I for one am going through quite a culture shock. I always assumed the nature of FOSS software made it immune to be confined within the policies of nations; I guess if one day the government of USA starts to think that its a security concers for china to use and contribute to core opensource software created by its citizens or based in their boundaries, they might strongarm FOSS communities and projects to make their software exclude them in someway or worse declare GPL software a threat to national security.
Open source means open source, I never assume anything else from open source projects.
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Although why would anyone from Russia even consider helping a project which sees them as lesser
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There was more drama? I didn’t even notice. They’re always doing drama.
Yes. If FOSS projects bend the knee to shitty laws just because “they are the law”, then FOSS is free labor for corporations with no gains for the people.
The usual consequences to not following the law are not in your favor.
If your goal in contributing to FOSS is to go to prison, there are a lot better avenues to achieve that.
Law aren’t always right and governments don’t always do the best neither for the world nor for its citizens. Open source projects and corporations shouldn’t rely on any government, they shouldn’t do the biddings on governments — either “good” or “bad” — and act in people best interests.
Of course this is a pipe dream and what we got is more free work for companies with none the benefits
I don’t understand why you think “avoiding prison” equals free work for companies. The individuals contributing to open source are subject to the same laws we’re discussing in this thread, and are the ones that would actually be getting consequences.
No one exists without a government, and that’s not even a pipe dream, it’d be societal collapse.
Because FOSS stands for both free software and people’s freedom. No one exists without a government except for external forces that are stronger than the government itself (lobbying is a way to strong arm a government), but this is another matter entirely.
FOSS organisations should exist outside a government because governments are easily corruptible, which is has happened again and again throughout history and is slowly happening right now. And obeying the law not to be thrown in jail is a nice argument, yes, and a shitty one at that: imagine how good would be a German citizen to abide to the government rule during the Nazi period. This doesn’t mean either that they shouldn’t follow any laws, but that, much like any international organisation, they should be international laws agreed on by multiple nations.
Which is essentially the crux of the matter: as long as FOSS projects work within the framework of a government (the US), the project can be easily hijacked, turned into something that goes against people interests. What are the people interests? In short, the minimum denominator is equality, freedom to speak, a right to privacy.
If FOSS projects do have to follow a government’s laws, then contributing to one is free work for corporations: laws can be changed and a democratic society can turn into a non-democratic entity, with laws that restrict the freedom of its citizens; in EU they try to pass a “chat control” law to make cryptography useless [by adding a back door] and while I believe it won’t pass no doubt it’s a worrisome sign. At the end of the day who would benefit the most from FOSS but companies, which do so already?
And to reiterate: sometime it’s better to be thrown in prison than to send someone else to their death
That’s the point of FOSS as copyleft, to use the law to protect “free and open” information. This allows bigger projects, because contributors don’t have to keep their heads down.
At the same time maybe this is a downside, not an upside. As the reason why it has all gotten so big and complex and corporate-influenced.
It really is. Relying on a government good will to protect people best interests may be the point of failure of FOSS. I hope not but I’m less and less optimistic about the future
Which corporation are you talking about here?
America™
Nearly every single corporation with an online presence uses free software from the foss community.
I just wanted to say that I have the same questions, and it’s a relief to see it posted by someone with more courage. I’m too ignorant to contribute to the discussion though. I don’t know how a government or private entity could pressure a FOSS project in this way, unless that pressure was put on the project’s git platform. At which point the repo just moves elsewhere.
FOSS does not mean:
- Community owned: Linux is owned by the Linux Foundation, a legal entity of the United States and subject to it’s laws.
- Obliged to accept all contributions: The owner is free to accept or reject contributions for any reason.
Nothing changed except some people are no longer responsible for maintaining parts of the source tree. Their delegated power to accept contributions was removed. They can still propose changes, but they will be reviewed by others who aren’t subject aren’t at risk of Russian state influence.
This isn’t saying they’ve done anything wrong, or that they are currently under state influence, but now that they no longer have maintainer privileges the chance of the FSB knocking on their door has probably dropped 90%.
No
No
I’m not concerned that they followed the best advice of their lawyers to respond to the legal and political challenges that currently exist.
I am concerned that hostile nation states (define those as you will) have made supply chain attacks (remember the xz Utils backdoor) so common that actions like this or worse are becoming necessary and that open source, globally contributed software could be at risk.
This does very little to protect against supply chain attacks.
Your example shows that too.
Increasing modularity and reducing complexity of software seem to be the right way to that end. Plan9, GNU Hurd, Minix3 are interesting in that context.
Linux at this point is an absolutely critical part of the information infrastructure our world is built on. It’s not just a few nerds in basements cobbling together code. Safeguarding this infrastructure against bad actors is absolutely crucial for everybody’s safety. Unfortunately we’re going to see more of this kind of stuff in an increasingly polarised world.
Israelis are more known for putting backdoors wherever they can than Russians, for example.
Anyway, nation-states are not the only kind of group with malicious interest. Maybe a maintainer is a member of some mafia, I dunno. How are you going to know this?
Many things can be done with FreeBSD. Again, in our time it may get some popularity again not because of such events even, but because of their possibility and to avoid monoculture (in the context of backdoors too).
Depending on industry, 60-80% of all servers, globally, are running on Linux. So yes, we are not going away.
It changed my view on how true to their ideas some people are.
Those kinds of problems aren’t particularly new (PGP comes to mind as an example back when you couldn’t export it out of the US), but it’s a reminder that a lot of open-source comes from the US and Europe and is subject to western nation’s will. The US is also apparently thinks China is “stealing” RISC-V.
To me that goes against the spirit of open-source, where where you come from and who you are shouldn’t matter, because the code is by the people for the people and no money is exchanged. It’s already out there in the open, it’s not like it will stop the enemy from using the code. What’s also silly about this is if the those people were contributing anonymously under a fake or generic name, nothing would have happened.
The Internet got ruined when Facebook normalized/enforced using your real identity online.
The Internet got ruined when Facebook normalized/enforced using your real identity online.
They now encourage fake accounts. Has made moderating groups somewhat harder.
I’m ootl. Quick summary?
NO MORE FUN!
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FOSS gives people the option to take the original code and create their own version of it in case they don’t like what the original maintainers are doing. With closed source you would be stuck and would have to look for something new.
Just this one. The philosophy is still there, Linus and TLF have abandoned it with great hubris. I am very disappointed in them.
I’m thinking about that conspiracy theory of Linus having been made an offer one can’t refuse, when some time ago he took a vacation and returned with news about seeing the error of his ways.
It almost coincided with Stallman being canceled for one of his usual highly socially unacceptable, but in principle consistent opinions. With most of the attackers being frankly some new random corporate-associated people, not very active in real communities.
Maybe I’ll re-read J4F and compare Linus from there to these events. Canary and all.
EDIT: Before you downvote this for the mush in my head (thx Linus) propagating conspiracy theories, offers one can’t refuse are not exactly an impossible thing. And WWII radio games, where, having captured an enemy station’s operator, one of the sides could either imitate their style in transmissions or just force them to transmit what it wanted.
I mean he has accepted a position as a luminary at the x86 ecosystem advisory group the most dominant and proprietary instruction set ever formed by companies with vested interest to keeping it in use and prevent competition (RISC-V & ARM) from catching up.
I think the prestige of “maintainers” and contributions/control are what is being torn down. Anyone anywhere is still welcome to contribute, they are simply limited from direct control. They can still fork at any time, anyone can. Getting people to follow your fork is another thing entirely, and your open source code will still likely be incorporated directly or indirectly. The only thing that has changed is the misguided prestige that has grown around the project and is not a required or relevant part of the project as a whole.
