Re: Next Steps For the Software Heritage Problem

[Ekaitz Zarraga <ekaitz@elenq.tech>]

On 2024-06-19 12:25, raingloom@riseup.net wrote:
> On 2024-06-19 11:54, Efraim Flashner wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 19, 2024 at 12:13:38PM +0300, MSavoritias wrote:
>> ...
>> One of our packages, dbxfs, left Github a while ago and continued
>> development on a different forge. They adjusted their README to disallow
>> hosting of their code on Github. Based on this restriction we have
>> labeled later versions of the software as non-free and have not updated
>> the package. IMO saying that source code cannot be uploaded to SWH would
>> fall into the same category.
> 
> No wonder more and more people are growing dissatisfied with the free
> software movement.
> 

There are many valid reasons why someone might criticize the Free 
Software movement and people behind it, but making free software only 
has 4 simple rules. If you don't comply with them you are not free 
software anymore. It's as simple as that, and that simple it should be.

Free Software gives me the FREEDOM to print the code, make a roll with 
it and shove it up my ass if I want to (and even distribute my modified 
copies for other people to do so). The same freedom I have to upload it 
to github. If you prevent me from doing one or the other you are 
restricting my freedom and that's defeating the purpose of free software 
and we cannot consider your code free software anymore. The line is 
clear, and trying to pretend to be free software while restricting 
people's freedoms (regardless of what they are) is absurd.

The Free Software movement can be labeled (and is often labeled) as a 
political movement but I'd say it's more of an ethical movement. It's a 
way to share *values* and the value we share here is freedom. We might 
or might not share other values, politics, religion or anything, but as 
long as we put the freedom in the first place we should agree that free 
software is better than any other software model we have.

There are bad actors in the world (say thieves, killers or... GitHub and 
AI), and we can discuss about how we should deal with them but I don't 
think the answer is putting our *values* aside but embrace them harder 
(one value, freedom, in our case).

If people is not happy with the Free Software movement because it puts 
the freedom first, I can only understand it as people being mad about 
Free Software because it's about software.

For other values, we can start other initiatives I may or may not agree 
more with, but if the value is freedom (in software), I don't think 
there's any better way to push for it. But trying to disguise other 
things inside of the Free Software is kind of dishonest.

I don't know, maybe I'm just a little bit tired.