Episode: 3585
Title: HPR3585: Freedom of speech in open source, Part 2.
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3585/hpr3585.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 01:46:41

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3585 for Friday the 29th of April 2022.
Today's show is entitled Freedom of Speech in Open Source Part 2.
It is hosted by some guy on the internet and is about 13 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag. The summary is Freedom has a cost.
Hello and welcome ladies and gentlemen to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I'm your host, some guy on the internet. Before we get started there's a couple things I want to
cover. First, in the last community news show, I'd like to give a thank you for everyone that
commented on the previous shows. I appreciate all your comments, especially yours, Mr. Fallon.
Wow, that's five words! That's right, them fighting words. I really like it when we can actually
have these kind of discussions because we all think technology is cool, especially in its various
forms. It didn't necessarily have to be a Raspberry Pi or a Pine Phone or something like that.
Any kind of tech that you can hack on and modify? We're all pretty much going to surround that and
want to be more educated on it, with the hacking process. How far can you go with modifications?
But when we start discussing things that force you to think and express your own opinions about it,
where there could be those differences in opinions, that's where I kind of want to bring a little
bit more of that into it. Not take away any of the tech at all, there's plenty of tech to go around,
but I guess I see this as another avenue for the community to get involved, where less technical
members may still be able to participate. Even if they're a little embarrassed about their project,
they can still chime in on some of this type of stuff because it didn't require you to have,
you don't have to sound as though you have a PhD to chime in on some of the topics that I bring up.
It's pretty lighthearted and we can all get involved. Okay, and the second thing I want to bring up
is my name. Yes, I get it whenever we're having a conversation, saying my entire handle,
some guy on the internet, you didn't drink in a few bottles of water, just getting started.
So yes, Scotty is perfectly fine. I accept it. I like it it's short. I'll still be knowing
that some guy on the internet, but for conversations sake, Scotty will do just fine.
All right, so now that we got that part out of the way, let's jump right on into the topic,
Freedom of Speech and Open Source. As many of you've heard, there have been some interesting things
that have occurred recently, and other shows have covered them pretty well, so I'm not going to
beat around all the same topics that have already been covered, you know, the same points rather.
It's going to be the same topic, just different areas of the topic. So you've, you know,
you've heard about the sabotage where they introduced the malicious code into open source,
which I mean, basically that's open source malware at that point. We're not going to go too deep
into that. That's just my opinion. When you do something like that, you delete somebody else's
data, and you don't give them a path to recovering or an option when deleting their data,
that's malware. All right, know if fans or butts about it, then I do not include that protest
wear crap at all. But let's dig more toward the protest wear, not the the one instance of
deleting other people's data. Now, when it comes down to all this so-called protest wear,
where these developers are inserting their opinions into the software. I get it, you can
strip it out or whatever, but we'll come back to that part later on. But let's just talk about
the act of putting your opinion into the software. So that way, whenever a user loads the software,
there's some sort of splash screen that gives, you know, the user an image, you know, the opinion
of the developers, that kind of thing. I disagree with doing something like this. First of all,
I get it that you want everybody to know that you're against the war that's occurring between
the two nations, Russia and Ukraine. I get it. That's understandable. A lot of people are against
war, no matter who the countries are. That's fine. But I thought that the software wasn't supposed
to have an opinion at all. And one of the things that was brought up earlier on when I joined
open source that I heard about, I can't remember the source, but they brought up the idea of
safer and since there's an abortion clinic, the people inside the abortion clinic have the same
rights to the software or with the software as the people protesting outside of the clinic. The
software itself does not have any sort of opinion in what they're doing. It's just free and open
source software that can be used to get the job done. So this is basically installing a bias
into the software and putting it and putting it on the front page for everyone to see.
Now, the reason I call it a bias rather than just an opinion is because some of the things that are
being done is basically what's the word I'm looking for with it. They're discriminating against an
entire region like xenophobic. There you go. So they're just pointing out that anybody in this region
of the world, we want you to know that we do not like you. And that is just that is not the way
to go about anything. You don't you don't really want to paint with a broad brush. At least in this
instance, because not everyone from Russia is considered an enemy combatant. So there's a lot
of good people that don't want anything to do with a war and they want to leave. But you're just
all of a sudden lecturing them and letting them know how bad there are because of what's happening
with a government that they I'm pretty sure have no control over. So now that we got that out
of the way, that's all the stuff I'm pretty sure everybody already knows right. What about this
one other interesting part now that we've already opened the door for you to basically show
everyone your opinion of what's going on in a certain region of the world. That door is open.
We can't close it now. But while it's open, what happens if a company were to come in and say,
hey, you're broadcasting your opinion. What if I were to broadcast goods and services through
that same door? What if I went to an open source developer and say, hey, you know, there's a big
issue with you guys getting paid. What if I could just cut you a nice check based on the amount of
people that use your software? If you were to include like a little splash screen at the start when
your application is loading, give it like a five-second sleep where they can just see this advertisement
as soon as they load the software and you get paid for it, right? Everybody's already fine,
but advertising, right? You get what I'm saying? They're advertising opinions all day long,
which wrong with advertising goods and services. Now, I know some of you're going to say that
the distro maintainers will just strip that stuff out of there. That's absolutely correct. They'll
just pull it out. Now, where the problem is going to happen is once more and more developers find out
that this is a sustainable method to bring in some income for development. So more and more
applications start getting these advertisements put in. The distro maintainers are going to have a
problem after a while. There's not enough volunteers to help strip that stuff out. And then you'll get
people like Facebook. Imagine if they were to say, okay, developer, look, I get it. You got a lot of
time invested in this. Let us send you a pull request. We're going to go ahead and really
tangle this advertisement into the code, right? We're going to make it to where anybody trying to
take it out is going to have to dedicate some serious time to stripping out all of it. And that
way, eventually, you're going to, you're going to wear down because Facebook's got the money to
continue with speaking, winding this thing up. And the distro maintainers, well, eventually,
they're not going to be able to. So here's the question for you, the listener here at Hacker
Public Radio. Are you okay with advertising in open source software, rather it be the advertisement
of opinion? And if you are, you would also have to be okay with the advertisement of good and
services. So where do you stand on the matter? Do you, do you say one's okay, but not the other?
Or maybe you're okay with advertisements of goods and services, but it have to be something
closer to open source. Like maybe when the Raspberry Pi five or six or whatever comes out,
it's okay for them to advertise within open source, but not someone like Facebook, right? Do
you, do you have some sort of boundary on it? Do you introduce more bias, more restrictions based
on what you believe is culturally appropriate for open source? And while you're thinking about that,
let me also just remind you of a little distribution, a small one. Some of you may have heard of it.
It's called Ubuntu. In the past, Ubuntu used to have a advertisement, if you will. It is
basically an icon from Amazon on the desktop. I think it was in the up the favorite spa,
and it was basically, you know, a way to bring in revenue. You could easily get to Amazon with
this little icon from understanding it wasn't even that difficult to remove, but people raised
hell at the idea that Ubuntu would allow, you know, Amazon to put their proprietor, you know,
you can't put your stuff in our desktop, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, that donation button was,
I mean, it had like an entire foot of dust on it. Or if you're in another country, I don't know
what a foot is in a meter. Is that the closest thing to it? I don't know. It had a mound of dust on
it, right? Nobody was ever donating to the Ubuntu desktop servers doing all right, because that's
enterprise, that's businesses that will, you know, pay to sustain. That's where most income was
actually coming in from and still is, but desktop, it wasn't doing good. So as you render your opinion,
I just want you to know, we have history with open source and advertisement in the software,
and we have, you know, the communities approach or the communities response to this advertisement.
From the way I saw it, the way we reacted to Ubuntu allowing Amazon to put their application,
their link to Amazon on the Ubuntu desktop, we responded to that issue. In the same way, the vegan
community will respond to McDonald's trying to be accepted into the vegan community just because
they put lettuce and tomatoes onto a hamburger. I heard that example somewhere. I can't really
remember where. If you recall where that came from, could you do a show? Another thing I want to
bring up, and it's not so much freedom of speech. I guess you can kind of tie it in. It's interesting,
and I'd like to bring it up, is open source rebranding and the issues we've had with rebranding.
Well, you know, there was also the idea of you can't sell something that's free, so they wanted to
take the word free out of it. And certain, certain developers wanted to create different branches
of a project, but they'd have like the community edition, and then like an enterprise edition.
Remember the outrage they came from that? I think LibreOffice is one of them that wanted to do that.
And at first, it was like, no, no, no, no, no. Don't make hours sound like the cheap, crappy one.
And then the businesses get the enterprise grade edition, you know, and I believe LibreOffice
was saying that it was going to be very much the same as just the enterprise edition would come with
services to help with large deployments, you know, like a school that had a computer lab,
and they wanted to just, you know, install over multiple different systems at one time.
The enterprise version would be better for them, whereas, you know, because you could sell a service
as well, whereas with the community edition, it'd be the same thing you already have. And the language
of it all was, I guess, insulting to the community. Nope, nope, don't do that. Don't make hours sound
like crap and the other one sounds like the, you know, the stuff we really want. All right,
ladies and gentlemen, I think I've touched enough on the freedom and open source for today.
I thank you guys for listening. Please do a show and response. Don't forget to leave some comments.
I mean, I love reading the comments. I really want to hear your opinions on everything.
I welcome all opinions, by the way, differences in opinions, agreements, whatever.
I received some emails the last time as well. I appreciate emails, all of them. So definitely
get involved, become a contributing member of the community. So I'll see you guys in the next
episode. Take care. You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio does
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