> It's an arms race, and one side has the funding for it. Hint: it's not us

Wasn't the flaw here? Shouldn't the FLOSS movement have been seeking sustainability for its 'peasants' from the very start?

I've been fondly quoting that Harvard study finding that (F(L))OSS contributes 9 trillion to the global economy. Yet its an unsustainable burnout zone for anyone who seeks to eek out a living in it. In the past I've said that dabbling in this movement feels like "burning ones privilege at the altar of sacrifice". Another way to look at it is that 99.9% of FOSS is really 'hobby projects' for those who can afford it.

Then the notion of "working in public" is imho flawed. After my years in the space it left me with uncomfortable questions.

social.coop/@smallcircles/1163…

Just throwing new tech out into society is no different than what the opponent does, but does it more smartly and unscrupulously.

It's a pity, perhaps too late for me, but I'd love to explore "working in commons".

@jens @bkuhn

Note, and I must state this explicitly, that I'm not blaming any individual participant in the FOSS movement, where most people are doing their stinking best with noble - varying between the more mythical, or less mythical kinds - Robin Hood motives being their intrinsic motivational drivers. To do good for society.

The issues arise by Emergence i.e. in-the-large where the net impact on society may not be so positive. Where the individualism in FOSS where everyone goes it alone, or in tiny groups does not contribute to a sustainable economy, where the indivuals' ethics, morals, and values can be held high. Value is directly inserted in larger society, which works on the basis of hypercapitalism. The emergent FOSS movement can't escape Conway's Law that way.

A Big Industry analogy intrigues me, which can uphold hypercomplex global supply chains, whereas the typical FOSS project has trouble scaling beyond a handful of people. We must be able to organize our supply chains.

@jens @bkuhn

The TLDR is that imho the movement should be much more about people, than about the product that rolls off the production pipeline, i.e. the software. Coding is social.

Let FOSS be code + a protective license. SOSS then is the sustainable production facility, where many SOSS initiatives participate in the formation of a larger and growing commons based value economy. Doing service development, delivery, and exchange with other parties based on trust and proven track records. Creating a fitness formula that is better able to hold the bad actors at bay. Ideally this formula is such that bad actors push themselves out of collaborative arrangements, and become intrinsically motivated to adopt better and more sustainable practices, in order to reap most benefit from their commons participation.

@jens

> I'm already more than ready for the next thing. But it'd hurt some libertarians' feelings.

Jens, we spoke at length about these things in the past. I am very curious about your vision on the future of our movement.

@bkuhn

@smallcircles Well, that's a difficult one.

I have some aims and thoughts, but no clear path yet. And I think that's actually good, because if there's anyone here that points in one direction and everybody else follows, we're failing from the start.

It's funny how these topics come up.once in a while, and then they bundle up weirdly.

So for one thing, a few days ago we stumbled upon new terminology, which I kind of like. From coding guidelines to mystics around the world, we get...

@bkuhn

@smallcircles... told that names have power. I think it's because names are essentially pointers at arbitrarily complex mental models, and the power comes from succinctly transporting a complex idea.

So we, that is @onepict and @abucci and myself, were sort of half shitposting about FOSS and/or FLOSS. Anthony brought up LOSS as "Libertarian Open Source Software" as a much better name for showing the particular failure mode of the movement, which starts from individual liberties...

@bkuhn

@smallcircles... and essentially hopes for the best in how that might translate into wider society. Not individuals - I agree that they often try very hard. But core tenets along which to orient oneself.

LOSS perfectly references the parts that work, but also clearly states that an important part is lost along the way.

So we were spitballing about what to call the other thing, the thing that we should have. I suggested MOSS, which is an awkward acronym for...

@onepict @abucci @bkuhn

@smallcircles... "Mutual(ly supportive) Open Source Software". Mostly it's because I wanted something green, soft, small, yet beautiful and full of life. The meaning.is.shoehorned into the word.

But it's pretty much what I want, too. I want to grow stuff, in its own time. I don't want to emulate startups based on extraction from the commons. I want people to feel good about it. I want to feel good about making it.

So it kinda caught on, for me at least, for a bit.

@onepict @abucci @bkuhn

@smallcircles I want to focus on MOSS gardening.

I think this is also something where we've sort of lost our way. "We" definitely includes myself, and looking at various others out there, I'm not alone. I look at "small tech" folk, indie game.devs, etc. We want the joy of creation just as much as we want other folks to have joy. Happy little b+-trees, under skies dotted by fluffy home clouds.

Bob Ross channeling aside...

Another thread by @bagder was about what...

@onepict @abucci @bkuhn

@smallcircles... to tell folk with some political authority about sustainability, and I felt obliged to point out that we have two faces to the problem "coin":

1. Maintainers require that "no warranty of any kind" is required, because - and here I cross streams - MOSS gardening is incompatible with pressure to do things in a certain way.
2. Projects which build on the commons need supply chain safety in the same way they'd get from commercial offerings.

@bagder @onepict @abucci @bkuhn

The two are incompatible, until you have mechanisms in place by which the activities that users demand of suppliers are sustainably funded.

But those activities don't have to all be performed by a project maintainer. Some, like support, can be done elsewhere.

They key issues here revolve around how easy or hard it is to pick and choose between activities and rewards. As a MOSS gardener, I want to pick up issues when I can, and a coffee in...

@bagder @onepict @abucci @bkuhn

@smallcircles recompense is fine. If I'm supposed to review an onslaught of dodgy LLM "security issues", it's a full time job, and not what I signed up for.

Politics is great at creating regulatory frameworks that favour the stronger lobby. Here we have industry on the consumer side, and individuals on the supply side. It's pretty clear that regulatory efforts focus on "how can industry get what they need?"

So, putting a realistic cost to that is one of the...
@bagder @onepict @abucci @bkuhn

@smallcircles... more effective arguments.

Meanwhile, if this means I cannot grow my MOSS garden any longer, well, we're all going to run out of commons pretty soon. So the flip side to this is to give gardeners all the incentives to turn their hobby into a job, with none of the downsides - until they decide they can take on some additional responsibility for additional incentive.

That is hard, because it requires trusting the gardeners instead of forcing...

@bagder @onepict @abucci @bkuhn

@smallcircles... them.

So next there's the question of LLMs. I can tell you right now that if you bring your tractor to my backyard MOSS garden, I will tell you to fuck off.

Lastly, elephant in the room, is the wider human rights angle. Allowing commons gardeners to grow their MOSS is, after all, them taking advantage of some combination of their human rights.

But our libertarian LOSS philosophy also includes "for any use" clauses, and "any use" also...
@bagder @onepict @abucci @bkuhn

@smallcircles... includes human rights violations. Genocide. Stealing the fruits of other people's labours.

When you see your code as a kind of gift to humanity, it's easy to take the stance that you've done your part, and it's up to others and other legal mechanisms to ensure that it's used well.

So there's a strong disconnect here between the freedoms that LOSS philosophy demands for contributors, and the needs of the general population.

"For any use"...

@bagder @onepict @abucci @bkuhn

@smallcircles... cannot work, cannot scale, cannot solve problems. Nobody is free until everybody is free.

So whatever path is chosen here, it needs to reject that libertarian point of view. We need enough room for variation to allow for individuals to grow their pet MOSS into vast rain forests. But this cannot be *expected* to be done, and such demands cannot come from industry alone.

Rather, the focus must be on fixing human rights issues before business...

@bagder @onepict @abucci @bkuhn

@smallcircles. .. cases, and it still needs to be funded appropriately for anyone willing to step into that responsibility to make a living from it.

I wouldn't call that a vision. More a set of non-negotiable constraints on the solution space.

But whatever solutions may be explored in that, I'm convinced that none of us will individually come to a complete model.

@bagder @onepict @abucci @bkuhn

@jens @bagder @onepict @abucci @bkuhn

Nice! Aligns well to SX, which is about sustainable evolution and organic growth on a basis of "Joyful creation" - an SX formula - within a commons. I like MOSS.

For the M in MOSS you might pick Mutualistic. In the narrative LOSS vs MOSS you force people in a political activist role via the L, which is I think unnecessary in a time where aware people already carry the weight of the world on their shoulder.

SX with Hedonic peer production revolves around finding intrinsic motivations on why people participate and stick around.

SOSS conveys "Save our souls" urgency, yet keywords are "sustainable social". It's about expectation management and good communication is key. It keeps FOSS as-is: code + a license, but focuses for it to be "commons based" i.e. created with a sustainability-first approach and respecting intrinsic values of Humanity and Freedom.

FSDL ensures accounting for changing Needs of direct and indirect stakeholders at any one time.

@jens @bagder @onepict @abucci @bkuhn

For SX I formulated CALM culture, for "Constructive activism-led movements", which goes from the notion that activism is a process going through awareness, attraction, activation, and engagement in a commons. Goal is to take people on a path of solution-orientation where they are empowered to act, work on positive and uplifting things.

Many forms of activism remain stuck in awareness stage, in the way they demand people to adopt the activist's political view. They demand 'sacrifice' to also become an activist, while this is not for everyone. It is a burden.

I never use the word "capitalism" as it gets me in pointless discussion with people throwing theory books at me, saying free markets are perfect. Observed reality is what matters. So I always use "hypercapitalism" insted, capitalism-run-amok.

LOSS will see people come fiercely "I'm NOT Libertarian" and rebuttal of "But you are". Which I think will drag things sideways from the central theme.

@whvholst @jens @bagder @onepict @abucci @bkuhn

Yes, any such requirement make the license not open source compliant.

I think generally speaking we put too much weight on the license alone, and should recognize that it only offers small measure of protection against bad actors and undesirable exploitation of a creator's work.

SX defines "working in commons" as an extension to working in public. What is a commons? It's a group of people who have things in common: who share a particular set of values they hold dear.

The codebase is just a set of plaintext artifacts that roll off the end of an intricate delivery pipeline. Let it be FOSS and publicly available (perhaps less easy to discover for the bad actor).

Where the work happens, where the knowledge is shared, where people learn about each other's needs, where they share their dreams and team up to realize them. That is the commons.

And that is the place that can be shielded protected environment that holds the bad actors at bay.

@smallcircles I feel that "not open source compliant" is a red herring.

@whvholst @bagder @onepict @abucci @bkuhn

@jens @whvholst @bagder @onepict @abucci @bkuhn

Yes, perhaps it is. And maybe I used the wrong phrasing of the words. Yet it also these words where in FOSS circles often heated arguments occur, where the topic of discussion is so often narrowly related to the licensing alone, and not the bigger question of: How do we make the FOSS ecosystem more inherently sustainable for its participants, and without "selling our soul"?