believe there are people within large organisations, who are
motivated by things other than money.  They also want a sense of moral
supremacy, of power, of discerning themselves as the elite.  You don't
just do this by being rich, but by being influential.

Why do you think companies push DEI?  It is a way to signal yourself as
a thought leader.

The software licence only covers the distribution and modification of
the software.

>
Free software explicitly spells out the Four Freedoms:
>
  0) The freedom to use the software as you wish
  1) The freedom to look at the source, figure it out and make changes
  2) The freedom to redistribute copies
  3) The freedom to redistribute your changes.
>
<https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html>
>

How you can use the software, what functionality and agency gives you is
also a coefficient of freedom.

The four freedoms ONLY concern themselves with the source/binary, not
with the mode of operation of the software.

But freedom has more levels than simply the freedom to
copy.  It is also what the software allows you to do, how it
inter-operates with ther software.

>
Yup. All covered.
>

The software licence says nothing though, about how much agency it gives
the user, when they are using the software.  Developers rarely look past
the code, and look at the software itself.

>
Not sure I understand this. You are saying “code” is not “software”?? What
is it, then?
>

Does this software give the user agency in their ability to configure
it?

>
A core part of the *nix philosophy is “mechanism, not policy”. Free
software is not supposed to impose particular ways of doing things on you,
instead it provides a toolkit you can use to do a whole range of things in
whatever ways you find best.
>

Nothing stops GPL or "Free" software imposing a very string method of
operation.  Especially if that software is a core component (i.e, GTK)

It link it with other pieces of software?

>
Open interoperability standards are a key feature of Free software, yes.
There is a strong preference for open and interoperable protocols/
standards over proprietary ones.
>

This is not guaranteed by the licence.  IT exist in the free software
world because the free software audience consisted of people who wanted
*BOTH* the ability to custmise and shape their computing experience AND
the ability to freely modify the source, hack at it.  Free Software was
in the past the purview of people who specifically wanted to take the
not-so-beaten path.

There is no guarantee these two will overlap in the next generation of
users.  In which case, you may see people who value one, or not the
other, or perhaps people who use free software, who value NEITHER.

This is what people are noticing.  I've noticed this shift too.

To use it with other software to make their own workflows?

>
This is one area where command-line/scriptability-based tools often have
an edge over GUI-centric ones.
>

Agreed.

A piece of software can be GPL licenced, but offer no
configuration, no real means of placing it in a pipeline, no
extensibility, whereas another, which could be proprietary could offer
vast configuratin options, allow extensions.

>
I would be curious where you can find examples of both of these things. Do
tell.

The games Doom and Quake were proprietary, but designed in a way to
give the user significant freedom to modify it, make levels,
modifications, and in the case of Quake and Quake II, write modules
which could significantly change the game play, turning into a new game.
Quake had a console and the ability to script actions.

I don't use much proprietary software, but I'm sure others can give examples.

On the other hand, GNOME project specifically sought to limit user
customisation.  Chrome has significant sway, and Google can, and do,
shape how people use the web.

https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/04/chrome_breaks_web/