The Future of Open Source: On Imperialism and Idealism
Fun &amp; accurate, great set up, but wrong conclusions. The author ultimately paints a picture of western idealistic hacking &amp; cybercommercial dominance, but they say this is enforced &amp; backed by once unchallenged but quickly crumbling dominance of intellectual property rights &amp; western legalistic dominion&#x2F;Imperialism.<p>This worldview was an entertainable perspective in the preconnected era, in the age of standalone software. But the world today runs in an interconnected mode, is based on Services-as-a-Software-Substitute (SaaSS). People &amp; nations dont respect the terms of service &amp; licenses because they&#x27;re in obesiance to the Empire, they do it because they just want in on, want access to the great vast online places that will kick em out of if they start mucking with the terms of service. Companys operate in cyberspaces lightly regulated supranational domain, and states have minimal leverage they can apply to force behavior upon greater cyberspace. Notably, EU is very much at the frontier of layering in steep requirements &amp; regulations, setting an example for the rest of the world that any state has the freedom to make demands &amp; push around online entities in any way the state pleases; somewhat ironic given what a boon to liberty &amp; possibility &amp; enablememt the open framework of cyberspace has created.<p>Viewing the cyberspace we have as a legal framework the rest of the world accepts is false. The internet is a dumb pipe, is connectivity. Anything in the way of connectivity is quite literally anti-internet. No nation or state may have their own take, their own legalistic roadblocks that are internet: they winniw down the whole to make a lesser thing below the internet with their impositions. The privilege of being interconnected to the global whole comes with a realizatuon that you are connecting to other places that wont follow your rules. Contrary to what the EU has insisted upon for itself.<p>Putting aside the absoluteness lf Cyberspace supranationalism, I dont see the clash &amp; challenge this article describes as real. The modern software world revolves around software running deep inside data centers, not on our personal computers. Other mations simply dont have the mainframes in their jurisdiction to boss around or use force against, so rebuffing their business is merely an impact on the bottom line. The legalistic modes are self enforcing, the terms of service dont need marshals to be enforced: we simply turn off access to violators, cancel their accounts. There has not been an opportunity for non-Western nations to misbehave or flout the supranational cyberspace standards, because the new things we want to use are online services, or deeply integrated with services. This isnt imperialism or legalism, it&#x27;s just a matter of were the desireable software runs &amp; what possibilities remain to those not running the data centers.<p>Changing topics again, peering at my crystal ball, one of the things i really enjoyed about this article was itcs setup &amp; it&#x27;s exploration of the mature of open source. Drawing my own projections, I think the value based western mode ultimately shines through. Individual empowermemt &amp; embracing possibility, idealistic hacking, &amp; the whole panolopy of values that embrace letting people get good, letting them explore- it creates positive vibrancy, is how energy &amp; creativity sustain &amp; maintain.