Am Do., 11. Juni 2020 um 15:25 Uhr schrieb Lassi Kortela <xxxxxx@lassi.io>:
>
> [Mostly off-topic]
>
> > Pretty harsh is the right word. I do not agree with all their
> > measures, but for the FSF, it is logical.
>
> Agreed. Whatever one's opinion of the FSF, they are consistent with
> their views and explain them clearly.

And we owe a lot to them, even when we don't think that we can be as
radical. (For transparency, I should add that I am an associate member
of the FSF.)

> Also agreed. Interestingly, GitLab is from Ukraine. But like most big
> companies they opened a branch in the US so it remains to be seen if
> their fate is any different from GitHub. For a large social network
> owned by Microsoft, GitHub's track record is unbelievably good so far.

You can install the GitLab software on your own server, so you are
more independent when you don't like the direction the company is
going anymore.

> Centralized social networks are so valuable that all of the commercial
> ones will probably end up being owned by a big US, Chinese, or Russian
> company eventually. It's hard to see how to solve the problem without a
> fundamentally decentralized infrastructure. Telegram (the messaging app)
> is trying by being a non-profit with independently wealthy founders.
> Since social networks are completely dominated by network effects, the
> decentralized ones need to be made as convenient to use as the
> centralized ones. Distributed VCS was a brilliant move in that respect.

What you can do is not to use WhatsApp but communicate through
standardized protocols like emails. Telegram is a bit better because
they have an open API so that, in principle, everyone can join the
communication.

I'm not so sure whether having a decentralized infrastructure alone is
sufficient or even critical. (Bitcoin is a good example of this: It is
decentralized by design; yet, we have been seeing huge concentrations
in power for a few players, reducing the original idea to absurdity.
NB: That said, IMHO the original idea wasn't even a good one. What is
the equivalent in Gt CO2 that has been wasted since the start of the
network?)

Email seems to works quite well. It is not really decentralized, but
it (a) is an open standard and (b) a lot of players (companies,
universities, private persons) are interested in joining the network
with their own server capacity.

> There was. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Tsunami>. Those
> people called it protest while the government called it terrorism.

> Agreed. GitHub has 50 takedown requests against 100 million repos. It's
> not really possible for a company of that size to have a more
> responsible track record than they do.

I'm wondering what would have happened if DeCSS had initially been
published on GitHub. Terrorism (choose a suitable definition) may at
least threaten the lives of people.

> I used to be quite concerned with ethics earlier in life but that is not
> sustainable for most of us. In order to change society one has to change
> what most people do, and we all go by convenience in most areas of life.
> The things that make the better option fun to use are the ones that win
> goodwill among regular people and make inroads into wider society.

„Handle nur nach derjenigen Maxime, durch die du zugleich wollen
kannst, dass sie ein allgemeines Gesetz werde.“ - Immanuel Kant

(Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time,
will that it should become a universal law.)

> Free software and open source made great strides in the face of
> improbable odds, spreading over all areas of computing. The coming tidal
> wave is that other people are using software _on us_ at all times and we
> won't be able to opt out of it without opting out of society [1]. It's
> like passive smoking and free software cannot address it effectively.
> The problem is so pervasive that the only solution is legislative.

At least when it comes to passive smoking, legislative has been
recently helpful. And I agree that a lot will depend on the right
decisions in the parliaments. But this doesn't mean that we don't have
to do our homework. And often, it doesn't even cost anything. When we
write free software, it doesn't cost anything to license it under the
GPL (vs the monopolist-friendly so-called more liberal licenses like
the MIT license). Yet, I have the impression that the younger
generation has been made blind in this regard. (As everything here, it
is my personal opinion, of course.)