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en:philosophy:technical_feudalism [2025/01/10 16:38]
throgh 		en:philosophy:technical_feudalism [2025/06/19 15:12] (current)
throgh [Conclusion]
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 A critical point is the question if only the licensing is enough to mark a project being free and permissive or being the opposite. When looking at the code written by people (or in between also with technical routines) it may be enough. But this is a reduced perspective, only to the essential point of the source-code itself. It is also an ignorant perspective when we just use this approach. Software is immanent depending on the perspective of an altruistic view. Altruism itself is here describing the engagement for a better tomorrow where people can rely on software and complete systems without any precondition. A critical point is the question if only the licensing is enough to mark a project being free and permissive or being the opposite. When looking at the code written by people (or in between also with technical routines) it may be enough. But this is a reduced perspective, only to the essential point of the source-code itself. It is also an ignorant perspective when we just use this approach. Software is immanent depending on the perspective of an altruistic view. Altruism itself is here describing the engagement for a better tomorrow where people can rely on software and complete systems without any precondition.
  
-Including therefore interfaces to questionable services, libraries or other software-components is in the clear and strict perspective never working out with the altruistic perspective of free, libre software and culture. The source-code maybe free and permissive licensed, but adding and including clear parts with non-free outcome makes the situation even worse. Tolerating the further development is here a complete misunderstanding of the upcoming issues: In the worst case users do not even have any clue that their data and information they add and handle through a software is transferred elsewhere to places and storages no one has access except owning entities, persons or / and groups, have access. This is then excused foremost that these additions are "optional", "for the best of the users" or "for the convinience". But this "convinience" has a price and this is a very high one to pay+Including therefore interfaces to questionable services, libraries or other software-components is in the clear and strict perspective never working out with the altruistic perspective of free, libre software and culture. The source-code maybe free and permissive licensed, but adding and including clear parts with non-free outcome makes the situation even worse. Tolerating the further development is here a complete misunderstanding of the upcoming issues: In the worst case users do not even have any clue that their data and information they add and handle through a software is transferred elsewhere to places and storages no one except owning entities, persons or / and groups, have access. This is then excused foremost that these additions are "optional", "for the best of the users" or "for the convinience". But this "convinience" has a price and this is a very high one to pay: Users are handed out to already mentioned individuals and groups doing whatever they like with the data. The principle called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance|paradox of tolerance]] demonstrates very well the problem: When we tolerate intolerance, we will corrupt democratic understanding in a whole. The always used excuse that there are not only two sides is undermining the will to see the fraud going on with **technical feudalism**. The source-code maybe open, free and permissive licensed, but the called interfaces are not.
  
 ===== The ethical erosion ===== ===== The ethical erosion =====
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 Please also remember that we work with legends and story-telling here in our global society. One of the greatest myths? Money is working and can be working. No, when "money is working" there are beings and finite resources exploited, nothing else. We create myths about money and property doing active harm to our society and our world in a whole. And nothing else is done with the myths about "earn money with free software". This thought is leading just to non-free parts and exclusive additions, features or even versions of software marked as free, permissive licensed. Please also remember that we work with legends and story-telling here in our global society. One of the greatest myths? Money is working and can be working. No, when "money is working" there are beings and finite resources exploited, nothing else. We create myths about money and property doing active harm to our society and our world in a whole. And nothing else is done with the myths about "earn money with free software". This thought is leading just to non-free parts and exclusive additions, features or even versions of software marked as free, permissive licensed.
  
 +===== The problem of the belief and chosen ones =====
 +
 +Mankind had in its own history more than only one recurring problem and issues with following so-called "chosen ones". The concept is foremost the same and can be also reflected back in generic to the religious beliefs at the same time: Approaching a desired state until this has nothing more left as being a cult. At the same time there is the opposite way: The work on the desired state with most pragmatism until anything can be done and also anything is possible and allowed.
 +
 +Both ways reflect in the perspective for a freedom but also democratic and inclusive oriented society and group a very bad outcome. Also both result within individuals and groups defined as elementary for the further existance of that approach. But here is exactly the main problem: Argueing forth and back about free, libre software has nothing more left as the repeating of some statements, while majority has either failed to see the need to reflect issues or just use the most pragmatic and convinient way, making free and libre culture nothing more than an empty phrase. A movement should be able to see its possible problems and flaws, work on and overcome them, making it possible for every individual to emancipate and enhance abilities or capacities of facts and information. When a movement is only possible to exist with just one group, organisation or individual person, it will not develop further and finally fail. The same way around with the pragmatism: When anything is possible, nothing especially has a worth and any principle may be used at any given time.
 +
 +In the end this brings back the earlier mentioned points of ethic and moral: What is elementary for technical emancipation as opposite movement towards the described feudalism? Working together, showing the ability towards empathy and support for others when they ask for help, recognize the need of undefined and empty spaces within a movement, a program or any other part, trying to fill this gap and therefore grant a better outcome. When we empower ourselves only to feel empowered and grow to just control others, we are not better. In fact we are even worse as the ones we perhaps initially wanted to teach better: We should know better and nevertheless failed to the simple matter of greed. **Therefore no individual or group should have concentration of power and also not being just focussed on. The claims are important, the deeds and results same.**
 +
 +This is reached now more and more in the space of free, libre software: With so-called "normalized" projects everyone should need. Also the imagination of corporations / companies offering free and permissive software for the "greater good", while pretending to be open for a free society. That is more away from the truth than ever before as companies / corporations would do anything to preserve and enhance their position and income. Not only betraying people, destroying the environment, even also working with inhumane ideologies and pure hatred when this is granting enough attention and therefore money and lasting influence and power.
 +
 +===== The strange case of clear false fingerpointing and many misconceptions =====
 +
 +The community around "free, libre software" and "free culture" has always engaged in a critical retrospective on the technological development. But within there is also a very sinister and false understanding, which had caused a further disruptive and erratic development, even caused a generic rift between several parts and groups. First and foremost the false trust in projects using free and permissive licenses.
 +
 +We have several projects concluding in applications, frameworks and libraries like **systemd**, **Rust**, **Wayland**, **Protobuf**, **AV1** and many more: On the one side they are all using recognized licenses making them accessible and inclusive, but on the other side there are clear copyright-rules and patents behind them. Is for example **Rust** really the language for the future? The original development was not funded alone from one group and when looking at the state of the names within the Rust-Foundation, the question arises who is in fact clearly having the control. Is it the so-called "community"? A rest of doubt resides when looking at the already known names from corporations and companies. Also a rest of doubt resides when looking how **Rust** is pushed into other projects and their infrastructure and development and how people praise highly that kind of framework promising much and proved less until today.
 +
 +So the community itself has made the situation worse: While on the one side criticizing companies and corporations, sometimes even with assumptions of most "evil plans" and strange "conspiracy theories", projects and people on the other side use without further questioning named frameworks, embedding them into the code and making them therefore inevitable, unavoidable (partwise) and also then complete mandatory. Therefore the community has then engaged as helper for standardization, while at the same time engaging as vehement critics and doing a **false fingerpointing**, hypocritical double-standards. So reclaiming privacy and security, but also claiming even more false digitization, more inclusion of dangerous developments within "machine learning", more inclusion of disruptive, non-free services or at minimum copying the agenda behind them.
 +
 +The **generic misconception here is the false understanding**: To claim that users are "just users" and need to update on-going instead to help them understanding, so that every user could be a possible developer in the future, at minimum for the own system or later on sharing own insights for others to learn. For this misconception we have also not established a possible way of minimalism: To understand the own system, partwise or even complete, it is absolutely crucial to have no clear non-transparent parts and components included. At the current state the majority in the "free software"-community is doing the opposite: More bloated components and frameworks, less understanding with as said very dangerous developments on-going to even loose more flexibility, freedom and democratic participation in the end.
 +
 +But there is more: When you now think that just "hosting yourself" is then a good thing, please think again. No, we do not mean "self-hosting at your home for local backups", we refer to doing this on the global network, offering on-going a service, some people even dream then of another "revolution for the individual development". Do you please note the issue here? It is not about your person or your own dreams. When the whole mankind would do such, we would have again next kind of big issues: Where should the energy needed come from because so-called "modern implementations" do not rely on small form-factor systems with less consumption and resources (please refer to the written text above)? It is impossible and also wrong doing the opposite extreme position. Decentralization and federation is not solving anything, but creating another bunch and kind of issues then. Is the data provided then safer? Not really, the data is even worse federated and there is no control where it is at any given time after releasing it to the public. Can it be changed or refreshed? No guarantee. Can it be deleted? No guarantee. So as already earlier stated about federated services within this article: They are not offering any solution. They are just a different aspect of the same issue. They are also further developed and outgrowing complexity when offering such implementation to the public. Please remember: Are you developing **Mastodon**? Or are you interested just in hosting it? When the second aspect is the important one, you have already your answer: You would need to take responsibility. And when a problematic conception like federation is hitting the aspect of security, you will need to engage within for the people trusting you in person. But then there is the complexity also: More updates, more progress and the promise of security being better with the next version - without having many times a clear check, just the promise.
 +
 +<note important>Please note therefore: We are not saying that there should be no updates done. We question nevertheless the generic statement, that there should be always an update to a newer version when the current one could get the important fixes. Many projects already do this, but not all and at a given time "older" marked versions are left out also.</note>
 +
 +So we have here many misconceptions, under a generic statement and false fingerpointing. Does this need to change? Yes, for sure. But this will need more people with critical thinking instead of the already named wrong assumptions.
 ===== The combination of contradictions ===== ===== The combination of contradictions =====
  
 The community around free, libre software has many naming-schemes likewise "free but shackled". A software using non-free parts is perhaps under those perspectives "shackled". But is that for real a good perspective? Making a project "free" with some patching? The community around free, libre software has many naming-schemes likewise "free but shackled". A software using non-free parts is perhaps under those perspectives "shackled". But is that for real a good perspective? Making a project "free" with some patching?
  
-That is not even possible when talking about software like [[https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_trademark|Rust]]. Yes, it may work to ignore the on-going contradictions. But we cannot oversee the cracks this has caused as free, libre defined projects and software has enabled the before called actors - individuals and groups / organizations - to do what they do. All what was needed is the correct decision to a fitting point of time. The refusal to reflect own perspectives and roots have brought free, libre software to the point where the whole word even vanished and got fuzzy, blurred out into vague definitions with "open-source". Nowadays something "open" or "open-source", without the context where free, libre software starts and the neoliberalism with "open-source" ends. We accepted too many contradictions and organizations like the Free Software Foundation globally failed to do what their own mission-statement was: Defending the freedom with responsibility. Accepting contradictions as long as there is enough room left, but there is none.+That is not even possible when talking about software like [[https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_issues|Rust]]. Yes, it may work to ignore the on-going contradictions. But we cannot oversee the cracks this has caused as free, libre defined projects and software has enabled the before called actors - individuals and groups / organizations - to do what they do. All what was needed is the correct decision to a fitting point of time. The refusal to reflect own perspectives and roots have brought free, libre software to the point where the whole word even vanished and got fuzzy, blurred out into vague definitions with "open-source". Nowadays something "open" or "open-source", without the context where free, libre software starts and the neoliberalism with "open-source" ends. We accepted too many contradictions and organizations like the Free Software Foundation globally failed to do what their own mission-statement was: Defending the freedom with responsibility. Accepting contradictions as long as there is enough room left, but there is none.
  
 ===== Conclusion ===== ===== Conclusion =====
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 To come to a conclusion within this article is not really easy and there are for sure multiple perspectives, not all correct and not all false at the same time. But for those thinking for any kind of "revolution" we would like to recommend reading some history-books and notes: Most "revolutions" are going to get out of hands at some point, thinking of fighting an "enemy" (whatever kind of definition and declaration) may end not as intended and for those looking to fight "monsters" there should be the point to be warned as it is also possible to become what they wanted original fighting against. So if you want to think revolutionary, you may take into your perspective that understanding, compassion, friendliness and love are the only truly revolutionary ideas. They are opposing most the points exactly being described within this article as to be named ignorance, arrogance, greed and hatred. Hyperbola stands for principles and values, same as many others. So if we ignore them, we will become what we despise. To come to a conclusion within this article is not really easy and there are for sure multiple perspectives, not all correct and not all false at the same time. But for those thinking for any kind of "revolution" we would like to recommend reading some history-books and notes: Most "revolutions" are going to get out of hands at some point, thinking of fighting an "enemy" (whatever kind of definition and declaration) may end not as intended and for those looking to fight "monsters" there should be the point to be warned as it is also possible to become what they wanted original fighting against. So if you want to think revolutionary, you may take into your perspective that understanding, compassion, friendliness and love are the only truly revolutionary ideas. They are opposing most the points exactly being described within this article as to be named ignorance, arrogance, greed and hatred. Hyperbola stands for principles and values, same as many others. So if we ignore them, we will become what we despise.
 +
 +Stay critical to blind worship of heroic figures, stay critical towards unquestioned leadership: There is no need to create "heroic role-models", but we need to question our own positions and be confident with our knowledge as learning is an on-going process never ending as long we are clearly alive and our surrounding environment with other beings is the same. It is our responsibility to learn and protect, not to destroy with false "progress".