The ongoing discussions about age-verification and changes in Free and Open-Source Software and GNU Linux and related OSs made me realize a gross misunderstanding on my part. I think many other users may have the same misunderstanding (seeing many comments using the word “traitors”), and it’s important that we become aware of it. We must understand that using or saying “FOSS” or “Linux” does not automatically mean to stand up for human rights, for the community, against corporations, and similar goals and values.
If we read the comments in those age-verification discussions we can see that many developers and possibly also users make statements like “the developers have no obligation towards the community”, “the law is the law, no matter what the community wants”, “we must comply”, and similar. It’s important to realize that many developers work on FOSS not out of consideration for the community, or for human rights, or against corporations. For them it’s just one kind of software development. We may have projects that are FOSS and pro-corporations or pro-surveillance. The “F” in FOSS stands for freedom to modify and distribute the software by/to anyone in the community. It doesn’t stand for “software that promotes / stands up for general human freedom and human rights". But of course there are also developers that work with FOSS because of such values.
So for anyone who, like me, wants to use and promote software as an assertion of, and a stand for, human rights and against corporations, it’s necessary not to stop at “FOSS” or “Linux” but apply more scrutiny and more careful choices. Probably it’s always been like this, but the present times require extra awareness.
I wish there was an acronym or other word that made this moral aspect of some FOSS development clear. This would help users to recognize software projects that share their values, and also those FOSS developers who do work for those values. Is there such a term already out there?
The problem is that “human freedom” and “human rights” are very general and somewhat vague terms and some people’s freedoms and rights are sometimes in conflict with each other. So it’s also often meaningless to say that you support “human freedom” and “human rights” without asking what freedoms and rights and for whom.
FOSS is a very specific subset of human freedom and human rights, it’s the right to control, modify and distribute the software one uses. All other parts of human freedom and human rights aren’t something that the free software movement necessarily has a position on. (Free software can certainly be used to, at least arguably, violate human rights, for example armed forces can use free software too, and should be able to!)
Human rights tend to mean those agreed upon on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, so not very vague at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights
Literally the first sentence is of the definition you posted is vague.
Some of the rights and freedoms? So, yeah, “not very vague at all”.
Okay, how would you connect the UDHR’s core principles to FOSS in a meaningful, concrete way?
It’s great as a set of guidelines, but their implementation is very much left as an exercise to the reader, which I think is what the GP is getting at.
Preamble: The following is only a extreme example to illustrate a core problem. It doesn’t show or represents my personal opinion.
Ok, the UDHR has the right to life, does that mean that no doctor or clinic who is pro-abortion should be allowed to use or work on FOSS Software? A lot of people would say that abortion is in hard conflict with the right to life and with that against the declaration of human rights.
Having a declaration of rights only helps with the groundwork but all the Details are a huge mess and often include lots of devils.
There are many more examples of this here: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freedom-to-run.html
Ok cool, I was not aware of that page. Thank you!