Saving the Planet With Honesty, Transparency, and Sharing (Not Only of Computer Code)
GAFAM is destroying the only habitat humans and other animals have and it'll only get worse
HAVING just covered the "great scam" (or "scheme") they've dubbed "AI" (even when programs they allude to aren't doing any Machine Learning at all!), let's re-examine the message of advocacy we can offer. The Nobel goes to hype, not substance...
Environmentalists typically support Free software and it's not a coincidence. They're constantly pursuing some perceived ethics and they study what causes pollution, global warming and so on (not just the activities but the pertinent brands that are the biggest culprits); it's not a coincidence many Free software coders and activists (even FSF staff) are vegans/vegetarians. Many of them recognise that money is just a man-made concept (Gaia doesn't give a damn about your "money") and instead of adopting the ideals of greed they try to make the world a better place.
In my personal experience, trying to enlist environmentalists as Free software activists (or vice versa) is way easier than the average because they think differently and see the world from a different perspective. Perhaps Free software advocacy needs to refocus on those angles, too. It's not that it should demand that environmentalists reject proprietary software or environmentalists should demand that Free software coders/hackers quit eating animals; it's just that there are common grounds and overlapping values, sometimes even identical objectives such as sustainability, reduction of waste (e.g. by reuse) and so on. Equitable society depends on sharing resources. █