cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/politicalmemes/p/1290769/there-is-a-3rd-choice
Reposting because it was removed from another comm earlier for the political content.
cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/politicalmemes/p/1290769/there-is-a-3rd-choice
Reposting because it was removed from another comm earlier for the political content.
Where is the third thing? Open source software is left wing ffs. Proprietary software is extremely capitalist/fascist.
You say that as if we don’t continually discover right wingers, fascists, religious bigots, and conspiracy theorists within the community.
You’ll find plenty of bigots and conspiracy theorists in unions, too. Union activity is still left-wing activity.
Fascists and right wingers too?
There are features of Open Source that clearly appeal to several kinds of right wing brain.
In general the far right is also a counter-culture, that benefits from all the kinds of freedoms that the left does.
You want privacy so government doesn’t come for the immigrants, they want privacy so the government doesn’t come for their guns.
You want encryption so the corpos don’t see you unionizing, they want encryption so the cops don’t see them organizing a coup.
You want free speech because information on gender and orientation is not scandalous and dangerous, they want free speech to discuss the proper place of brown people.
You don’t want to use mainstream tech because it’s awful, exploitative and plutocratic, they don’t want to use it because it’s clearly an arm of the jewish deep state.
And let’s not even get into the whole crypto thing. Largely open source, but largely appealing to ancaps and other such funny beasts.
Yes but the conspiracies tend to be different.
Probably. Certainly republicans, so fascism isn’t a deal-breaker for them.
Plenty of union members believe in the “jewish deep state”, e.g., so I don’t think the conspiracies are that different.
I agree that freedoms can be abused. And, they can certainly be used for right-wing purposes. I also agree that there are plenty of fallacious arguments for freedom, some of which are based on conspiratorial thinking. But, fighting for freedoms of the people and restrictions on the state is always a left-wing activity.
That said, I don’t know where the balance is or should be between solidarity and rejecting intolerance. At the moment, I’m more in favor of protecting marginalized persons by aggressively excluding intolerant people, particularly if their intolerant behavior is well-documented and they still refuse to reject and remediate it. So, I do see the fascists in open source as a problem.
There are arguments for freedom based on conservativism. Ancaps also exist. Plus fascists love freedom. Their freedom, and a reeducation camp for you.
And plenty of left-wing activism tries to leverage the state to protect minorities.
What I’m really saying is that it’s not so one dimensional as lefty freedom vs right bootlicking. You want a nice example?
http://dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm
This actual economics book on intellectual property, which advocates for a downsizing of IP rights (both copyright and patents) and is greatly supportive of open source. It was written two decades ago by a couple of relatively conservative Chicago neoliberal economists.
I highly recommend it BTW, there’s very good factual research that more people should be aware of, and high quality discussion. But a lot of the arguments are based on market capitalist principles.
I don’t think anyone can tell you for sure. It’s a difficult balance that needs to be constantly negotiated (even just within yourself). Very very often doing good requires evaluating trade-offs between values that are desirable but (to some extent) incompatible.
All Open Source / Free Software is building the commons. Strong copyleft is using the weapons of the state to help the commons stay under collective ownership.