delete the software developer
we know FOSS, for instance, is not a meritocracy. we also know that places like github function as a white boy's club for the most part.
erase the developer. don't list the contributors. the project is what should matter. github shouldn't be treated like a credentialing system. all that does is allow people who already have the luxury of throwing free labor into things (white well to do people) to further cement their privilege.
along a different dimension, if you were working on a truly subversive software project, you absolutely should not want your identity attached to it in such a way that the entities you'd subvert with the software can stop you. that's just poor strategy. you'd also not want that software to be open sourced to everyone in the world, since you'd then be giving away all information needed to thwart your efforts. but that's another discussion.
That would be the joy of American corporations.
No authorship, no copyleft.
The shortest path to see your subversive project embraced, extended and extinguished.
megas don't care about license, they can hire a team of engineers to make a clean room copy of anything they like.
@xj9 @Shamar I don't believe they can ideate any better or faster than independent thinkers, and there's a fairly well documented groupthink problem in large organizations that prevents them from innovating. that's why companies like Google buy hundreds of smaller companies--they lack the ability to come up with those things.
yes, if you hand them the idea then they're well equipped to replicate it. but that's what im saying. stop handing them your ideas.
That's what they want you to think.
But afaik #GAFAM didn't do a clean room implementation of #Linux, for example.
Also suggesting to not share ideas means suggesting to not do anything innovative or subversive, since once you distribute something innovative you ARE sharing ideas.
#Copyleft isn't perfect but makes it harder to run EEE tactics.
But throwing subversive code to the public domain is just a way to do R&D for big corps for free.
linux is copyleft and it powers the massive corporate surveillance apparatus. how does copyleft help again?
You are ignoring time into your reasoning.
If you code for a small élite (which is totally fine, even if such élite has a cardinality of one), the probability that what you build is going to attract economical and political interest is actually low.
In such case, public domain is as good as copyleft, since you only care about the few people you are coding for and, if a venture capital turn your tool into an oppressive proprietary spyware for everybody else, your small élite can still use the public domain software you coded.
BUT, if you are hoping to free more than a couple of persons, if you aim for a wider reach, releasing code in the public domain is exactly working for free for those you want to beat.
You are taking the risks.
You are doing the hard part of Research and Development.
And what's worse, you are building a new well defined market for them to enter.
If you build something that, even for a small period of time, have a chance to succeed, by releasing as public domain you are just doing your enemies a favour.
Now, as a workaround, #copyleft is NOT perfect. In particular, #GNU licenses have too many loop holes.
BUT, if you don't protect your work so that its evolutions will stay in the #commons, you are renouncing to any hope for your principles to spread.
A #community is defined by the rules that protect what the members held in #common from their own individual egoisms.
So if you look at things into an historical perspective, you should see that putting work into the public domain is always to support oppressors in the long run.
While I'm happy to look something more effective than GNU licenses, a a strong Copyleft can slow down a bit the Embrace, Extend and Extinguish strategy that is the immune system of #Capitalism.
i've written at some length about this, so enjoy this thread https://viewer.sunshinegardens.org/%25FEYbF%2FUYDIN7spNrHC6R1GV8n%2FsWBd9RzyVKQs8H3Uo%3D.sha256