Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Brand Names, loyalty and ill Effects

[Thadeu Lima de Souza Cascardo]

On Sun, Jul 31, 2016 at 11:21:52AM +0530, A. Mani wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 31, 2016 at 6:19 AM, Pen-Yuan Hsing <penyuanhsing@gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> > Sorry I don't quite get what you mean by "sense of brand loyalty" and
> > "corporate world concerns". Can you explain specifically what you mean by
> > those terms?
> 
> 
> Distros like Fedora and Ubuntu are mostly developed on the lines set
> by their respective corporate groups.
> 
> I am talking about the nature of local ecosystem of these and similar
> communities. The dynamics of development within these groups suggests
> that the active developers have accepted the state of affairs.
> 
> What may be a possible solution?
> 

I will contribute my 2 cents to the discussion with some personal
opinions based on my experience.

I have contributed small fixes for some software for 15 years now. At
first, I did it as a student, playing and hacking with free software on
my free time, which helped me a lot to grow as a hacker and
professional.

Even before I finished college, I started doing some consulting and was
able to contribute on my terms, keeping copyright and such. After I
graduated, I kept doing that and even started my own company. Again, I
kept my own copyright, released software under GPL or other free
software license, contributed upstream, etc. Though my clients were
chosing what I was going to do with their money, I still had some
leverage on chosing clients and what kinds of contributions we would do:
contribute to an existing project, start a new project, choose the
license, direction to go, etc. As long as we provided a solution,
clients would be fine with that. And I also had some free time to work
on projects of my choosing, sometimes in the expectation to create a
product, sometimes not. But always on my own terms, and I always
preferred copyleft licenses, for example.

Then, I got employed by big companies. I still had/have jobs related to
working on upstream projects, but the employer kept the copyright, the
employer chooses the license, its clients, the project direction, etc.
Having started a family, any free time left is hardly dedicated to free
software, though I still try to instead of a full night sleep once in a
while.

And that's your concern, I guess. That many people who contribute to
free software these days do that on an employer's time and terms. That
most contributions come from large companies, who give the direction to
the project, keep their copyright, choose non-copyleft licenses, or
don't enforce the GPL, etc.

I agree that's something we need to be worried about and take action. A
very good talk about GPL enforcement and copyleft use is Bradley Kuhn's
talk "Copyleft For The Next Decade: A Comprehensive Plan", given at LCA
2016. One of his suggestions is that we go back to contributing at our
free time, which is one thing I am trying to do.

The other suggestion I would have is talking more about free software
and contributing back to free software. Sure, we should not be exclusive
to Computer Science students, but they sure are an important audience.
We should talk about copyleft and how nice it is to contribute to other
free software, fixing bugs, developing alternatives to non-free software
and creating new projects and releasing them as free software,
preferably copyleft-licensed, with an open community and governance,
etc.

And we need to take back community/personal participation on key
projects. Of course, every one will have its own opinion on which
projects are these, and which ones they want to contribute to. For some,
it will be system and toolchain software, like Linux, GNU libc, GCC,
etc. For others, it will be desktop software, like GNOME, KDE, GTK+, QT.
Or distributions, either existing ones or creating new ones. The
important thing is that we get back to have more community participation
as we used to have, instead of so much companies taking over most of the
project contributions.

Cascardo.

> 
> Best
> 
> A. Mani
> 
> 
> 
> Prof(Miss) A. Mani
> CU, ASL, AMS, ISRS, CLC, CMS
> HomePage: http://www.logicamani.in
> Blog: http://logicamani.blogspot.in/
> http://about.me/logicamani
> sip:girlprofessor@ekiga.net
>

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