Midway through writing this i realized how much of an essay this comment is, so heed this warning i suppose. I’ll just copy the last line here because it summarizes this whole thing pretty well: In the end the improvement doesn’t really come from the software or its license, but from the context that it exists in.

Free Open Source is definitely better than closed software but “better” doesnt mean “good”. Breaking one leg is better than breaking every limb, but I think most people will want to break no limbs, if at all possible. I think it is possible to make licenses that optimize for what in this metaphor would be breaking no limbs, even if we will probably never get to no broken limbs at all. And there are perks about limbs being breakable that we wouldn’t get. Bear with me here.

The thing is, software that we license to stop Bad people stops being entirely free, as there are restrictions to its use. We don’t want, for example, to help a corporation create tools for surveillance. Say someone’s making their own personal digital assistant that has features most digital assistants don’t, and that is free and open source. Now imagine google found it.

Yes, they would have to tell people about your alternative, but most people are still not gonna choose it because the one they give is more easily recognizable and Right There. You have helped google create a tool for surveillance and you can’t do anything about it other than accept it.

If you think that is ok, then you are agreeing that it’s ok to help create tools for mass surveillance (even if not in favor of it). You are allowing it, therefore not against it. This is why true neutrality does not exist, it will always swing towards the ““side”” that is already most powerful.

So what does this mean for open source? Is it bad relative to the rest of current software (which is our current point of reference)? No, it is better. It makes it easier for more people to make things, and even if not all the software that is made is better, a big portion will be, and the portion will be better the more we progress away from the things that make Bad software exist in the first place. It also allows to improve pieces of originally bad software. They are a way to make things better, but they are not where we should stop. I don’t think we’re ready to have software that is restricted away from people who will use it to be nazis and cause harm, because they will also make software that is restricted away from non-nazis and harm reductionists (i just made that up but hopefully what “harm reductionist” means makes sense). And currently, it looks like that’ll be a big section of the software. This kind of fragmentation isn’t good because it means that Bad software can’t become Good, there is no real improvement.

If the world was less full of people who will use software for Bad things, the losses would be lesser, and we could help prevent the Bad from rising again simply by making it harder for them to get tools to spread out.

In the end the improvement doesn’t really come from the software or its license, but from the context that it exists in.