this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2025
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Having open source literally is political as it stands opposed to close and proprietary code. You can't have it without being political.
Free and non-free code is more about a economic system and maybe a legal system.
But I don't think it has anything to do with the political system.
It is. Let's look at activitypub, a protocol that allows decentralised services to talk with each other. The protocol is auditable, viewable and modifiable by everyone aka open source.
Everyone can participate in it's development.
Closed source on the other hand is not auditable, viewable or modifiable unless you are part of the organisation. Only those part of the organisation can participate in it's development.
Furthermore the open source nature allows to fork by anyone for whatever reasons. Closed source doesn't allow that.
Changes in a source can affect everyone involved. In close source you can only assume what changed, see YouTube as a recent example or algorithm changes on Twitter or not being able to use your favourite software.
So yes open source is political.
@DmMacniel @melroy It is only political because politicians are conflicted: they make money joining boards of walled-garden firms, and owning stocks in such entities. Take that away and open source would be a no-brainer.
#opensource #4opens
Well we are sadly far from the communist utopia though.