Re: [GNU-linux-libre] Proposal to revise FSDG to exclude SaaSS-only software clients

[bill-auger]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 11:02:02 -0300 Adonay wrote:
> # Should the GNU FSDG foster decentralized communication technologies?

my generalized response, is the same as i added to the parabola
ticket - to "foster" something ("promote", on the parabola
ticket), does not entail preventing anyone from doing the
opposite - that would be "mandating" or "imposing" - the
intended effect is an matter of education; and education would
be sufficient - technical or policy measures would do nothing
without the educational component - people would simply get the
problematic software elsewhere, and use it anyways


On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 09:42:37 +0300 Jean wrote:
> Users who value decentralization and freedom will need to make their
> own choices.

more specifically, it is best, not to assume any implication
from decentralization to software freedom - in practice,
decentralization and federation do very little for software
freedom - their value lies in data freedom and failure
resilience - software freedom and decentralization/federation
are both possible, even with a restricted protocol - the
restrictions, reduce to: constraints , practically - the only
constraint is the protocol itself; and that is an inherent
technical constraint, regardless of legalities

ive had a lot of interaction with the 'fediverse' folks; and it
is clear that their typical motivation does not include software
freedom - the primary motivation seems to be, simply that their
home-server is not operated by a large corporation - _very_ few,
actually plan to operate their own service - therefore, they
have no more software freedom (or privacy) on those networks,
than on proprietary networks - anyone interacting with any
public communication network, necessarily forfeits some freedom
and privacy - the system could not work otherwise

to underline this, the fact is that, even the very few who do
want to operate their own service, are still constrained by the
networking protocol - if one exercises software freedom, by
modifying the protocol, the service will be incompatible with
the rest of the network; which works against the goal of
decentralization - ie: total software freedom _and_ total
decentralization are incommensurable