Close the Door: Open source was wrong

Redefining collaborative environment for 21st century

The idea of open source software seems to be old as the software itself. All in all, first software pieces used to be published in the form of algorithm description or "code" itself. During 1950s, 60s and 70s software-sharing culture continued spreading in academic and research circles, even the term of "Open Source" was not used yet. And it was no later than in 80s, when the idea that every software should be distributed along its sources was gaining on populartity. This would mean, that the user has the way how to understand what exactly the software is doing, extend its functionality, or, if needed, to fix a bug that might me critical.

They were in the power. They could build their own tool

While these communities started as small groups, where everyone knew each other, they soon began growing to thousands and tens of thousands of users and potential contributors. With them came the licensing.

And here comes the first problem - these licenses were created mostly by white hetero cis males, and they were created to serve them best - to allow their software, their names and their egos spread across the world, without any control. Their software was meant to literally cover the Earth, like their sperm.

While the idea of grabbing the power from the claws of corporations might sound nice, they hadn't been driven by the idea of helping others, but by acquiring and accumulating more power in their hands. The more users, the better for them. More users bring more contributors, that means more better features, that means more users, more fame and even more power. And power can be then casted into money, comfortable seats in corporations, they used to say they were fighting.

Everyone knows "fathers" (sad it's always fathers, all of them white, for some reason) of the most popular open source projects, they are traveling the globe, giving lectures and speeches, telling you they are the "fathers" and you are paying them.

But times are changing, and more and more people from marginalized backgrounds are coming to these projects, doing more and more work, and they want to be heard too. They want to be in control too.

The problem is that their work is exploited - you have a LGBTQ+ nerdess, solving an unsolvable issue and immediately after that comes a fascist white male, slapping his name and his logo on her work.

These opensource sanctuaries and communities ceased to work. We need and must find a new model.

It's not a new problem - we faced it before, but our response was Code of Conduct, keeping these harmful entities out, but still allowing them to use our work. Exiled person might not interrupt our conversations, might not affect our direction, but still could download our code. And since our work was there, free to everyone, and them especially, to take, they were, even by the licensing terms, encouraged to fork our work. To slap the fascist logo on it. Their only contribution was often just the right wing rebranding.

All this being said - it's more than clear, that opensource approach is giving power to our own oppressors. We are giving them our work for free, letting them to take it and do whatever they want to do, letting them to spread fascism, racism, misogyny, letting them to oppress us. We are giving them the means of our own desctruction.

And this is not a empty statement - any extremist can use Linux for free, any extremist can use Firefox to drive other extremists against us, to plot murders. Any "free software" like email clients can be used in our disadvantage, any "free" music player can be used to play nazi anthems.

This must stop. Now and for ever. We are the creators of our work and we must decide how our work is being used.

Open source, where anyone can compile it and use it as they want must be destroyed. It's not open when the "openness" is used against you. We must be in charge, we must be those who decide who can use the fruit of our work.

I admit it won't be easy or nice, but it's necessary. We need to background check everyone. Every user of our work. Get back to the roots. You allow your friend to use your code and your work. You allow trusted people only. It will still be free to use in terms of money, not free in the terms it's for everyone. Because "free speech" is only a tool to inject fascism to our society. Free as in "free beer" not free as in "bring your fascism"

We will need centralized registry of all users, which would have another benefit in driving corporations out. Are you from Amazon? Supporting zionist genocide in Palestine? Sorry, you are not welcome here, you are not "free" to use our code.

But that means that we will need to close our "open" source.

What is the point of giving a weapon to your enemy so he can kill you.

Closing the source is a necessary step in this struggle. If we build mechanisms to defend our software against fascists, we cannot give them tools to just remove these mechanisms.

But many of these right-wing users would be smart - they would try and definitely succeed in overcoming the licensing. So we need to anticipate this and go one step further - to monitor them to see they are not using our software under fake indentities to hurt us

While there's a general understandable opposition against AI and "spying", I believe it can and it must be used in our advantage. If we are going to survive, if the free software is going to survive, we must take radical approach. Small local models (SLMs) can easily detect any user's interaction with nazi-oriented websites, search phrases in search engines and even writing posts to otherwise harmful sites without compromising the primary privacy. It would detect and stop a fascist before they can cause any harm.

You may object that AI is not he most dependable tool, and you would be right. So - we need to build our defense in layers - AI would be the first one, human review would be the next one. It's nothing new and nothing to be afraid of - this is how content moderation works over all social network sites, we are just bringing it to a much broader usage.

You may object, that it's constant policing and sniffing - and you would be right, but that's the point. If you are not using our code in a way that would harm us, you are free, no one will limit what can you do. Are you a fascist? You will be stopped immediately, without you being able to spread your destruction to the world. And if it's not your computer, because you are using Windows, macos or other fascism-enabiling system? Your router will stop you. Or your provider's router, or any new Linux system on the way.

What about encryption, you may ask. Encryption is for people who want to hide something. And you don't want to hide something. You want to be clear, transparent and antifascist. You want to be proud.

We must fight the encryption.

And finally, no need to mention that this approach would significantly reduce the amount of disinformations, direct lies, anticommunism or zionism across the world. If your computer says "no" before you post, the world would be safer.

It's win-win

This will be a long and difficult struggle, but the world needs it. No one says it will be easy to close whole "open" source, no one says it will be easy to detect fascism, no one says it will be easy to drop encryption. But step by step, it needs to be done and today is already late.

Today is just a begining.

NiVe
Liz A. T.