Sanction:
* The GNU Project
* The Free Software Foundation and @fsfe
* @linuxfoundation
For enabling the technological ability of the russian army and refusing to take steps to save human lives. #FOSS #FLOSS #OSS #OpenSource
@kreyren Interesting take; why do you think that
a) they have the responsibility to do this
b) they have the ability to do this
The GNU and FSF projects have written contractual agreements (their licenses) that prevents anyone, much less themselves, from restricting the sharing of their software. If they try to renege on this contract, not only do they lose all credibility, but they also may be liable to legal action being taken against them.
Even supposing they had the ability to restrict access without legal ramifications, how do you suppose they will be able to stand for their principles of free speech and freely shareable, accessible code if they restrict it for "the bad guys". What happens when that definition inevitably changes?
The FSF and GNU projects have always stood for these principles regardless of who stands to benefit, including minorities, disenfranchised youths, persecuted religious groups, etc. Unfortunately those principles also extend to anyone else, even though they can use, modify and share the code as they like, even for war. And let's be honest, the Russians can access these open repos via VPN or other internet services, how can the FSF or GNU project hold the pirating capital of the world accountable for accessing FLOSS software that has no DRM protections whatsoever?
I abhor what's going on with the Russian Ukraine war as much as, if not more than, most people. But putting blame on a neutral party in this matter won't help. Instead, let's leverage FOSS libraries and other tools to support Ukraine and thwart the Russians, yeah?
> a) they have the responsibility to do this -- @johnabs
Every creator has the responsibility for their creation, Richard Matthew Stallman Founded the Free Software movement on principles of four freedoms to ensure that the ideology of the original four freedoms by roosevelt is preserved in computer science.
Today these freedoms are violated namely:
> Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute and make copies **so you can help your neighbor.**
This sharing is violating the 2nd part of Freedom 2 and instead of helping helping freedom and democracy it's placing a major role in ruzzia's ability to kill it including innocent people, children and infants.
> b) they have the ability to do this -- @johnabs
We have the ability to disrupt the supply chain and to make the software unusable by ruzzian army.
> The GNU and FSF projects have written contractual agreements (their licenses) that prevents anyone, much less themselves, -- @johnabs
Majority of used licenses are `GPLv3.0-or-later` so just a matter of updating it or be that FOSS is founded on liberalism make an alternative license and allow developers to choose if they want the clause about it's software being used in a war included.
> The FSF and GNU projects have always stood for these principles regardless of who stands to benefit -- @johnabs
The GNU project is receiving payments from the ruzzian government that makes them to not stand up for the principles and values of Four Freedom i am a former FSF member and i know from whom do they receive money first hand.
> But putting blame on a neutral party in this matter won't help. -- @johnabs
GNU is not neutral, they are on the ruzzian side and fooling everyone in the free world with being neutral.
