Re: youtube-dl DMCA takedown on GitHub is risk for all GNU/Linux distributions

[Pedro Lucas Porcellis]

On Tue, Nov 03, 2020 at 11:03:07AM +0300, Jean Louis wrote:
> Mastodon, GNU Social, Pleroma or any federated social network can
> become centralized with a lot of money. Once user base is gained, the
> network can be centralized. Both Google and Facebook users could
> communicate back in time through their chat. They have used the XMPP
> in first time. Facebook user could send email to Google user. Google
> user could send email to Facebook user. They could chat between
> networks. People who did not subscribe neither to Google or to
> Facebook could chat to both of them by using XMPP network.
> 
> So those large social networks DID start as pretty much federalized
> networks! If I remember well their pages were also pretty much open,
> and not closed to non-members.

That centralization exists today. https://mastodon.social is the bigger
instance, filled with people all around the world and basically the
"default" instance people sign up for. The thing is, ActivityPub (i.e.
the protocol) is a standard under the W3C. Also, most of the
implementations are licensed under AGPL (Pleroma, Mastodon, PeerTube).
So that sort of centralization doesn't have much impact today.

> Once they have gained user base they removed email and XMPP
> possibility.
> 
> Exactly same thing can take place with Fediverse network. Any company
> is free to advertise and gain user base, once they gain large user
> base it becomes familiar to others and your friends and family will be
> telling you about that website. You will then listen to friends and
> family and despite having your fediverse account somewhere else, you
> may sign up for this or other special feature or reason on their
> network. And so will do millions of others. Sooner or later the
> company may block the outside Fediverse and centralize its users.

Again, that can't happen. Even if a company so desire to enter the
competition, we're in a federated network, therefore I *can* use my
instance to talk with that company's instance. *That's*  wy federation
is a really good take on those sort of problems.

> Problem is in corporations with money gaining large users based and
> not in datacenters or centralization itself.

How not? Again, free software cannot resolve things if where we shove it
is centralized on the hands of 3 or 5 companies located only on 2, 3
countries. If all rice seeds in the world is being produced on Brasil,
and Brasil decides to not selling for the rest of the world y'all be
fucked when you run out of rice seed. It doesn't matter if you have land
to plant them (that's a silly example).

> If company would be providing free software messenger and hosting free
> software servers with the transparent and safe peer to peer
> encryption, without abusing users' privacy and selling their
> information, I do not think that centralization itself would be
> problem there.

A company would not do that. It's not profitable. And a basic thing for
a company to operate is to have some sort of profit.

> There is fundamental Internet bait called "get it free" and that was
> never explained to public until today. Would people be taught from
> beginning that they should pay for service,  there would be less of
> centralization that we have today. Just as for email services, when
> people pay for email they are centralized and companies can provide
> them service without entering into their private lives. If they do not
> pay for service they have to submit to email searches and PRYSM spying
> network.

Exactly what I've said before.

> There is only free software politics for GNU and no other
> politics. That is policy of GNU project.
> 
> No radical politics.
> 
> No strenghtening of national infrastrucutre.
> 
> Maybe some other organization, but not GNU. GNU is friendly and
> welcoming and being apolitical for anything but free software makes it
> friendly and welcoming regardless of various opinions of people and
> their political orientations.
> 
> Sanctions are political, but GNU project regards only free software
> politics, nothing else.

Any movement is somewhere down the line, political itself. The GNU
project cannot be apolitical, because it is confronting the common sense
and therefore posing questions that it doesn't exist or didn't matter
until them. Politics is way more than "regular good-old liberal
politics". It envolves acting, thinking, questioning, being critical
about what is being throw at us.

What I'm trying to say is that the Free Software Mov. is a entrance to
question deeper and beyond. De-centralization *and* free software is bad
for companies that want to exploit users. They're holding hands, not
apart.