Re: Next Steps For the Software Heritage Problem

[MSavoritias <email@msavoritias.me>]

On Thu, 20 Jun 2024 16:35:10 +0200
Ekaitz Zarraga <ekaitz@elenq.tech> wrote:

> > 2. You seem to imply that Free Software or code is apolitical. (in the
> > sense of social or state politics not) Which it is not. Nothing is.
> > For example Free Software is explicitly pro-capitalist and
> > pro-Google/big companies. I am not saying I disagree, but its good
> > to keep in mind that politics exist and do exist always. And in the case  
> 
> I'm not one of those people that think everything is politics but that's 
> not a debate I want to open. Free Software can be understood from many 
> ways. I don't think it's pro-capitalist, but pro-freedom, but that 
> freedom affects the capitalists too, and it's a *value* they have. But 
> freedom is also an anarchist value, and it can be an anti-capitalist 
> value too it becomes more politic when you put more things around it. 
> The issue I was trying to point is Free Software attracts many people 
> from many different backgrounds and politics, and trying to push for one 
> side defeats its purpose: making people stay together because they have 
> some shared value.

I agree up to point. There is a lot of ifs and buts here and the CoC covers some of the already.
Not every political opinion should be respected.

> >> 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.  
> > 
> > This is missing the context that GPL does indeed restrict people's
> > freedom to license code as the see fit. Because it was written to
> > further the political goals of FSF. It is on purpose. So we are already
> > restricting the freedom of people to do what they want on purpose.  
> 
> It does restrict your freedom but only if your goal is restrict other 
> people's software freedom. I'd say the argument here was that GPL 
> provides more absolute freedom in the current world than other licenses 
> but I don't think the GPL was a very easy decision to make for the 
> radical freedom fighters. That's why some people don't like it.

Sure I agree. My point was more that we already restrict stuff to make room for better things.
Same way the CoC restricts some people from participating so that our spaces can be safer for people to participate.
Its the tradeoffs you have to do. By allowing everybody to do whatever they want or allowing everybody to say whatever they want, you end losing everybody.
As you said yourself.

> > And lets not forget
> > "your freedom ends where the other persons freedom begins"
> > and consent of course in the issue at hand.  
> 
> Yes, but I don't think this is a matter Free Software needs to deal 
> with. And my original message was around that.
> 
> Now, we should do something as a set of people that collaboratively work 
> in a project. Probably not under the Free Software label, because what 
> free software is is already pretty clear and well defined, but as 
> something else, may that be Guix users and contributors, if we wish.

yep. I agree. And this is exactly what I wanted to do in my proposal in the first place :D

> >> 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).  
> > 
> > Definetily agree. The solution is not to embrace propietary software or
> > restrict software. Its to write down some common social rules that are
> > rooted in consent.
> >   
> >> 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.  
> > 
> > Fair. I mean we already have CoC and channel descriptions. Idk if we
> > have event guidelines/CoC yet but we should.
> >   
> >> I don't know, maybe I'm just a little bit tired.  
> > 
> > No worries. I think it was very well said.
> > 
> > MSavoritias  
> 
> That was just for clarifying my point wasn't against this discussion but 
> to say that the decision Efraim took on dbxfs is not only correct but 
> the only possible decision, and that it should be.

I think our decisions should be a lot more based on context than dogma or some kind of immovable law. But that is just me and probably a discussion for another time.

> Now in Guix, I don't feel comfortable with the fact we are helping 
> people use AI that doesn't respect the licenses of our work to be 
> trained. I'm sick of it.
> 
> If they respected the licenses, I'd be ok with it. Since I accepted Free 
> Software's social contract I'm open for anyone to use my code with any 
> purpose (unless they don't respect people's freedom later).
> 
> Also, even if we don't do anything about it, Guix's codebase is public, 
> so they could do it anyway, regardless of SWH, so there's not much we 
> can do about that.

I mean sure. But the problem is that Guix actively gives them the source code which they use for the wrong purposes.
I wouldn't have a problem if it was on archiving. Just because somebody else is an asshole doesn't mean we have to be.

Also a lot of people don't see the Free Software social contract as GPL. They see it as a legal license.
Probably we could define some kind of Free Software contract on top but I am guessing that:
1. It would be against GPL, because GPL doesn't want anybody for any purpose to use your code. We would go public domain.
2. A lot of people probably couldn't accept it. See for example hostile forks even inside GNU that have happened.

> What we *can* do is raise our concerns to SWH, motivating them to be 
> more strict with their collaboration with companies or with the terms of 
> their collaboration. It's probably better that they are in our side in 
> this battle than if we are alone. I think they are sensible to this 
> issue so it shouldn't be hard to have a proper conversation with them 
> and see if we can understand better what they do, how, in which terms 
> and so on.

I agree. I don't want to burn any bridges. Which is why I made the proposal that I did. To put social pressure on them to actually respect consent.
 
> Maybe it's better that these AI companies reach our code through SWH 
> with a well-written contract than letting them steal it from the 
> internet without having them to sign anything.
> 
> I'm kind of just guessing there, but we are probably stronger that way.
> Also, if we could make other distros to take part on this it would be a 
> great way to be stronger.
> 
> In any case, I think SWH are more than sensible to this issue and I 
> think their connections might be helpful to not only restrict this 
> HugginFace from doing shady things but to start pushing for regulation 
> for every AI company that uses our sweat for their purposes.
> 
> So, to come back to my original point: It's not the free software that 
> needs to change. It's the regulation of AI companies that should, and 
> the responsibility we demand from them. Legally and morally, they should 
> be accountable of what they do, and that's the direction I'd like to 
> approach this. Maybe it's not easy to change the regulation of the whole 
> world, but we can try to push for it in Europe (we pioneered some 
> related regulations before) first.

Maybe. Then again this changes nothing to the current discussion.
That a system of code harvesting like SWH has needs to opt-in with consent.
Laws or not.

Then everybody can take the decision they think is based and give or not give their code to the LLM model :)

> In summary, I don't think this is just a SWH is bad/good or Free 
> Software is bad/good issue.
> 
> Best,
> Ekaitz
> 
> PS: If there's action I'm open and ready for it, but I won't like this 
> discussion to become an exercise of ethical bragging with no goals.

Please see my initial email for this thread for actional goals :)
That I plan to send a pr/mr/email for soonish.

MSavoritias