Notices by Christian Bundy (christianbundy@social.coop)

The #Comcast outage today is a great reminder at how terribly centralized and hierarchical connections are. #P2P all the things!

#decentralization #mesh

You know, mobile operating systems are an incredibly clever move on behalf of intermediaries who are afraid of an open and community-managed web.

Standards-based organizations like the W3C are (if I understand correctly) overwhelmingly dominated by business interests already, but even *that* is to inconvenient for Apple, Microsoft, and Google right now.

Instead, they're each working to build walled gardens with faster-paced development at the expense of 100% vendor lock-in.

To express my distaste, I've:

- Unfollowed all GitHub users
- Unstarred all GitHub repositories
- Made my profile URL point to GitLab
- Pinned GitHub alternatives on my profile

It won't make a large change, but even if it moves *one* person off of GitHub it'll be a long-term success.

What's the move on #GitHub and #Microsoft?

I'd really rather not use any Microsoft tools unless I really have to, but I know there are a ton of folks using GitHub and it's a nice way of connecting with people.

This is #Facebook all over again.

Can anyone explain #forkoff / #forkofftogether to me? I've looked through the hashtags but all I see is discourse, no context.

At this point my understanding is that some folks are unhappy with Gargron as a Benevolent Dictator For Life and want a community-managed fork. Is that about right?

I think I'd enjoy living in the city a lot more if people would drop the weird "urban solitude" thing where you're supposed to pretend you aren't aware of each other's existence.

It feels so weird to walk by someone on the street, say "good morning" and watch them stare directly forward and pretend they're alone on the sidewalk.

Humans are weird.

Copyright is theft.

The point is that we don't actually care about software.

The point is the source.

I want the source for my software, my firmware, my hardware, and even my wetware honestly. Of course free source for software is important, but it seems like the source itself is the thing that matters -- not the software.

And for cultural works that don't have abstract mechanial "source": #FreeCulture

Please somebody shoot me down, but this seems like it could actually solve our current mass identity crisis.

My latest (and probably final) attempt that:

- disambiguates "free"
- avoids "open"
- standardizes on /FOSS?/
- is still pronounced /fɔs/
- complements "Free Culture"[0]

#FreeSource

0. Freedom to use the source and artifacts.
1. Freedom to study the source.
2: Freedom to share the source
3. Freedom to improve the source.

Instead of "free [and open source] software", it's "free [and open] source [software]".

Am I tripping, or is this legitimately not a bad idea?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-culture_movement

New idea that solves:

- the ambiguity of "free"
- the confusion of /F?\/?L?OSS/
- the software-specific "source"

I've seen folks refer to "open hardware", could we just do the same with software? It seems to solve all of the problems.

#OpenSoftware
#OpenHardware

?

I've always felt like #copyleft was authoritarian in that it took away "freedoms", but really it only prevents the "freedom" to use intellectual property to commit violence against:

0. Those who run the program as they wish, for any purpose.

1. Those who study how the program works, and change it so it does their computing as they wish.

2. Those who redistribute copies so they can help their neighbor.

3. Those who distribute copies of your modified versions to others.

I think both Google and Apple are making a huge mistake: their short device lifecycles are good for profit, but the space is ripe for the "innovation" of not having to buy a new phone every two years.

Sometimes I wonder how many hours humanity has spent trying to explain that "free software" isn't always $0.

I get that "liberated software" is a mouthful, but what about "freed software"?

Happy birthday to #SocialCoop, and thanks to everyone keeping my local feed full of #birthday wishes today. So lucky to share an instance with you all.

Someday I hope we'll see a major push for repairable free and open-source software. The fact that software is free and open source is rarely actually of material importance until you need to fix something.

Don't get me wrong, there are *ideological* reasons for free and open-source software, but there's plenty of software that's effectively proprietary because only the author(s) can understand how it works.