incredible take from one of the GNU maintainers, seriously
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@ariadne
The basement-dwelling douchebag who wrote this is seemingly unclear on the distinction between legality and morality.
@ariadne Somehow I should have guessed it was Eli
@ariadne it's exhausting to enjoy using emacs
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@ariadne some zealot, doubtlessly: “At least a person wrote it”
@Elizafox@social.treehouse.systems @ariadne@social.treehouse.systems Well, 3/5ths of a person in Confederate states.
@ariadne
Well, that's a take.
@ariadne honestly I think the “community” should split, people who feel ethics are important on one side and people who don’t care on the other. Starting from scratch is not easy, maybe not even practical in the slightest, but is it ethical to use past work of people who have now become unethical or perhaps have always been unethical. Ethics is complicated but “is slavery bad??” Is one of the simplest things ever and when someone can’t answer that correctly it’s time to split.
@mbrdev @ariadne Yes, the splitting has to happen. We have been too upset about splitting efforts and community, and this is where we have landed.
Now I wish we had split more in the past.
Had we had more parallel developer communities ran on different philosophies, switching from one project to another would be easier. Instead we face a series of "take it or leave" deals today. We exchanged diversity and resiliency for unity. And here we are
@hugoestr @ariadne I’m happy to join the community that doesn’t accept slavery, believes in human rights for every single human, and takes a proper ethical stance on all things including AI. And hey don’t forget it’s actually a good thing to be against animal cruelty as well! Racism, bigotry, transphobia, homophobia, antisemitism, misogyny, fascism and all the things it’s so easy to condemn, I want to be with the group that easily without even discussion is against those things!
@ariadne me when my moral framework is just vibes and my complicity leads to societal rot:
@ariadne it would seem to me that if one is to use the products of slavery as a means, or part of a means, to disrupt and cause the cessation of that same slavery, then it is a viable solution if the alternative is to permit that same slavery to last any length of time greater.
When the slaves make guns, is it not appropriate to take those same guns, that would otherwise have been used in the oppression of slaves, to instead destroy the masters?
In that same vein, instructing an LLM to create the means of its own destruction would seem appropriate.
What is not is permitting personal gain from those same products.
@ariadne "Well actually, it's called GNU/Slavery."
@ariadne what thE FUARK
@ariadne False equivalency plus "Yet you live in a society, curious I am very intelligent" meme, used to justify a choice.
@ariadne What I don't like about this answer is, if the project wants to absolve itself of responsibility for deciding whether contributions are ethical or not, then giving a definite yes/no answer is still not the way to do it.
In that circumstance, the correct answer is,
> As a U.S. based foundation, we track the law of the U.S. for issues outside of our focus.
Problem solved.
If the U.S. permits products of slave labour, that's a U.S. problem at that point.
@ariadne Living by principles is hard. Moral decisions aren't supposed to make you feel warm and fuzzy.
RMS has been demonstrably problematic over the years. I hereby condemn you all for using FSF software.
Or maybe I don't.