Stuart Croall @stuartcroall@librem.one

I don't have a lot of technical skills beyond installing software and searching the web for help and fixes for any problems I encounter. I think "power users" like me often undervalue our potential contributions to liberating software, because we're not coders or graphic designers. But because we spend a lot of time teaching ourselves how to use software, and hack around bugs, we can give really useful UX feedback to dev teams, and share hard-won experience with less confident users.

It's never been clearer to me that ethical tech needs ethical income and admin models ("business models"). Also that cooperatives, social enterprises, and B Corps need ethical tech. Only by working together can these movements protect ourselves from further enclosement of the digital commons, like Apple's use of their monopoly power over iThings to coerce app developers not to copyleft their code, or this attempt by Goggle to use its power over the Android ecosystem to knobble the fediverse.

Wow, on first blush, *this* is a party I can get behind. https://peoplesconvention.org/ The US needs a major shakeup, and the current duopoly needs to be dismantled.

The Canadians will build a wall, and the US will pay for it ;)
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/02/898165324/americans-go-home-canadians-track-u-s-boaters-sneaking-across-the-border

Political opponents can agree on the baseline negative freedoms (if even that!), but add a dimension of "do no evil" to the license and now you have at least two incompatible licenses.

One will require you to block sites considered bad, for some definition of bad, one will require you not to do it, maybe there will even be one that has another definition of bad, and software licensed under those different licenses can't share code. Are you willing to bet on which camp will come out the winner? Likely all camps come out losers.

This is what is happening right now around the OSI, as people are submitting "open source plus" licenses, "ethical" licenses, which all risk being incompatible with each other and certainly at least one-way incompatible with any pre-existing licenses. Suddenly we're back in the year 2000 again and have to worry about license proliferation undermining the whole endeavor of free software.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the rise of "source available" licenses (both morality licenses and the no-commercial-use ones) herald the end of "open source". Not because the practices of code sharing and collaboration that has gone under that name will end. But because the only people who will stick with licenses that honour the Open Source Definition are those who come to understand that computing freedoms are the point, not shared source:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html

#FreeCode

"Unlike giving cash to needy people on the streets, HandUp helps donors give money to homeless people who commit to using it to fulfill specific needs like rent, security deposits, food, or health bills."
https://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/07/16/a-crowdfunding-app-for-the-homeless-handup-raises-850000/

No human being deserves to have their lives micromanaged by strangers, just in order to secure the basics of life. *Especially* in countries more than wealthy enough to supply them to everyone unconditionally. This is why we need a #UBI.

Find a cool product on #Amazon?

That company exists OFF Amazon, too.

1) #DDG company name.

2) Order from their site.

2a) Can usually find a 10% code!

3) Still get product in 2-8 days.

4) Company avoids losing 25% margin share to Amazon.

5) You avoid giving money to #Bezos.

Massive protests around the #Aotearoa yesterday, in solidarity with the US protests against cops routinely murdering people and getting away with it:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/418031/photo-essay-thousands-march-in-solidarity-with-black-lives-matter

does anyone nearby (i'm in riverside county, in southern california) have a place i could stay in the near future? like, a couch i could sleep on? not yet, but it looks like things are gonna go to shit pretty soon no matter what i do, so it'd be nice to have an escape plan ready. my parents have been incredibly abusive since i moved back in with them, especially since they found out i was trans. today they went into my backpack and took all my hormones, and that's only the tip of the iceberg of the bullshit they've put me through. at the end of next month they wanna take me to mexico and i wanna be gone before then. please help.

Here are our plans for #PeerTube's v3 (#live streaming for this automn!)
▶️ more info on the framablog https://framablog.org/2020/05/26/our-plans-for-peertube-v3-progressive-fundraising-live-streaming-coming-next-fall
▶️ read and support the roadmap https://joinpeertube.org/roadmap

This comment from 2016 is telling in a number of ways.

"U.S. intelligence officials also believe that any attempt to ban Microsoft will be limited because its products are too integrated into Russia's IT infrastructure"
-.https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/putin-wants-push-microsoft-out-russia-battle-us-n674781

"Online, there is no requirement of proximity, which allows students to get instruction from the best teachers, no matter what school district they reside in."
- #EricSchmidt

Schmidt, like so many people, doesn't seem to understand that teaching is more like counselling than programming. It's more about facilitating learning than installing capabilities and pushing content. The younger the students, the more true that is.

The software commons gets broken and fragmented by morality licences like the Hippocratic License and Anti-996 License. Maybe instead of trying to have their cake and eat it too, these principled software engineers could campaign to abolish proprietary software, and refuse to work for any organisation that makes it? Without it, any activity using computers would be open to public scrutiny, and tech companies couldn't build oligopolies on free code by wrapping it in proprietary layers.

I'm taking my #Hubzilla instance for a test drive, and trying to learn about all its features and possibilities. The one challenge of finding tools, software, and platforms in the #decentralized, #federated social world is simply the number of options, and their various quirks

I'm interested in the idea of social networks and virtual social spaces bridging the physical/virtual divide, where groups of physically-proximate communities could collaborate to host servers for their communities, rather than relying on physically distant, often abstract entities to host their server-based tools.

For a couple of years now, I've thought about Community Centres - in the sense of the actual physical locations and organizations of people that exist here in #Winnipeg - as potential places to start in terms of a physical unit of organizing hosting and tech support.

Another model that is interesting is that of "community bike shops/collectives." Here in Winnipeg there is a growing number of these organizations that train volunteers to help others repair their bikes, and learn to repair their bikes, and even build their own bikes from parts. On a number of occasions, they've organized volunteers to salvage bikes from the piles of old bikes at the city landfill, and then had a marathon volunteer bike-building session where, using the parts from salvaged bikes, they build bikes for those in need.

I like the idea of the #social.coop. The #cooperative movement is strong on the Canadian prairies, and I think the idea of #platformcooperatives could certainly resonate among Winnipeggers and other prairie folk. I do think, however, that there is some additional value in terms of adding a tangible physical-local component to such a model.

Coming back to Hubzilla, one of the reasons I'm drawn to it as a platform, and to some of its underlying concepts and philosophies, is it seems like something that could serve a great virtual hub, to mirror a supportive and cooperative physical-local hub, such as is presently represented by #community centres.

These are all just thoughts and ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for a while and I'm, just now, trying to fill them out and ground them in reality. Any thoughts or comments anyone has would be appreciated :-)

Lots of great pieces have come out recently calling upon those of us in the free/open-source software to go further in making ethical tech.

* @ntnsndr on the culture war in open-source https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-culture-war-in-open-source-is-on
* @CoralineAda on **ethical** open-source software https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/a-six-month-retrospective-on-ethical-open-source

#OpenSource #FreeSoftware