08.07.20
(Don’t Let’s) Throw Caution to the Wind
2020 figosdev
Index
- Chapter 1: Start With Perfection
- Chapter 2: Controlling Your Computing
- Chapter 3: Miseducation
- Chapter 4: Computing vs. Marketing
- Chapter 5: The Psychology of Developers
- Chapter 6: Freedom is Personal
- Chapter 7: Computing Fundamentals
- You are here ☞ Chapter 8: (Don’t Let’s) Throw Caution to the Wind
Chapter 8: (Don’t Let’s) Throw Caution to the Wind
Summary: “As it will become crucial to explain, the effect of all this dancing around truth and reality was to transform a volunteer force primed to bring freedom to users into cheap labour for an industry that exploits everyone in it — all the way to the very top of Open Source itself.”
Before we muck up our not-quite-pristine software platform with more projects, it would be wise to talk about why this is done only with some trepidation.
The projects most relevant to the next chapter are desktop environments or DEs, window managers or WMs and toolkits or libraries. The choices we make there decide what kind of crappy developer politics we end up saddled with.
“The choices we make there decide what kind of crappy developer politics we end up saddled with.”Of all the laughable farces in the world, one of the greatest is that you can separate a project from “politics”. As someone recently said online (maybe it was Tom) politics enter the equation the moment you’re talking about Free software. This idea of any project being “apolitical” is itself a political stance. It means that certain kinds of politics (not just the party/electoral variety either, I might add) are discouraged or forbidden in a project.
One of the most famous scams to avoid the subject of “politics” is Open Source. Open Source was created to talk about / sell / exploit Free software, without mentioning either freedom or organisations that work for it. Open Source is the pseudo-apolitical, “Don’t mention the war” corporate-friendly sell-out version of the Free software movement — so much so, that its flagship organisations own co-founder Bruce Perens resigned after just a year of Open Source selling out the movement it hijacked.
Pretending to be apolitical is an industry unto to itself, and industry loves to say that political discussions are forbidden, because if they weren’t you could call them on their own political atrocities.
“Pretending to be apolitical is an industry unto to itself, and industry loves to say that political discussions are forbidden, because if they weren’t you could call them on their own political atrocities.”Once again, this is not just about politics tangential to Free software itself. Discuss Open Source for long enough, or discuss the ethical implications of software withing an open source project for long enough, and someone will mention that political discussions are either “divisive” or a “waste of time” — basically to “Shut up and (don’t say anything unless you) code”.
You will reasonably expect the next chapter to be about graphics. But this book is about user freedom, and the next chapter is about graphics from the perspective of user freedom. Some people will say “just choose your graphics layers based on their technical aspects”. If you do that, you could end up with lock-in as well as the exploitation of users and developers. Maybe that’s great for you, but its exactly what this book exists to discourage as much as possible.
Because so many Free software projects are actually Open Source projects, and because these projects eschew “politics” and ultimately sell out their own users (along with developers who aren’t on board with the changes), it is absolutely necessary to examine the Open Source Initiative as the archetypal example of this political bait-and-switch routine.
Let’s start with Bruce Perens — I like to start with Perens, because I believe he is (at the very least, was) the most sincere person in Open Source. Perens and Eric S. Raymond founded the Open Source Initiative in 1998 — more than a decade after the Free Software Foundation was started.
It doesn’t bother me that the FSF doesn’t have a monopoly on promoting Free software, nor did it bother Perens. Perens is the author of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, or DFSG. I happen to like the DFSG, even though I’ve lost all allegiance to Debian. Of important note is that the DFSG was the basis for the Open Source Definition (OSD) itself. That’s how integral Bruce Perens is to Open Source.
“ESR still hosts the Halloween documents on his own website. These are based on memos leaked from Microsoft (verified authentic) regarding their practices towards competitors.”Eric S. Raymond, I believe — made Open Source what it is today. I don’t think its accurate or fair to say he alone was responsible for the state Open Source is in. He may have made the decisions that led us to where we are now. He absolutely did not act alone.
The paradox of ESR is that he was very vocally anti-Microsoft (Microsoft is not a company, it is a Cult and empire — so for a moment, it may help to think of ESR as anti-empire. Though whether he really is would only be a guess) to the point of publishing the “Halloween documents” on the OSI website. From there, things get weird.
ESR still hosts the Halloween documents on his own website. These are based on memos leaked from Microsoft (verified authentic) regarding their practices towards competitors. They prove that Microsoft considers Free software a competitor, that they intend to fight, thwart and if possible exploit it, and some of the overall methodology they might use to accomplish this.
“The farce of Open Source is this elaborate footwork around the idea that you can actually fight corporate hegemony without ever really talking about corporate hegemony.”Raymond’s comments were hardly sympathetic to them, though today Microsoft has very arguably done to OSI exactly what the Halloween Documents said they would do to Free Software and Open Source.
For years I’ve tried to figure out the paradox of Raymond letting Microsoft do to his own organisation exactly what he condemned them for, and I have still only come up with two possible conclusions — one is that he lied about his true feelings originally (I very much doubt this, it is also less charitable than my other guess) and the other is that he’s too proud to appreciate and admit the irony — I think this one is probably on the money.
The farce of Open Source is this elaborate footwork around the idea that you can actually fight corporate hegemony without ever really talking about corporate hegemony. Just wave your hands about “practical development methodology” and you’ll hoodwink the empire into doing the bidding of the tech world peasantry! I don’t picture Raymond rubbing his hands conspiratorially and cackling so much as I imagine him thinking he could pull this off.
“In the Open Source cult, mocking the empire they originally exposed (OSI no longer hosts the Halloween documents, instead their board of directors plays host to Microsoft themselves) is precisely the problem, and being “constructive” (pretending to not have any political qualms with Microsoft’s actions against users, while pretending you can reform them with a “better design methodology”) is the real answer.”At any rate, Open Source acts like Free Software is a “Cathedral” full of sacred cows, while Open Source is (or pretends to be) very laid back, invisible-hand-like, replacing all “wasted time” concerns about freedom with de facto freedom itself.
As it will become crucial to explain, the effect of all this dancing around truth and reality was to transform a volunteer force primed to bring freedom to users into cheap labour for an industry that exploits everyone in it — all the way to the very top of Open Source itself. Microsoft and OSI are both corporate cults, and OSI promotes an ideal that you can somehow beat the cult if you worship just the right way — turning it against itself.
While Open Source points and laughs at the sentimentality of Free Software and treats it as pompous, naive and even hateful, its worship of industry monopolies is revealed by the complete lack of a sense of humour about people mocking the empire itself. For all of Free Software’s alleged sacred cows, nothing is more sacred or hallowed to Open Source than the empire. Throw the smallest stone you can find at one of the corporations under their protection, and the “morals” and politics of OSI will be revealed not only to peons like you and me, but even to Linus Torvalds and Eric S. Raymond.
“Unfortunately, this systemic and philosophical failure is not limited to OSI, but is likely to play out in every project (as it has with too many) that caters to Open Source over Free Software.”In the Open Source cult, mocking the empire they originally exposed (OSI no longer hosts the Halloween documents, instead their board of directors plays host to Microsoft themselves) is precisely the problem, and being “constructive” (pretending to not have any political qualms with Microsoft’s actions against users, while pretending you can reform them with a “better design methodology”) is the real answer.
Unfortunately, this systemic and philosophical failure is not limited to OSI, but is likely to play out in every project (as it has with too many) that caters to Open Source over Free Software. One of these is a movement; the other is a conceit. █
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