Free Software is Political

In progressive discussions about technology and open source, there is intolerant pushing of mess from people who say “just focus on the code” without the politics. This is an understandable outlook, but it is also stupid, based on a misunderstanding of what is Free/Open Source Software (#FOSS). This everyday pushing of mess making comes from #blinded #mainstreaming people claiming that FOSS is “a-political” or should be kept that way, and shows a lack of any understanding of this movement.

As this article highlights, the idea of “a-political” Free Software is not only incorrect; it’s historically nonsense. Free Software is intrinsically and unavoidably political. It is not simply about code; it is about who controls the code and, therefore, who controls the user. This is why the path that many projects take, to jam FOSS into capitalism without addressing these core issues, is a mess and failing path.

The roots of free software are in a political and ethical movement that just happens to focus on software. “Computer users should be free to modify programs to fit their needs, and free to share software, because helping other people is the basis of society.” This is not just a technical stance; it is a moral, ethical, and political one. The idea that users should have the right to control their own digital lives and help others do the same is at the heart of Free Software. This #KISS foundation opposes proprietary software, where users are legally prevented from helping their neighbours, thus restricting their freedom.

“Computer users should be free to modify programs to fit their needs, and free to share software, because helping other people is the basis of society.”

The emergence of the “Open Source” in the late 1990s pushed change on this “native” path, into a more #mainstreaming direction by shifting focus to development benefits, pushing out the ethical and political core. This, however, does not change the foundational politics of Free Software, it merely tries to mask it, to hide it, by pushing out of sight the political core, this is mess making and the normal mainstream “common sense” when it comes to taking up any Alt paths, this is a history we need to stop.

The difference between Free Software and Open Source: “Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement.” For the #opensource path, non-free software is a suboptimal technical solution. For the FOSS path, non-free software is a social problem that needs challenging and changing. This is a distinction that some who try to take this path fail to recognize, leading to the meany messy social and coding projects we try to make work today.

As the #dotcons world increasingly face crises of privacy, control, and trust, the relevance of these distinctions, hopefully, becomes more into focus. From tech giants abusing data to governments exploiting backdoors, the ethical foundation that Free Software rests upon is needed, not optional.

The politics of software, the idea that software can be a-political, is a misunderstanding of what software does and represents. As Larry Lessig says – “Our choice is not between ‘regulation’ and ‘no regulation.’ The code regulates. It implements values, or not. It enables freedoms, or disables them. It protects privacy, or promotes monitoring.” Every decision in software development, from what features to include, to how data is handled, to what kind of accessibility is provided, is a political one. There is no “neutral” code. Decisions about prioritizing user rights, security, and privacy are political decisions, and they shape the wider digital networks we live within.

All code is ideology solidified into action – thus most contemporary code is capitalism, this is hardly a surprise if you think about this at all. Yes, you can try and act on any ideology path from this code, but the outcome and assumptions are preprogramed. If we continue to pretend that the software and platforms can be devoid of politics, we are, taking a side, and actively contributing to the mainstream mess that dotcons push, and this is the mess we urgently need to move away from. As outlined on my website, we need to focus on building a #openweb projects that respect people, rather than merely mimicking corporate platforms with a veneer of openness as we do so often, on the #Fediverse, #Bluesky etc.

Conclusion: stop pretending and start building, to those who wish to “just code” without the politics, it needs to be continually pointed out strongly that is impossible in the path of impactful software development. Every piece of software carries with it values, ethics, and political implications. Acknowledging this is the first step toward building digital networks that serves the people, rather than controlling them. We need to walk a path away from the mess of #mainstreaming towards a more open and humanistic internet.

This is not a hard path to take #OMN