diff --git a/content/html/en/006_copyleft-pandemic.html b/content/html/en/006_copyleft-pandemic.html index 3ea253b..9049f7a 100644 --- a/content/html/en/006_copyleft-pandemic.html +++ b/content/html/en/006_copyleft-pandemic.html @@ -69,7 +69,7 @@
This report was published in 2016 by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a right-wing think tank which mission and agenda is “designed to shape the choices of leaders in the U.S. government, the private sector, and society to advance U.S. interests and strategy.”
I found this report after I read about how the U.S. Army scrapped one billion dollars for its “Iron Dome” after Israel refused to share key codes. I found it interesting that even the so-called most powerful army in the world was disabled by copyright laws—a potential resource for asymmetric warfare. To my surprise, this isn't an anomaly.
The intention of CNAS report is to convince DoD to adopt more open source software because its “generally better than their proprietary counterparts […] because they can take advantage of the brainpower of larger teams, which leads to faster innovation, higher quality, and superior security for a fraction of the cost.” This report has its origins by the “justifiably” concern “about the erosion of U.S. military technical superiority.”
-Who would think that this could happen to FOSS? Well, all of us from this part of the world have been saying that the type of freedom endorsed by many copyleft institutions is too wide, counterproductive for its own objectives and, of course, inapplicable for our context because that liberal notion of software freedom relies on strong institutions and the capacity of own property or capitalize knowledge. The same ones which have been trying to explain that the economic models they try to “teach” us don't work or we doubt them because of their side effects. Crowdfunding isn't easy here because our cultural production is heavily dependent on government aids and policies, instead of the private or public sectors. And donations aren't a good idea because of the hidden interests they could have and the economic dependence they generate.
+Who would think that this could happen to free and open source software (FOSS)? Well, all of us from this part of the world have been saying that the type of freedom endorsed by many copyleft institutions is too wide, counterproductive for its own objectives and, of course, inapplicable for our context because that liberal notion of software freedom relies on strong institutions and the capacity of own property or capitalize knowledge. The same ones which have been trying to explain that the economic models they try to “teach” us don't work or we doubt them because of their side effects. Crowdfunding isn't easy here because our cultural production is heavily dependent on government aids and policies, instead of the private or public sectors. And donations aren't a good idea because of the hidden interests they could have and the economic dependence they generate.
But I guess it has to burst their bubble in order to get the point across. For example, the Epstein controversial donations to MIT Media Lab and his friendship with some folks of CC; or the use of open source software by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. While for decades FOSS has been a mechanism to facilitate the murder of “Global South” citizens; a tool for Chinese labor exploitation denounced by the anti-996 movement; a licensewall for technological and knowledge access for people who can't afford infrastructure and the learning it triggers, even though the code is “free” to use; or a police of software freedom that denies Latin America and other regions their right to self-determinate its freedom, its software policies and its economic models.
Those copyleft institutions that care so much about “user freedoms” actually haven't been explicit about how FOSS is helping shape a world where a lot of us don't fit in. It had to be right-wing think tanks, the ones that declare the relevance of FOSS for warfare, intelligence, security and authoritarian regimes, while these institutions have been making many efforts in justifying its way of understanding cultural production as a commodification of its political capacity. They have shown that in their pursuit of government and corporate adoption of FOSS, when it favors their interests, they talk about “software user freedoms” but actually refer to “freedom of use software,” no matter who the user is or what it has been used for.
There is a sort of cognitive dissonance that influences many copyleft supporters to treat others—those who just want some aid—harshly by the argument over which license or product is free or not. But in the meantime, they don't defy, and some of them even embrace, the adoption of FOSS for any kind of corporation, it doesn't matter if it exploits its employees, surveils its users, helps to undermine democratic institutions or is part of a killing machine.
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