Post #2351239

2026-03-20 05:55 UTC

@pid_eins@mastodon.social @cas@social.treehouse.systems I guess in some way it comes down to "who is the software for?" A piece of libre software is for the users, it serves the user and does what the user wants (which may or may not be the same thing that lawmakers in some country want). It's not a tool for governments to enforce laws. Of course, when there is a FOSS license users can always do what they want anyway. But saying that changes are because of laws risks giving the wrong impression. Do you see what I mean? 2/2

Replies (1)

@cas@social.treehouse.systems 2026-03-20 06:23

@eliasr@social.librem.one @pid_eins@mastodon.social superficially sure that makes sense, if FOSS existed in a vacuum I'd be totally on board. But despite the efforts of many to create and share software while taking zero responsibility for the consequences of their actions, software still exists in the real world. To be clear (though I think i said so in my post) im not in favour of governments imposing restrictions or requirements on software, these laws are arbitrary and almost as hard to define concretely as they are to enforce. With that being said, if I may attempt to challenge your underlying assumptions here: how are the requirements of law different to the requirements of (for example) a security minded individual, or an enterprise customer? I want to daily drive a Linux phone but I care a whole lot about security and implementation details basically mean to only way to implement a truly secure OS stack is to use proprietary "trusted apps" from Qualcomm to protect my OS encryption keys (think software backed TPM), I have no doubt in my mind that people may object to the idea of Linux loading proprietary trusted apps into the "secure world" to implement this functionality, but would you object to the kernel adding support for this because it might not be "what the users want"? I guess im making two points here so i'll try to separate them: 1. At what point is a topic so technical that the opinion of an average user with minimal context shouldn't be trusted? 2. How do you in practice enforce that "libre" software is always serving "the users" without alienation and othering? Like I personally am always pretty confused and occasionally frustrated by the systemd unit constraints system, did i want Requires= or BindsTo= or WantedBy= or Requisite= etc.... Similarly the fact that every openrc service file is a shell script is infuriating, does these mean these aren't libre projects? And again, yes I think the laws are fucking dumb, i just think criticising systemd and XDG in particular is just virtue signaling here, not advocating for real change. I hope i don't just come across as contrarian, you're making a philosophical argument so I hope it's ok to respond in kind.

Open ##2351240