A software commons?
A few articles have popped up recently about open-source software and its role in society.
“In short: I maintain a sorta-popular open source package, and I want to prevent big corporations and “bad guys” from using it. I want feedback on how to do this.”
https://evanhahn.com/stopping-bad-guys-from-using-my-open-source-project/
Businesses and governments need to get used to the idea that you are not part of their “software supply chain” unless they are a paying customer. Unless and until they are willing to make direct, material contributions to the software maintainers they rely on, it is long past time that maintainers stopped letting them take advantage of their good nature. They are free to solve the problem themselves, just as they always have been.
https://pivotnine.com/blog/open-source-has-too-many-parasocial-relationships/
Open source, the thing that drives the world, the thing Harvard says has an economic value of 8.8 trillion dollars (also a big number). Most of it is one person. And I can promise you not one of those single person projects have the proper amount of resources they need.
“I steadfastly believe in open source praxis as an exceptionally powerful method of permissionless coordination & innovation. Yet if open source code alone could change the world, it would have happened by now. When Microsoft suddenly turned OSS-friendly in the 2010s we triumphantly proclaimed “open source has won!”, but what have we got to show for it? More technology does not on its own correlate with better quality of life.”
The latter especially really considers the idea of seeing software as a commons, following Elinor Ostrom. (Citing both Ostrom and Ursula Franklin is a really quick way to get me paying attention!)
I’ve been inching myself towards the co-operative and mutual sector in Australia as I get involved in co-op housing in Sydney.
I’d love to see co-ops and mutuals working together to develop shared-source infrastructure, autonomous from big tech.
The co-op movement is already built upon the ideals of co-operation, community, participation and democracy. These ideals should go hand-in-hand with the kind of ideals we’re used to in the free software and open source movements, but leaven them with a little bit of economic analysis and class consciousness.
For example, instead of building source code under permissive licenses, why not develop it under licensing that allows it to be used by co-operative and mutual businesses, with certain mutual obligations to e.g. fund development, share their own modifications to the software, or even just be a good citizen (e.g. not demanding free labour from maintainers?). Kind of like “free software for the mutual sector”.
That, to me, sounds like it would maintain some of the important benefits of open-source software, while avoiding some of the pitfalls. Instead of just freedom-washing ways for big tech companies to benefit from free labour, co-ops could lead the way to a source code commons.