@smallcircles The problem that businesses are more than happy to profit from the (in their view) 'altruistic' commons is only getting worse. There is no protection of the commons. Working on commons means working for absolutely nothing. And then they all complain about enshittification without recognising the causality here.
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Just to be technically accurate: there IS in fact "protection of the commons," in the form of copyleft. That's why share-alike clauses were invented, and they DO in fact work well to protect the naturally-peaceful economic nature of non-scarce resources.
@fossham @smallcircles Assuming you are not implying that labor is a non-scarce resource. So someone has to create those non-scarce resources without any protected means.
Again, that's incorrect. The protection is in the form of copyleft licenses.
@smallcircles The word free is yet another double bottom to give businesses the false idea that it is free for taking and profit from, so some suggest to use the word 'libre' instead, even though the FSF does not agree!
@gert yes. I simply chose 'sustainable', which is a holistic concept and includes someone earning decent income for their work, i.e. sustenance.
@smallcircles Businesses interpret the term 'sustainable' as forever profitable. Isn't it difficult to find unambiguous terminology..
Sustainable here is how SOSS interpretes it for their intrinsic processes, and to offer sustainable business services externally, to the broader economy. To any exploitative hypercapitalist actor.. they may charge unsustainable high price, or withhold their services altogether :D
@gert Free software development pipeline is a SOSS initiative (where people earn what they fairly deserve) which still outputs free software (the artifact / end product of a supply chain).
(In another context I also use FSDL as Fediverse solution delivery lifecycle)
@gert slapping a copyright license on something and calling it a day, is only the most meagre of protection one can use. To have any chance for better sustainability and FOSS maintainers eeking out a decent living, many more protection mechanisms should be in place. Like.. simply the ability to operate strategically, without the evil enemy standing in your chef's kitchen all the time, and reading in your recipe book, saliva drooling :)
@smallcircles @gert Protection mechanisms... Isn't the model wrong if it needs so much plastering? I like David Chisnall's thinking where F/OSS comes back the roots of Unix, with small chunks working perfectly in harmony while the Big Corp is left dying with their unmaintainable COTS products.
https://infosec.exchange/@david_chisnall/115320768955284944
@ardentengender @smallcircles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom Makes it ckear that commons can not survive without rules.
Totally. At Social coding commons I make the distinction between chaotic commons (the one we're on now) and chaordic commons, where the participants made the rules together by their collaborative arrangements and value exchanges.
Totally with you. That is also one of those protection mechanisms. I did not mean in it in the sense of 'shielding' it, though that may be in order in some ocassions. And creating software on a #SmallTech paradigm, less interesting for BigCorp™, and such.
I like @tastapod definition of CUPID Joyful coding, see https://cupid.dev
The "U" stands for Unix philosophy here.
(The site is offline due to an error, see: https://web.archive.org/web/20250420210147/https://cupid.dev )