AdmiralinSchlaffeArtischocke @toni@cybre.space

know what's more common than things evolving into crabs?

things evolving into trees

https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2021/05/02/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-tree/

The genderedness of emoji only makes sense to screen-readers, and only accidentally.
If you are sighted and look at them they just change their hair and maybe the colour of their clothes.
Should have just removed instead of adding "the other gender" and later a "gender-neutral" one (which in practice means medium-length hair, instead of long hair like the woman version or short hair like the man version.)
Just add a hair length modifier instead

@pants @balrogboogie The statement that "proprietary ownership of software gives the owner unjust power" is perfectly correct, of course. Because software is a means. But this is true of all means. Private ownership of Amazon warehouses gives the owner unjust power. Private ownership of land gives the owner unjust power. Of apartment buildings. Of natural resources by governments.

The problem with the free software movement wasn't that it defends free access to knowledge.
The problem with the free software movement is that it made sure to sabotage itself, by putting its head in the sand about systems of power and pretending this is a matter of elaborate law codes like a programming puzzle.

This is how there was so much incredible work poured into Linux and BSD etc. only for the Web to end up the way it is today, for e-commerce, mobile etc. to end up the way it is today.

@pants @balrogboogie "free" is a trap word to obscure the flows of power. if you say "water should be free for Nestlé to come and fence it", you are empowering Nestlé to the detriment of people (BSD license). If you say "the rivers in our city should be freely accessible by fascist warships", you are giving resources to fascists (GPL Freedom 0).

The refusal of the free software movement to take a stance against capitalists has empowered capitalists, because Amazon can get a lot more power out of all the "freely" available code than individual workers can, in the same way that Nestlé can get a lot more power out of a spring than you can.

Moreover the very unspoken premise that this is a problem solvable by licenses in a legalist framework pressuposes that laws and courts are good and work for the people, preventing reforms of the real cause of software injustice: private ownership of the means of production. The freedom to see the source code means nothing if the server farms, networks, computer factories etc. are all controlled by a handful of capitalists.