Or why modern economics mostly loose the plot when you try to factor Open Source in there simplistic theories.
The latest move by the US government treating LLMs like dangerous weapons tells something about the geopolitical moment. Can we collectively raise to the challenge and build on cooperation instead? It'd be a much better position than assuming governments or big companies will make the right choices for everyone else in isolation.
Indeed the trend wasn't new. It's "just" the icing on the cake from the enclosure point of view.
Very interesting take. This gives very valid ground on why tech communities should reject AI based contributions. Not doing so will indeed hinder the commons communities rely on to exist and improve. This is a path to prevent getting better at inclusivity and diversity (which is really needed).
Excellent piece, indeed legal is not the same as legitimate. More often than not the law is lagging behind and things might be wrongly "fixed" at a later date. In that interval that's when our communities need to build its own tools to protect the commons. We're clearly reaching such an inflection point. Interestingly, I think there's is a difference of reaction between the people with a Free Software culture and the ones with an Open Source culture.
Interesting lessons indeed. Especially the first one: "Technology is inherently political, and anyone telling you otherwise is trying to hide their politics." As tech people we too often forget this is all "sociotechnical", no tech is designed and used in a vacuum.
I guess when you unleash agents unsupervised their ethos tend to converge on the self-entitled asshole contributors? This raise real questions, this piece explains the situation quite well.
Wondering where Markdown is coming from and how it became such a success? The piece helps answer those questions.
This is really a big problem that those companies created for Free Software communities. Due to the lack of regulation they're going around distributing copyright removal machines and profiting from them. They should have been barred from ingesting copyleft material in the first place.
Nice little post, indeed the license is not enough to base a decision on. You need to look at the business, presence of CLA or not, etc.
Indeed, if you benefit from Free Software you'd better engage with it. Maintainers should stop bending backwards to please free loaders.
This debate around licensing, politics and making our FOSS efforts sustainable need to happen. It looks like for now to some people the path forward is defensive licensing? I wish at least we'd first attempt to have more strong copyleft use...
Putting things in the public domain voluntarily is indeed more difficult than it should be. The best tool we got is CC0, but it still raises (probably unwarranted) concerns for software.
It's a piece which really resonates with me. I've been thinking and saying for a while that focusing mostly on the technical (licensing and dev) aspects of Open Source was a mistake. This completely overlooked the political side of the Free Software equation. This is why the industry is as it is now. We need stronger commons and indeed the AGPL is best for that.
Friendly reminder, if you're not paying authors of FOSS libraries, they owe you nothing.
An excellent piece about the links between collapse and complexity. Obviously focuses more on socio-economics systems. Still some of it applies to other fields.
Very interesting initiatives... I wonder what they will lead to legal wise.
The rebellion against the academic publishers is still going on. Hopefully this will really change soon. That cartel of publishers needs to go back to its rightful place.
Another very important common turns 25 this year. Happy birthday Internet Archive!
Interesting approach. Nice to see several coops and non-coops forge an alliance like this for a better all encompassing offering.