_     _         _   _                _ _ _ 
| |   (_) ___   | \ | | _____   _____| | (_)
| |   | |/ _ \  |  \| |/ _ \ \ / / _ \ | | |
| |___| | (_) | | |\  | (_) \ V /  __/ | | |
|_____|_|\___/  |_| \_|\___/ \_/ \___|_|_|_|
                                            

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  ___ ___  _ __ | |_ __ _  ___| |_ 
 / __/ _ \| '_ \| __/ _` |/ __| __|
| (_| (_) | | | | || (_| | (__| |_ 
 \___\___/|_| |_|\__\__,_|\___|\__|
                                   
    

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| |__ | | ___   __ _ 
| '_ \| |/ _ \ / _` |
| |_) | | (_) | (_| |
|_.__/|_|\___/ \__, |
               |___/ 
    

The Third Blossoming of Free Software

We're now in the midst of the third blossoming of the ¹Free Software community. The first time was at its conception. Capital saw an opportunity to expand on the new frontier - the monetization of software (development) and grabbed it. It did so by expanding the copyright law to apply to source code. Free Software responded by copyleft, by self-perpetuating license that granted the control over software (and the usage of it) to the user. It did so by a creative juridical hack, by exploiting the weapon that capital used to grab control over software and indirectly over user, the copyright law. GNU General Public License (GPL) was aikido move, using the force of an attacker against himself.

Corporations had a few tricks up their sleeves as well. Namely Embrace, Extend, Extinguish practices, which were mostly used on Open Standards. Meanwhile, Corporate software grew and expanded, but the seeds of Free Software also sprouted and grew. It grew in places were the power of capital is limited, mostly in academia and fringe independent communities.

The second time when Free Software blossomed and defended the user rights and user's control was when capital saw an opportunity to appropriate the work put into Free Software development and monetize Free Software by exploiting the loophole in the GPLv2 license, that is - you don't redistribute the software if you offer it as an online service. That is how the (corporate) cloud was born. The presentation The Cloud is Just Another Sun by Kyle Rankin from FOSDEM 2019 talks about that. Free Software responded with GNU Affero General Public License (aGPL) and capital responded with the rejection of aGPL.

The fact of using a license as a tool that protects the user misled many to think that the gist of Free Software is in a license or in copyright. There's a lot of law jargon around licensing, you can easily get lost in the details, and you miss the forest for the trees, because Free Software is primarily about user freedom and user control over the software (its usage, distribution and development). These foundations are being shaken by corporate control over genAI.

I am saying that the rejection of genAI is the third blossoming of the Free Software. To explain that I need to make a quick detour by explaining the Free Software vs Open Source split. Even though the terms are used interchangeably with the Open Source being the dominant one, there's a catch, and that is, that Open Source is a part of Free Software that got "corrupted" by capital. I've heard comparisons of Free Software and Open Source as the latter not being ideological and more objective, being just plainly about the openness of the source code. I hate to break it, but there is no neutral position. There's a pragmatic position, there's naive position, ignorance is bliss, but whatever is your stance on Free Software vs Open Source split, it has political implications where the control over software and its use is tilted. It can either be towards the user, or towards the corporation, your class enemy.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see a huge overlap over Free Software community and the rejection of genAI and Open Source community and genAI proponents. And that is the consequence of Free Software community being aware of the power relations that originate from the methods of software distribution and licensing.

Projects depending on genAI tools for development are slowly giving away their know-how, their craftsmanship and ultimately the control over how their projects are developed for the sake of the short term benefits. We are in the midst of the third power grab, this time it doesn't come in the form of a copyright, no, we saw a full circle from the big tech there. From the defenders of copyright they are now the greatest pirates there ever were. Well, I don't care about piracy, my stance is that copyright is theft in the same way private property is theft, and that robbing a bank is nothing compared to founding one, but I care about power relations. And I oppose the power of denying and allowing access to the knowledge be granted to or be appropriated by big tech.

I am afraid this is the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish on a whole new level, on a level of social knowledge of coding. There is no need for people to be coders, per se. Some people enjoy it, I sometimes do as well, because I like solving problems and riddles. It is similar kind of fun I had when I was still able to rock climb. You're presented with a problem of how you're going to navigate your body to climb over obstacle and once you manage you feel some pleasure. Secondly, I remember a mathematics professor from Ljubljana's Faculty of Mathematics and Physics Andrej Bauer replying to whether we need [in Slovenia] more people with STEM education. His answer was counterintuitive, he said that you can not foretell such a thing, and he pointed out how society changed from necessity of most people to be farmers in order to feed itself to now, where only a fraction of people need to be farmers to feed the whole population. So it might happen that only a few engineers will suffice to solve most of the engineering problems our society will face in the future and more social scientists will be needed in the society. To come back to genAI, which also markets itself as a big coding productivity boost (similar to modern farming equipment and fertilizers in farming), the issue I see is that all this knowledge is stored in the walled garden of a big tech corporation, and they will be in control of how it is distributed.

There is no guarantee that those in power over genAI training and output will not tweak that in a way to enlarge their wealth, power and control, when the moment is right and when enough people are hooked (one way or another). In fact the opposite is true. There will come a "we-told-you-so" moment, when investors will want to see gain on their investment. The business model is always based on a barrier that restricts the access and then finding a way monetize the access. This can come in various forms from simple payment to processing and selling of (private) personal data and aggressive marketing. One scenario that I find particularly disturbing is a vibecoder that copy-pastes a tracking library in their project because genAI adds it to their output.

To sum up, I'm involved in heated debate on genAI in online Slovenian digital community. There's a plethora of very valid reasons to reject the usage of genAI tools that came up in the our debate (and on Fediverse) that I did not touch, to name the ecological aspects out of many. Speaking of these reasons I plan to publish an interview with the founder of Guix project Ludovic Courtès who proposed anti genAI policy for Guix and was a guest in my Techno Enema radio show as a podcast.

I focused on political aspects of software usage, development and distribution that been essential for the conception of Free Software and that is user freedom. As a term, user freedom is centered more on an individual freedom, but as a consequence the digital commons are a collectivist outcome that is very appealing to me. Many are still cut from using Free software due to lack of knowledge and time or resources to gain that knowledge, but the possibilities for a wider adoption and digital empowerment exists and are within grasp. With a clear and radical critique of genAI, we can widen the adoption of digital commons and use it as a protection against surveillance capitalism.

 ____  ____ ____      _ 
|  _ \/ ___/ ___|    | |
| |_) \___ \___ \    | |
|  _ < ___) |__) |   | |
|_| \_\____/____/    | |
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    ____  ____   ____     _ 
   / ___||  _ \ / ___|   | |
   \___ \| |_) | |       | |
    ___) |  _ <| |___    | |
   |____/|_| \_\\____|   | |
                         |_|
    

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|  _ \  ___  _ __   __ _| |_ ___    | |
| | | |/ _ \| '_ \ / _` | __/ _ \   | |
| |_| | (_) | | | | (_| | ||  __/   | |
|____/ \___/|_| |_|\__,_|\__\___|   | |
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    _     _                         
   | |   (_) ___ ___ _ __  ___  ___ 
   | |   | |/ __/ _ \ '_ \/ __|/ _ \
   | |___| | (_|  __/ | | \__ \  __/
   |_____|_|\___\___|_| |_|___/\___|