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LaF0rge

@AdrianVovk the freedom of FOSS is the freedom to use it for any purpose. I never really liked that, but licenses that would discriminate against certain use cases [like military] are neither compliant to free software definition nor open source definition. For decades that was the mantra.

6 comments
Lars Marowsky-Brée 😷

@LaF0rge @AdrianVovk That is still the mantra and why they don't censor Palantir, Rheinmetall, Lockheed ...
The US and the EU are flexing their weight (not just when it comes to warmonger Russia), and organizations are legally required to comply and won't - can't, really - be publicly discussed.
And of course it's, in many ways, hypocritical. (And impacts individuals negatively at least, like all sanctions.)
But the OSS world can't escape Conway's Law.

LaF0rge

@larsmb @AdrianVovk do you have any references to laws that prevent the public debate about sanctions? Since when can we not debate and question or even challenge public policy?

Lars Marowsky-Brée 😷

@LaF0rge @AdrianVovk Sure, we can and should. But I don't see that as a decision the LF and its associates could have done any different, given that they're bound by law.
What I meant is that no business will publicly discuss their reasoning behind this. The legal departments would throw a fit.
I'd love for sanctions to have FLOSS exemptions, but I'm not sure how realistic that is.

Lars Marowsky-Brée 😷

@LaF0rge @AdrianVovk And very few orgs indeed will come clean with "well the government asked us to so we can continue to get their money".
Some countries (Australia, US?) have actual secrecy laws IIRC.

(I need to add a disclaimer here that this is my very personal take, not representative of or informed by my employer, where I'm not in the loop about such decisions anyway.)

LaF0rge

@larsmb @AdrianVovk In a better world, LF should exist to serve the Linux kernel development community, and not the other way around. And I guess it should rather be registered in Geneva, next to the ITU and other international organizations.

Adrian Vovk

@LaF0rge The freedom to use for any purpose is not the same as the freedom to participate in development.

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