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generalizations | 3 months ago

No, I did not. From the article. This is, unfortunately, a straightforward case of poorly-considered moralizing with extremely bad consequences.

> Overall, these ideas lead me to believe that the open source movement needs to see itself as in a larger social context. Can we shift the balance of power away from massive companies and their massive harms? Can we prevent Nazis from using our software? Should we even try?

> I know my goal: shift the default in open source from “it’s free for anyone to use” to “please don’t use this if you’re evil”. I don’t just want to do this for my little project; I want to slowly change the discourse. I’m not sure how to do that effectively, if it’s even possible.

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navane|3 months ago

Whoops you're right. I read it twice and completely overlooked that part. Also one of the seven bullet points points in that direction.

I read it as a more "big corps exploiting open source devs" take (as were six out of seven bullet points), but they did indeed slip that in, and concluded with it even.

generalizations|2 months ago

Upvoted but felt bad for not replying. Yeah, I initially read it as a generic "big corps exploiting open source devs" take as well. Not often someone actually says "whoops you're right" so kudos - not sure I would've done the same.

The article is an interesting philosophical situation where you know the intent is good. But maybe, they took it too far without any of the necessary caveats.