Call for Sessions for LibrePlanet 2024: Cultivating Community now open

[Miriam Bastian]

Hi all,

We just opened the Call for Sessions for LibrePlanet 2024: Cultivating 
Community: 
 



Please share the Call for Sessions in your community and encourage 
people to submit a talk, workshop, or panel.


Thanks for your help in spreading the word.

In freedom,

Miriam


--
Miriam Bastian // Program Manager
Free Software Foundation

Help us spread computer user freedom: https://www.fsf.org/

Follow the FSF on Mastodon: https://hostux.social/@fsf

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Re: Truth Social as an example of the limits of free software

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Truth Social is a success story for free software.

People who could have been subjected to some proprietary software due to 
their interest in one certain celebrity are now using a (largely/mostly) 
free software service, thanks to Mastodon and the AGPL. They can benefit 
from years of development focused on community rather than advertisers. 
They can also benefit from external analysis of what we know about their 
variant of the code, which might be little but it's more than nothing.


You might discount those benefits as minimal, but they're not trivial 
and they're multiplied by the millions of people receiving them right now.


We don't know what's going to happen in the future, but thanks to free 
software (and open standards) the people have multiple possibilities. If 
some conflict arises, subcommunities might splinter and move to their 
own instances with lesser disruption. If the company fails and decides 
to discontinue the service, another service provider might take it over 
and make it better; users could even take matters in their hands with 
limited capital, thanks to lower costs.


You might consider this a distant possibility, or something you don't 
care about because you'd prefer the community to just vanish, but it has 
a non-zero probability. That reduces the centralised power of the 
current owners, even if just by a little, and that's certainly a good thing.


Federico

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Re: Truth Social as an example of the limits of free software

[Valentino Giudice]

   Those are not limits of free software.
   The only way this is even connected to software freedom is that Trump
   had the freedom to use the software for this purpose.
   This, however, would have likely been true for most proprietary
   alternatives he could possibly have used. Proprietary software licenses
   don't give the user full freedom, but they are still permissive enough
   for the program itself to be useful, or at least appear to be useful.
   You could argue that the fact that Trump did what he did is still a
   consequence of software freedom, and in some way you'd be right, but
   that isn't a "limit", nor is it accidental. That is the exact intention
   of software freedom.
   Free software authors yield control in advance, to the user, so that
   the user can do things the author disagrees with, without having to ask
   permission or approval. That isn't a side effect of software freedom,
   it's the exact core.
   While I'm personally no fun of Truth Social (although, I have to admit,
   I'm also not a user, so I can't comment much on it) and I don't have a
   good opinion of Trump, I still disagree with some of your criticism of
   Truth Social.
   You talk a lot about "freedom", but, really, multiple different
   freedoms exist and one person doesn't have to hold the same stance
   about them all. For example, one could support freedom of speech, as I
   do, but also taxation (as I also do) so that the state can operate.
   Taxation, in a way, decreases certain kinds of economic freedom. You
   might think I am wrong, but I am not *inconsistent*, having two
   different opinions on two different things.
   The fact that somebody supports software freedom says very little about
   their political stances in general. Free software has supporters that
   disagree politically on other issues. They probably do tend to be
   somewhat liberal (or at least not authoritarian) and in favor of
   freedom of speech as well, but there are plenty of topics, even
   freedom-related, to disagree about.
   >  The name "Truth Social" suggests that they care about truth and
   society.
   No, it only suggests they care about truth, not society. "Social"
   clearly means "social media", in context and doesn't refer to any other
   aspect of society.
   > We know that incorrect information is bad for freedom.
   We also "know" that censorship is much worse than misinformation.
   If Truth Social actually did allow all expression equally without
   discrimination, I would support that.
   >  However, Truth Social members value the freedom to pursue their
   personal pleasure and comfort above all else.
   > […]
   > A critical problem Truth Social faces is that the extreme opinions
   make many people uncomfortable.
   You criticize Truth Social because its users seek their own comfort.
   Then, right after that, you criticize it because it makes many people
   uncomfortable.
   Who cares if people feel uncomfortable? Why are the potential users
   that are made to feel uncomfortable (which apparently is bad) more
   important than the actual users that are made to feel comfortable
   (which apparently is also bad)?
   Maybe the rest is a bigger audience. It probably is. It doesn't mean
   that pandering to the majority is necessarily the best choice, however.
   > Advertisers feel the same way.
   If, besides software freedom, there is one absolutely gigantic issue
   with social media is that they pander to advertisers to the extent that
   they do.
   The idea that, as a society (and, in this, I am including online
   services, including of course social media) we should pander to the
   self-interests and feelings of the greedy capitalists that have the
   economical power to have an effect is rather bizarre to me.
   Fuck advertisers, fuck whatever they want, fuck whatever makes them
   feel comfortable.
   Looking at what advertisers want, of all people, is one of the worst
   possible ways we could filter what we write and what we read.
   > As a result the platform is financialy insecure.  It is estimated
   that it loses 1.7 million dollar each month.  It started out with 37
   million dollars in late 2021 - early 2022.  Without additional funds,
   it won't be able to continue for long.
   The issue here is ever relying on advertisers and ever being for
   profit.
   A truly content-neutral platform, if well studied technically, could be
   rather efficient and would likely be able to operate as a non-profit
   (with freedom of speech as a mission).
   Bending to what the greedy capitalists with enough money to spend in
   advertising want is a disgrace.
   > In the above I have shown that free software can be used in a
   product which spreads falsehood, encourages ignorance and
   irrationality and endorses greed, selfishness and lack of gratitude.
   I hope I don't sound rude saying this, but this is very unsurprising. I
   don't know of anyone who ever remotely suspected that free software

Re: Truth Social as an example of the limits of free software

[Paul Sutton via libreplanet-discuss]

Good post, however the decision to use free software is taken by 
humans,and the decision to respect or acknowledge the license is also a 
human decision. So is the problem with people rather than the software.


Another problem seems to be the media,  obsessed with headlines and 
generating income from in some cases poor, lazy and sloppy journalism, 
it sells ads so who cares, but people want 'instant' updates this is 
very difficult with fast developing stories.  It takes time to 
investigate, fact check and write.


Truth.social only made headlines because Trump was behind it.  Mastodon 
made the headlines briefly as there was a big exodus from Twitter, but 
the media don't want to give these smaller players equal air time and 
given how Mastodon is being reported as hard to use, perhaps that is a 
'good' thing.


Where does freedom to write and publish balance between earning enough 
money to live, one of the reasons facebook can't carry news is that they 
don't want to pay media outlets for that news as per recent laws,  the 
downside of what this law has done,  is that while it fixes payment in 
the case of the fires in Canada where people NEED the news,  they didn't 
get the updates needed.


I am not sure happened in Maui but it seems the warning was sent out via 
social media as the sirens failed, but we need to wait for the 
investigation to find out what actually happened there.


All we can do is keep going and promote free software in the best light 
we can, listen to any criticism, and acknowledge this and address the 
issues / concerns raised.


Paul


On 04/09/2023 23:23, Akira Urushibata wrote:

Last month I posted a message here on the problems of non-free
software in voting machines.  I was pointed out that free software
does not completely solve the problems; even with free software there
are numerous opportunities for bad actors to upset the process.

I understand the limits of free software.  One problem I identify is
that some people use free software not because they value freedom, but
simply because it is economical to do so.  The great charm of free
software is absence of charge.  Often there are additional merits:
quality is high, problems are few, documentation is reliable and there
exists a community of engineers who understand the code.  People who
exploit the "cheapness" do nothing to promote free software and its
philosophy; they do not say: "This product is possible thanks to the
free software packages X, Y, Z and many more.  We are grateful to all
the develpers who worked on them while making this available to the
public on gracious terms."

The Truth Social social media service is an example of a product
developed, owned and used by people who care little of the liberty
which free software makes possible.  Truth Social uses Mastadon as its
back-end and Soapbox as its front-end.  They released their derived
work for public testing without making available the source code in
violation of the license.  (Mastodon and Soapbox are AGPL.)  They
eventually released the source code in .zip format.

When Truth Social was launched, it proclaimed to be a "big tent"
platform allowing for "free expression" without "discriminating on the
basis of political ideology".  The name "Truth Social" suggests that
they care about truth and society.  In reality Truth Social is a chamber
where extreme opinions far from the truth circulate.  It is for people
who like to say and hear such things.  We know that incorrect
information is bad for freedom.  However, Truth Social members value
the freedom to pursue their personal pleasure and comfort above all
else.  For them what makes them feel good is "truth" and such good
feeling is the foundation of "social" interaction.

A critical problem Truth Social faces is that the extreme opinions
make many people uncomfortable.  They will never consider signing up
to participate in the dialogue.  Advertisers feel the same way.  As a
result the platform is financialy insecure.  It is estimated that it
loses 1.7 million dollar each month.  It started out with 37 million
dollars in late 2021 - early 2022.  Without additional funds, it won't
be able to continue for long.  Elon Musk's X (foremerly Twitter) faces
a similar fate.  A little inspection reveals that under Musk's rule it
has followed a course similar to that of Truth Social.

I have taken a look into Truth Social here but my main objective is to
bring attention to the limits of free software.  It appears to me that
freedom is good, but it can be combined with bad things.  Literacy
greatly enhances one's freedom but one can argue that efforts to
eradicate illitearcy violate the illiterate man's freedom to remain
so.  In the above I have shown that free software can be used in a
product which spreads falsehood, encourages ignorance and
irrationality and endorses greed, selfishness and lack of gratitude.
This makes me feel that we have much more to do than just call for
freedom in software.

In classical 

Re: FSF's plan for https://sourcehut.gnu.org/

[Michael McMahon]

Hi, Andy!

At this time, https://sourcehut.gnu.org/ is an incomplete development 
instance of sourcehut being worked on by volunteers. It is not hidden or 
publicized. Reach out to the tech team by emailing sysad...@fsf.org if 
you have system administration or Golang experience and are interested 
in helping explore this option with volunteers.


Best,
Michael McMahon | Web Developer, Free Software Foundation
GPG Key: 4337 2794 C8AD D5CA 8FCF  FA6C D037 59DA B600 E3C0
https://fsf.org

On 9/4/23 21:28, Andy Tai wrote:

GNU has an instance of SourceHut:

https://sourcehut.gnu.org/

This seems not publicized.  Curious what is the plan for it?

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Re: Copyright and machine generated output at the US

[Yuchen Pei]

On Fri 2023-09-01 21:53:29 +0300, Julian Daich wrote:

> FYI
>
> The US Copyright Office is opening a public comment period around
> machine genrated content and copyright issues beginning August 30th
> https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2023-18624.pdf

Thanks. I noticed in the document the following paragraph - does it mean
comments will be published on 18th Oct which people can reply to until
15th Nov?

> DATES: Written comments are due no later than 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time
> on Wednesday, October 18, 2023. Written reply comments are due no
> later than 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, November 15, 2023.

Also, I assume only US residents' input will be considered?

Best,
Yuchen

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