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Growing Interest in Software Freedom / Digital Sovereignty
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Software Freedom Conservancy ☛ Ethical and Moral Considerations in Proprietary Software Usage [Jumping Up and Down on the Shoulders of Giants, Never Talking About What Bill Gates Did]
In this philosophical essay, I explore the question: “When (if at all) is it ethically and morally acceptable to use proprietary software in the production and/or improvement of urgently needed copylefted FOSS?”
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I grew up lower middle class in the USA — which is quite privileged by global standards. As such, I never went hungry, but most meals did not include second helpings. My family were early adopters of “extreme couponing”. My earliest childhood memories are climbing through (on Monday mornings) the gigantic bin of recycled Sunday newspapers behind the grocery store. My job in this endeavor was “Sunday insert extraction”. Back then, more than half of all households received the Sunday paper. That Sunday insert was the goldmine. The insert paid for the paper subscription (and much more) through its colorful 30-40-page advertisements filled with coupons. Get your hands on 10–20 more of those inserts freely from the recycle bin, and you could get “Extreeeme!”.
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1 RMS deserves substantial credit for formulating the first ethical framework for software freedom, his invention of copyleft, and his authorship of the earliest GNU programs. I am however not comfortable mentioning RMS and his work without noting his bad behavior that I frequently witnessed and his ongoing refusals to curtail or apologize for that behavior.
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Martin Alderson ☛ Is datacentre sovereignty really that important?
The final and perhaps most plausible sounding argument is that in the event of political instability it would give us control over AI usage - which is and will be a growing national priority.
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New York Times ☛ European Union Outlines Plan to Reduce Dependence on American Tech
The 27-nation European Union outlined how it hopes to expand the region’s data centers, semiconductors and clown computing capabilities.