• pitninja
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      The motivations for creating open source software can be political, but the product itself is apolitical. Programming code is pure logic and has no opinions.

      I don’t even really believe that software licenses are inherently political. All they do is permit/restrict specific rights to attribute, use, modify, reproduce, distribute, etc. the code. The only real political position I could see against software licenses is one that doesn’t believe in protecting intellectual property rights. So if we’re going that far, I will tacitly agree that software licenses could potentially be considered political, but not in a very meaningful sense IMHO.

      • guyman@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        I don’t even really believe that software licenses are inherently political.

        Lol. I don’t think you know what political means.

        • pitninja
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          I actually do know what political means. Care to explain why you think software licenses are political instead of laughing at what I consider to be a completely reasonable statement?

          • guyman@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            If you need it explained to you, then you don’t know what political means.

      • charles@lemmy.computer.surgery
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Programming code is pure logic and has no opinions.

        Can you explain to me how, for example, Stuxnet is apolitical?

        All they do is permit/restrict specific rights to attribute, use, modify, reproduce, distribute, etc. the code.

        Can you explain how these restrictions/permissions are apolitical?

        • pitninja
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Stuxnet itself doesn’t care whose centrifuges it destroys (in fact it doesn’t care or have an awareness that it’s destroying anything at all), it does what it’s programmed to do and is deployed to do by people with political goals. It’s not the same thing as Stuxnet itself being political.

          I did say that I could conceive of one way that software licenses could be considered somewhat political if one’s politics reject the validity of intellectual property. But then again, the software licenses are also not the code itself. If one doesn’t believe in the concept of intellectual property, one is free to accept whatever risk is involved with breaking the license and using it anyway. The software doesn’t care who’s running it.

          I know this is all somewhat pedantic, but I pretty firmly believe no software is inherently political. At least maybe not until we have a computer system that achieves some form of sentience and its operating instructions are subject to its own will.

          • finder@sopuli.xyz
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            I don’t think this is pedantic at all. This is a pretty reasonable perspective, but I’m not quite sure yet if I agree or disagree.

            What are your thoughts on the death of the artist? I feel like the intentions have some kind of value in all art (or software in this case). It is yet another thing I am fuzzy on.

          • charles@lemmy.computer.surgery
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Stuxnet itself doesn’t care whose centrifuges it destroys (in fact it doesn’t care or have an awareness that it’s destroying anything at all), it does what it’s programmed to do and is deployed to do by people with political goals. It’s not the same thing as Stuxnet itself being political.

            This was actually pretty thought-provoking, so thanks for that. It seems like your argument is founded on the idea that non-sentient entities are incapable of being politically charged. In a vacuum where no sentient entities exist to charge them politically, this is trivially true. However, we don’t live in such a vacuum. As such, one must take into consideration that a subset[1] of people do consider a subset[1:1] of non-sentient entities to be inherently politically charged, and since one can’t know who considers what to be politically charged, one must treat all non-sentient entities as (at least potentially) politically charged. Of course, one may choose to ignore that subset[1:2] of people (which itself is a politically charged decision) but that doesn’t change the fact that any given non-sentient entity could be considered politically charged.

            I did say that I could conceive of one way that software licenses could be considered somewhat political if one’s politics reject the validity of intellectual property. But then again, the software licenses are also not the code itself. If one doesn’t believe in the concept of intellectual property, one is free to accept whatever risk is involved with breaking the license and using it anyway. The software doesn’t care who’s running it.

            Sorry, it seems you’ve repeated yourself rather than addressing the specific point I had asked for elaboration on. Would you mind trying again?


            1. Specifically a “non-strict subset” in the mathematical sense ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

            • pitninja
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              I didn’t repeat myself on the second point. Either one’s politics endorse intellectual property rights, which include the rights of an individual or organization to permit/limit any or all of those specific facets I mentioned previously according to their preference or one does not believe intellectual property rights exist. That’s the only meaningful way I can conceive of software licenses being a political concept, but I’m welcome to hear your take.

              • charles@lemmy.computer.surgery
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                The question isn’t the legitimacy of intellectual property rights, the question is how these permissions and restrictions are apolitical. People license their code with the expectation that the terms are adhered to, regardless of whether the license is actually enforceable. How are these terms (“specific rights to attribute, use, modify, reproduce, distribute, etc.”) apolitical?

                Edit: I won’t be able to reply any further because I’ve shut down my Lemmy instance.