"FOSS" is Not a Terminology Strong Enough, We Need Freedom and No Monopolies
Openwashing is a fata morgana and a road to nowhere
THE original goal (or purpose) of technology was to empower people and to act as a force multiplier, e.g. when calculating things or doing chores that machines too can handle, sometimes even faster and more accurately. Nowadays, and more so over time, technology is being leveraged to keep people down, to oppress them.
This statement is hardly controversial as many people can relate and give examples.
There is a lingering issue associated with Free software or watered-down (less freedom) FOSS too, and that's not limited to openwashing as corporate takeover has a similar effect. "Too much of what could have been about FOSS is now infected with Microsoft GitHub or Microsoft ShitGPT," one person told us, citing this new example.
Putting aside how a site called "It's FOSS" promotes things that are not FOSS (e.g. [1, 2]), I regularly witness so-called 'FOSS' that acts more like malware. Mozilla Firefox and Chromium are good examples of that.
I moreover need to constantly remind myself to focus less on the brands and more on the concepts, especially freedom (FOSS as a term encourages focusing on "OS" rather than "F").
Unlike "Open Source" (OS), Freedom (F) is about the users and the developers, not companies. If we don't explain to people why digital and software freedoms matter, they might leave Microsoft only to find some equally bad brand, like Google instead of Microsoft Office (spyware replaced by other proprietary spyware can be bad for Microsoft but also bad for freedom and we get almost nowhere when this happens).
This "is almost always a false dichotomy fallacy," the above person noted, and we wrote about this in recent weeks [1, 2, 3] because Apple and Google are not really substitutes, except in the branding sense.
Microsoft Office vs Google (or vice versa) is just "one specific example but another could be done with less focus on brands," the person said. "The Google vs Microsoft Office is another example of a false dilemma, one specifically intended to exclude Calligra or, more importantly, LibreOffice from mind share. Underneath all that, which they really don't want discussed, would be open standards for productivity software especially in regards to having a universal file format..."
"Then there are the privacy and sovereignty losses that go with "cloud"..."
There is another problem lurking in the shadows though. As the person put it: "The problem is that Microsoft has long since become a political movement with strong aspects of a nasty cult. Those people won't vanish, they will splatter across the market and spread rot from within new institutions."
"Maybe cult deprogramming tactics and methods are thus relevant in addressing Microsoft but keep in mind that it has thoroughly permeated both Congress and the White House in the US during the last 10 years." █