RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@ariadne/117579594140229264
If free software is not about ethics, then what the fuck is its point.
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@Gargron This is bad, but the shitheads here legitimately trying to excuse this make it even worse.
The people who call themselves Libertarian these days don’t have ethics.
It’s a left-wing word and it’s origin expropriated like so many other words and concepts by power hungry evil people.
Libertarianism requires the discipline that one abstain from harming other people. This aspect is completely ignored by the right wing.
Freedom for me to hell with thee
@badrihippo looks like somoene discovered the same metaphor I like to use....., and then answered wrong!
@Gargron
That's a hell of an example! What a horrible take!
@Gargron The history oft the world is the history oft exploitation - be it resources, be it labour.
@Gargron I'm not all that surprised to see this come out of FSF-space unfortunately. Their dominant belief in that place at this point, whether they realise it or not, is that FOSS exists to service corporate interests. As a gift! As a treat!
They've spent the last few years proving that one.
"Software should be free. The people... not so much"
@Gargron Well, it's only one guy.
The process has to respect human rights.
The FSF itself rejects the use of proprietary software with one exception: to replace that proprietary software.
LLMs are proprietary software.
Free Software Foundation calls for free-range LLMs rather than factory-farmed AI https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/03/16/fsf-urges-ai-vendors-to-liberate-llms/5221192
If LLMs were libre software, the process probably would respect human rights, too.
Staff and Board https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board
"They advocate for user freedom because it is a human right, and a vital tool for securing and protecting other human rights."
@Gargron Free Software and the Nazi Bar problem. We should've kicked the Nazis out a long time ago. Now that we're noticing the problem, it's going to be a lot harder (but not impossible!) to give them the boot that they so admire.
@Gargron GNU officially retconning the RMS quote to "it's not free as in beer, it's free as in free labor"
i'm not looking forward to getting dragged to the hague for having emacs installed on my machine
@Gargron
There is no territory on earth that I know of that doesn't allow slavery.
@Gargron Isn’t mastodon slop-coded as well?
@iscarlosmolero No? What makes you say that.
@Gargron it’s not a no, so I guess it’s the classic “yes you can use AI but pretty pretty please eyeball the code a bit”
Which leads to slop.
@iscarlosmolero Nobody on the team uses AI. I cannot speak to the policy as I wasn't involved in writing it.
@Gargron Apropos of nothing, the only email I ever got from a "free software" figurehead over my career was a whiny complaint about documentation being in a PDF file. Ok.
@Gargron FOSS was actually never about people/environment/ethics. It was just another business or destribution model.
Maybe beeing open source is not enough. Like "fair trade", how it is developed should be reflected in the name.
@Gargron I mean, slavery as a lense is a very interesting way of examining LLM companies, particularly those that claim they are creating conscious entities.
I think that's an absurd claim, but if was true, it sounds to me that what they're trying to create is the perfect slave.
https://mark.gabby.li/Web%20Log/Servus%20et%20Machina.html
this is classic #libertarian shit
libertarians sound cool on the surface
but when you talk to them closer you find out that to them "freedom" means "i can do whatever i want, even if i harm others"
i think "freedom" means "i can do whatever i want, as long as it doesn't impinge upon the freedom of others"
#libertarianism and its pathetic immoral attitude is "freedumb"
unfortunately there is a lot of such turds in the world
you have to be on guard against them
they're out there
@Gargron I mean, slavery as a lense is a very interesting way of examining LLM companies, particularly those that claim they are creating conscious entities.
I think that's an absurd claim, but if was true, it sounds to me that what they're trying to create is the perfect slave.
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd03xx/EWD340.PDF
@Gargron clearly unethical, but isn't his point that GNU's ethical mission has a limited scope (namely, software freedom, copyright, user privacy, etc)?
If you filtered source code contributions along every single moral dimension, you would end up with pretty much nothing at the intersection.
Think of all the scientific discoveries and tech invented by horrible people or horrible regimes. What matters to scientists is that the science is good. Historians and tribunals can judge the rest.
@isacdaavid @Gargron less horrible people will have scienced the discovery, and will have written the patches, instead. We do not need to accept the contributions of horrible people.
@Gargron When people grow up a bit - and it doesn't take most people very long! - they learn not to answer contorted convoluted hypothetical questions like that. You're always going to get less grief by refusing to answer than by trying to contort yourself to fit the question.
HMRC is a classic example of this. If you ask them "what would happen if I do X" the answer will always be "we're not telling you; you'll have to actually do it and then see how we decide to respond".
@Gargron Liberty? I mean this quite seriously, it is about the "It is better for ten guilty people to go free than for an innocent person to be convicted"-type of classically liberal and institution sceptical mode of thinking, where you intentionally do not assume to be able to know/express what is right or wrong with certainty that would legitimise extending power in ways that could be abused.
@Gargron Lately it seems to be about free patches for corporate infrastructure.
What @Gargron says ☝️
One can use free software because of the ethics, or because it's free. But never forget: it is only free BECAUSE OF THE FUCKING ETHICS!
@Gargron @sstephenson The reply is illuminating.
"i went back and read the gnu manifesto and the sections on philosophy at the fsf website, something i haven't done for quite some time. i was convinced I would find something to support the idea that the fsf's mission, while focused on software, is in support of the greater mission of human liberty. but you are right. i was gravely mistaken."
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2026-11/msg00197.html
@acf @Gargron @sstephenson The FSF/GNU has generally always been more in favour of having an alliance of people that set aside their differences to fight for something they have a common interest in. Others decide to have a more concrete, holistic worldview that relates their specific concerns to broader values. I think both the diverse and uniform approaches are valid and respectable, they just have different strategic advantages and costs.
@pkal @Gargron @sstephenson I agree, sort of. It's a noble goal to say we can put aside politics, or religion and focus on software, but I think that somewhere down at the bottom there has to be a line we can all agree on, where its not politics, its basic humanity. The hard part, of course, is collectively deciding where that line is. Are LLMs "politics" like your feelings on low tax, or high tax, or maybe gun control? Or are they ethics like your position on slavery or child abuse.
@acf @pkal @Gargron @sstephenson I agree. No slavery. I'm on board.
Do we make a global purity test questionnaire that everyone has to fill out before they can contribute? And the list of prohibited activities and unsavory political positions will be maintained by who, exactly?
Or no list, but each maintainer decides if they find out something repulsive about someone? So each project says what they accept and has a form where you can rat out contributors?
Not sure how to implement this.
@ericphelps @acf @pkal @sstephenson What a terrible take! Yes, if you find out that one of your contributors has a history of misconduct, you can and should reject their future contributions. If their patch disclaims it was made with slave labour, you are fully capable of rejecting it on those grounds! Just because you can't know everything about everyone in advance doesn't mean that nothing should be done! It's perfectly reasonable and possible to just react according to a set of principles!
@Gargron @acf @pkal @sstephenson A very libertarian position, to make individual choices😉. I can't disagree with that even though I didn't list it as one of my alternatives. It doesn't have the large social impact most other people are advocating for, but you're absolutely right: Regardless of what everyone else is doing or considers acceptable, we must make our own decisions.
@Gargron @acf @pkal @sstephenson I think software licenses (like GNU) are an imperfect example of the global test. Many people refuse to deal with certain licenses because they don't agree with its the policies.
And I think the Fediverse is an imperfect example of individual project maintainers deciding. Server maintainers decide who can join and what other servers to block. And I can report anyone I think should be blocked.
I don't think either of these is a terrible take. But whatever.
@Gargron There are a Range of solves - not just single-solve mindset "points". Equally, it's extremely rare for a solve to be too large of a Range, to be justly applied.
Therefore, it's more productive to scale ethics as part of a 'higher/better' solve, than its predecessor.
Call it 'evolution', but teach it as Behavioral Science, which should be Core Education instead of too many deRanged.