How did the ideology of libre/free software get so politicized?

I’ve noticed advocates for exclusively for libre software and actively discourage simple open source software for not going far enough, also want censorship of not allowing any proprietary software to be mentioned, and don’t allow any critiques of the software they use because it’s libre software so there are no faults or bad designs.

I thoroughly enjoy the code purity of what is labelled as libre software, for license I only like the ISC license for freedom. My attitude is if someone changes my code and doesn’t give back, it does not harm me or injury me in any way.

I also believe libre software can be used for the surveillance of other people, libre software does not be default mean privacy. How network software is configured in systems that other people don’t control, it doesn’t matter if it’s open source when people have no knowledge of other networks configuration.

On the principal of freedom, I do support the right to develop proprietary software. The fact that it exists does not harm anyone who chooses not to use proprietary software.

It seems the die hard libre software crowd, not open source people but the ones who want to live in an only GPLv3+ world can start to live in ther own world, their own bubble, and become disconnected losing perspective that which software other people use is not something that should affect your day in any way. Unless someone is both a network engineer and does infosec or something similiar, they’re not in a position to understand fully appreciate how network protocols matter more than a license and code availability.

  • wet_lettuce@beehaw.org
    6·
    1 year ago

    I read this on Daring Fireball the other day:

    Mastodon is at risk of falling into the trap that a lot of free/open source software does, where the idea of the software being “free as in speech” is expected to outweigh or explain away deficiencies in its usefulness. However, this ignores three salient facts:

      -Most people don’t give a thruppenny fuck about their freedom to view and edit the source code of the software they use, which they would not know how to do even if they cared;

     -Most people are not ideologically opposed to the notion of proprietary software, and cannot be convinced to be because it is simply not important to them and cannot be explained in terms that are important to them; and

     -When given the choice between a tool which is immediately useful for achieving some sort of goal but conflicts with some kind of ideological standpoint, and a tool which is not as useful but they agree with ideologically, they will probably choose the former

    A lot of the hardcore advocates of free software get, understandably, upset when they see masses of people spout FREE software! or opensource software…then not give a flying fuck about what that actually means. The quote above is pretty accurate imo.

    I think half of the people using free(as in libre, not gratis) software are doing it because its free (as in cost). Not because they care about the “four essential freedoms”: (0) to run the program, (1) to study and change the program in source code form, (2) to redistribute exact copies, and (3) to distribute modified versions. Because, well, see the quote above. Most wouldn’t even know where to start. They just want to use the software…and not pay for it. They aren’t opposed to closed, non-free software.

    So if you truly believe in the philosophy behind free software, you’ll start getting pretty opinionated as you see people co-opt, distort, and disregard key tenants of your philosophy. Even looking at some of the responses to this post, you can see people misusing the definition of free and/or not being precise with their language (which for something like this, can completely change the meaning).

    This is a fantastic article: https://ploum.net/2023-06-19-more-rms.html

    It gives a good short history of how we got here.