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Floss, A Partial Antidote To Social Catastrophe#

See also: floss, hacker-ethos-collective-intelligence

Summary and reflections on _Floss, A partial antidote to social catastrophe with the structure

Summary#

What is the problem?#

  • Software embedded in all we do
  • But neoliberal drivers mean there are numerous issues
  • In this context, just adding more technology isn't going to help.

What is FLOSS?#

  • short description of FLOSS versus FOSS

What is the common alternative to FLOSS?#

  • Links to issues with capitialism contributing to rise of monopolies
  • Limitations of regulatory environment an issue
  • Some examples from tech
  • Nice quote

When Richard [Stallman] called it slavery, it wasn't a metaphor. It was simply an archaic political term for what it is like living in a world in which machines that you can't understand and you can't modify and you can't do anything about, control you and everybody else." - Eben Moglen, Coding Democracy

  • Facebook has two critical assets

    1. Secrecy of their algorithms.
    2. Restricted interoperability with their services

    distribution

How does the public stand to benefit from FLOSS?#

  • Draws on benefits of commons-based-peer-production as a starter using Wikipedia as the "case study"
  • Of course, doesn't mention the difficulties of encouraging significantly representative levels of collective engagement
  • links interoperability - a key missing part in social media - to the idea of checkpoint capitalism and the right to repair movement and the EU's recent moves to force interoperability

A Focus on Communication#

  • Briefly - almost as a side track - talks about the value of communication, Facebook's apparently bait and switch about the value of communication and absence of processing of that communication

A New Hope#

  • Uses Mastodon as a better FOSS and distributed example

Conclusions#

  • positions collaboration and volunteering as "two of the most prominent vertebra in humanity's collective backbone" - without higlighting the challenges (outside scope)
  • identifies some issues with FLOSS and gives example of how FLOSS/distribution was able to handle it