License Cannot Beat Politics
Are there limits to the free software movement/ideology? It appears like there are
There’s a point that Pirate Praveen keeps repeating in FSCI chat group. It took me some years to understand. And there are several others who have not understood it yet. I quote:
my point is, trying to project ethics beyond copyright law into software only confuses people. Ethical movements should not be centered around software, trying to change the world through software licenses is a futile excercise, it only alienates potential allies but don’t actually achieves goals beyond what copyright law provides. Free Software works because it is within copyright laws limits. Community CoC works because communities can enforce its rules within their communities. The moment you want to enforce something beyond your community, you need political power and no software, however named or defined can povide you that. It is a naive/wishful thinking/illusion.
~ Pirate Praveen
If you need some explanation, you can read my post titled Give up the Free Software vs Open Source Debate where I try to explain the reality that free software and open source are functionally equivalent in politics (although in rhetoric free software movement sounds like it is much more political).
The free software movement (or the open source movement) does not operate as a political movement. It doesn’t participate in elections or try to influence political processes. It doesn’t have that many political goals. It doesn’t have cadre. It doesn’t have much literature around it (apart from the early GNU essays). It doesn’t have university professors teaching it as a political philosophy. It is nothing compared to political movements like Marxism, anti-caste movement, feminism, etc.
Yet free software movement (or open source movement) perpetuates itself. How?
The answer is that the free software movement (or the open source movement) is built on a hack. It is built by hacking into copyright. Copyright is a legal mechanism that’s enforced by the might of nation states. And by the clever loophole of using copyright itself to ensure free sharing, it was possible to unlock a peculiar game (like game of life). In this game, production of free software leads to production of more free software. And thus it creates value for everyone. And that’s how the free software movement (or the open source movement) survives/thrives.
PP says, therefore, that adding any political goal on top of the free software movement is unsustainable. Because there’s no mechanism through which such a goal can be achieved.
For comparison, take a movement like the feminist movement. You could add a political goal like “harassment free workspaces” to it. Feminists will then talk among each other and start mobilizing resources and attention towards campaigns like #MeToo. There’ll be widespread awareness about the issue and soon the goal will be achieved. This is what political movements are capable of achieving.
But for free software movement (or open source movement), there’s no such possibility of mass mobilization towards a political goal — because it has never built itself as a political movement.
You might think that the widespread adoption of code of conduct in free software communities is an example of such mass mobilization. It is, indeed. But it was the result of a mass mobilization by the feminist/LGBTQ+ political movements, not by a mobilization of the free software movement.
Even if we assume that there is a group of free software queer feminists who are political in both ways (free software and otherwise), their influence cannot be on the wider free software movement. They are limited by the subset of free software movement which is populated by such similar free software queer feminists. And one could even argue that their solidarity is not even mediated by free software, rather it is feminism/queer politics that brings them together.
There’s one more damning criticism that can be made on the “political” vision of free software. In the above explanation, I agreed with Praveen and said that the copyright hack is what lets free software work.
But one can say that the copyright hack isn’t even necessary (at least now).
When capitalism understood the true business value of sharing code, they discovered the economic incentives to keep this movement going. That they created the “open source movement” may have served some strategic function in the past. But regardless of what name they used, they unlocked a whole new upgraded-3D-splashy level of the game. They figured out we can save/make money with open source.
If one is skeptical of free software movement, one could even say that it is the economic model unlocked by the open source movement that sustains the free software movement. Copyleft licenses are not even necessary now to keep this going. Or in other words, even the copyright hack no longer applies.
And that’s an even bigger reason why politics doesn’t survive in free software movement. There’s no space for political goals in business.
If one really cares about politics, they would have to build a political movement (more practically, they would have to join existing political movements).
If they somehow hang around in free software movement hoping for a political change, they’re on the wrong bus.
Post-script: It is this realization that made me stop spending energy in free software circles and start spending it elsewhere.