this post was submitted on 08 May 2024
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It's a weird pair of things to put together. People call open source libre specifically because they want to emphasize that it's free as in the freedom to control what the software on your own computer does, rather than free as in you don't pay for it (gratis). Pirating is only free in the gratis sense, not the libre one.
Free software is a vision of a non-capitalist mode of production for software* while piracy is about reclaiming stuff that was still produced under a fully capitalist system. Putting them together is like making a shared comm for cooperatives and dumpster diving.
*I could rant about the ways it fails, but a failed attempt is still an attempt.
We should call the piracy comm /c/gratis.
Even if it was free as in gratis I'm not sure they'd go together well - one would still be software that is designed to be used without paying, while piracy is about finding ways to use paid software without paying, which has it's own specific methods and pitfalls.
foss is about a lot more than not paying.
It's about trust, being able to know what software is doing. That is in the source-available part. I can never be as certain a pirated (or legitimate) binary blob isn't secretly leaking telemetry or documents off my system, or doing anything else of the infinite things I dont want software doing.
It's about safety, from poor decisions and hostile decisions. If my foss software is enshittifying, I can use a fork, which can be created with comparatively little effort and can still otherwise track upstream. With proprietary software I am completely fucked, and with a pirated version best I can do is continue using the old version, being locked out from any new features I do want.
It's about security. Both in the sense of the trust benefit knowing there are no intentional backdoors, and in the bug sense where foss simply does better in identifying vulnerabilities before major malicious actors do.
Our modern world and especially proprietary software fucks you in plenty of ways, and most of them aren't an easily visible price tag. More and more software corporations are earning most of their money from spying on or abusing the users of their software, even for paid software. This money is spent on doing things to the users they would never want, otherwise why would you need to pay? It is money they will earn back when you get denied health ensurance based on your unreleased draft of a book you were writing that chrome sent to googles servers for "virus scanning", which the insurers ai flagged as a mental health risk indicator.
I recommend you don't participate in the global expetiment of how much intransparent software can ruin your life.
No, piracy is not related to FOSS at all. Piracy in the sense of piracy of proprietary software is arguably detrimental to FOSS since piracy of a particular proprietary software makes people more reliant on that particular proprietary software instead of developing or adopting a FOSS alternative. This is why Microsoft doesn't actually give that much of a shit if home users use pirated copies of Windows or Microsoft Office. In their eyes, you're not using Linux if you're using a pirated copy of Windows, you're not using Libreoffice if you're using a pirated copy of Microsoft Office, and so on.
ehhhh kinda. but libre specifically refers to free and open source software, piracy is a bit different. if you want to make a rule that
posting gets put in libre that'd be alright, but I think a dedicated piracy community would be a better option.
at the end of the day, you're a site admin with like 100000000000 times more experience than me so the choice is yours. just offering my perspective. no matter what you choose to do, i still love and appreciate all of the admins on this site!
edit: i'm going to actually add [email protected] 's comment here:
This is a perfect articulation of the way i feel about this.
I am also in agreement with owls comment, It's called c/libre specifically for the fact that it is about the freedom, not the price. Piracy fails at being libre software since it doesn't conform to the four freedoms