I think we have to consider that the principles of the free software movement, revolutionary though they genuinely were, were also set in the same mindset that latterly saw its founder Richard Stallman spectacularly fall from grace. They are principles that deal in software development and licensing in strict isolation, outside of the social context of their use. They are code-centered, not human-centered.
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It’s worth considering whose freedom we value. Do we value the freedom of the people who use software, or do we also value the freedom of the people the software is used on? While the latter group doesn’t always exist, when they do, how we consider them says a lot about us and our priorities.
I agree with all your points except this one. Considering the implications of the tools you create is a huge deal.
I mean, we literally just had a blockbuster movie this summer that was ostensibly heavily about the regret Oppenheimer felt over how his invention would be used, how he didn’t foresee how damaging the mass casualties would be on his conscience. The back-half of the movie is about how his stance became anti-nuclear weapons after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
You raise really great points, but you’re being dismissive of a huge personal issue for a lot of people: will they actually feel comfortable with the way the tool they’ve designed is being used? If they’re anything like J. Robert Oppenheimer, they may struggle with their feelings on it if they don’t do enough consideration of it beforehand. I think rumination on things like this is very important, and definitely not fear, uncertainty, and death.
Also, frankly, it seems short sighted attributing cheaper modern software only to FOSS and not to the explosion in sizes of tech companies (economics of scale) as well as documented examples of tech companies colluding to keep engineer pay low and globalization allowing companies to pawn off labor to third-world countries where they can pay people less (Google doesn’t even use foreign labor, their janitors and bus drivers are contract labor, because that’s cheaper than having them directly on staff). Or has dumping US workers and replacing them with cheaper workers overseas not been happening steadily since 1988?
Without a free OS the walled garden could well have been maintained. Same without an open browser the web would be nothing. I do not think that was inevitable.
Really only Unix and Windows were there and a crap MacOS with a nice UI. BSD and Linux paved the way to the cloud, Android, most of our routers, the web. Everything.
As far as software compared to the atomic bomb. I do not think it really compares.