While I agree with you completely, the argument for a counter-point would be that exactly because the private company should create as much profit for the owners as possible - it has to be as lean / efficient as possible.

That is not true for “the goverment” as profit is not an encentive to rationalize the work process.

What I find interesting are goverment agencies that operate on both levels. A great example is Ordenance Survey in UK. While they provide a public service, they also sell some of their products commercially to cover some operating costs (hiking maps etc.).

Nice, and congrats! Could you show an example of original image and ASCII output, as I’m afk atm.

Non paywalled link: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ftm.eu%2Farticles%2Fashton-kutchers-non-profit-start-up-makes-millions-from-fighting-child-abuse-online

Honest question: “Without any authority who gets to enforce the rules?”. Everyone, as they see fit it seems. What makes “your” hierarchy better than “my” hierarchy?

Disagree. If FOSS were an anarchism what would be the point of FOSS lincences of which some are very long legal documents? Also corporations would just take your code, say its theirs and tell you to go fuck yourself.

Yes, I agree. And Creative Commons are a great example of peoples’ control over their work. My argument is that it wont be ‘the original artist’ who gets to interpret the licensing terms.

If I may take your example of border patrol abusing immigrants with your software. And I’m sorry for the trivial example beforehand.

Let’s say you put in licensing terms: “This software may not be used to endanger peoples lives and/or livelyhoods”. And software is used by both Border Patrol and the immigrants to protect/cross the border.

Both parties come before a judge, accusing the other party of misusing your software. Border patrol says the immigrants are endangering american people with crime etc. ,and the immigrants accuse the border patrol of violent beatings.

In whose favor would a judge decide?

P.S.: thanks for the link. I’m a huge Tom Waits fan, and had no idea about the voice-theft.

While we might not agree with immigration policy and power abuse, it’s hard to put moral limitations on who gets to use our software. While the example you gave is far from trivial.

The second we say someone can’t use our software for whatever reason, that’s the second the software is no longer truly free. It’s same with Open data.

If you set in writing that your software can be used by anyone, then you also take away the power of those in high places to interpret the licence in a discriminatory way.

That may be true, but there is (usually) also an upside. Any fixes and modifications must be shared back. Thank you copyleft licenses. Thank you GPL.

How do you connect i/o devices to it?

Damn, how’d that get me :)