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Did the recent Linux drama change your views on how you perceived Open Source projects? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I for one am going through quite a culture shock. I always assumed the nature of FOSS software made it immune to be confined within the policies of nations; I guess if one day the government of USA starts to think that its a security concers for china to use and contribute to core opensource software created by its citizens or based in their boundaries, they might strongarm FOSS communities and projects to make their software exclude them in someway or worse declare GPL software a threat to national security.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Same here. For now it's only barring contributors which won't harm actual users much, but that could change in the future with the precedent this is setting.

What's the point of "FOSS" at that point if it's not so different from corporate products, being similarly vulnerable to sanctions? I could see genuine free software being relegated to piracy communities if it goes that far.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago

FOSS gives people the option to take the original code and create their own version of it in case they don't like what the original maintainers are doing. With closed source you would be stuck and would have to look for something new.