RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@ariadne/117579594140229264
If free software is not about ethics, then what the fuck is its point.
21 Boosts
1 Like
@Gargron I want every contribution I ever made to the FSF when I was young and naive back, adjusted for inflation, with interest.
@Gargron let's do some ethicsmaxxing
@Gargron It turned out to be about corporations getting a lot of people to work for free ... it's not a big leap from that to actually owning the means of production outright and making them work for free.
@Gargron are we going to ignore that computers are built with products of child labor in conditions more akin to slavery than anything else?
@Gargron
Absolutely 100%, thank you for pointing out what shouldn't need to be pointed but JFHC
@Gargron great question. i got involved in FOSS through activism on *other* topics, and i suspect i am not alone in that
@Gargron I don't know, but FSF says freedom means freedom to do anything. Literally anything. Regardless of anything.
@Gargron Freedom without ethics and humanitarian values is chaos. The one that erupts in war torn countries etc Everybody is “free” to kill each other. In the same analogy free software without ethics leads to the same dog eat dog world we tried to evade in the first place.
so no contributions from the genocidal apartheid war-criminal fascist state of israel ?
@Gargron This whole thread needs a dose of "I don't argue with people John Brown would have shot" stapled to it, JFC.
@Gargron GNU GPL doesn't ban contributions from slaves forced to work on software, so it is… fine?
@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.
»injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere«
@wonka @acf @Gargron @sstephenson I am afraid I don't get what you are trying to say. I am intrigued, since I think that there is some truth to that quote, but it would be great if you could elaborate how it relates to this topic.
I'm trying to say that maybe some people want to set aside a difference or two too much; Eli being one of them.
@Gargron
While the scenario hypothesized by the GNU maintainer is unfortunate, and quite tone deaf at that, it is also important to note that the use of LLMs is nothing like participating in actual slavery. Also, systems of ethics are relativistic in nature, so unless one wants to fall into a "my ethics are better than yours" trap, one must keep this in mind. "Free software" means different things to different people.