For the time being, proprietary software doesn’t seem anywhere close to being the limiting factor on my freedom of thought and speech. I experience social relationships, the media, and government being much more profound checks on my personal freedom and that of others. To be sure, they exert some of their power via software. But the proprietary nature of that software doesn’t seem to be central.
Freedom of data, on the other hand, seems like it could be game-changing. Imagine if Facebook, for example, was legally obligated to make the contents of its database freely available. What if a competitor could “fork” not just the interface of Facebook, but its entire userbase? What if all hospitals were required to contribute the contents of their EMR systems to a central database—perhaps with robust anonymization features, but otherwise available to all, at least in some format? What if all businesses above a certain size were required to maintain public records of all purchases and sales above a certain cost? What if SciHub were legal?
I’m not at all convinced that this would be good. I’d want to think through the implications over the long term on a case-by-case basis, though I’m sold on SciHub. My point is that such a change strikes me has having the potential to be powerful.
The fact that they exert some of that power, (an ever increasing amount), through software make the question of the freedom of that software quite relevant to your autonomy in relation to those factors. consider the G0v movement. When working with open government software or at least open APIs civic hackers have been able to get improvements in things like government budgetary transparency, the ease with which you can file your tax forms, the ability to locate retailers with face masks in stock etc. The ability to fork the software used by institutions, do better and essentially embarrass them into adopting the improvements because of how bad their versions are in comparison is surprisingly high leverage.
Data is its whole own complex problem especially personal data that warrants a separate discussion all of it’s own. In relation to free software though the most relevant part is open data specifications for formats and data portability between applications so they you are free to take your data between applications.
It seems to me that what you’re worried about is a tendency toward increased gating of resources that are not inherently monopolizable. Creating infrastructure that permits inherently hard-to-gate resources, like software or technological designs, to be gated more effectively creates unnecessary opportunities for rent-seeking.
On the other hand, the traditional argument in favor of allowing such gates to be erected is that it creates incentives to produce the goods behind the gates, and we tend to reap much greater rewards in the long run by allowing gates to be temporarily erected and then torn down than we would by prohibiting such gates from ever being erected at all.
The fear is that some savvy agents will erect an elaborate system of gates such that they create, perhaps not a monopoly, but a sufficient system of gates to exact increasing fractions of created wealth over time. I think this is potentially worth worrying about, but it’s not clear to me why we’d particularly focus on software as the linchpin of this dynamic, as opposed to all the other forms of gateable wealth. I think this is my primary objection to your argument.
When working with open government software or at least open APIs civic hackers have been able to get improvements in things like government budgetary transparency, the ease with which you can file your tax forms, the ability to locate retailers with face masks in stock etc.
Note that at least budgetary transparency and location of retailers with face masks are questions of data access. Sure, software is required to access that data, but it’s making the data available that’s key here. Forking software is useless without access to the data that software is meant to deliver. It’s also useless without access to sufficiently powerful computing power. For example, if I had the source code for GPT-3, it wouldn’t do me any good unless I had a sufficiently powerful supercomputer to run that code on. Furthermore, the human knowledge required to implement and maintain the code base can’t just be forked even if you have access to the source code.
Data, microchips, and expertise are where bits meet atoms. Source code is just a fraction of the total capital controlled by a given company.
For the time being, proprietary software doesn’t seem anywhere close to being the limiting factor on my freedom of thought and speech. I experience social relationships, the media, and government being much more profound checks on my personal freedom and that of others. To be sure, they exert some of their power via software. But the proprietary nature of that software doesn’t seem to be central.
Freedom of data, on the other hand, seems like it could be game-changing. Imagine if Facebook, for example, was legally obligated to make the contents of its database freely available. What if a competitor could “fork” not just the interface of Facebook, but its entire userbase? What if all hospitals were required to contribute the contents of their EMR systems to a central database—perhaps with robust anonymization features, but otherwise available to all, at least in some format? What if all businesses above a certain size were required to maintain public records of all purchases and sales above a certain cost? What if SciHub were legal?
I’m not at all convinced that this would be good. I’d want to think through the implications over the long term on a case-by-case basis, though I’m sold on SciHub. My point is that such a change strikes me has having the potential to be powerful.
The fact that they exert some of that power, (an ever increasing amount), through software make the question of the freedom of that software quite relevant to your autonomy in relation to those factors. consider the G0v movement. When working with open government software or at least open APIs civic hackers have been able to get improvements in things like government budgetary transparency, the ease with which you can file your tax forms, the ability to locate retailers with face masks in stock etc. The ability to fork the software used by institutions, do better and essentially embarrass them into adopting the improvements because of how bad their versions are in comparison is surprisingly high leverage.
Data is its whole own complex problem especially personal data that warrants a separate discussion all of it’s own. In relation to free software though the most relevant part is open data specifications for formats and data portability between applications so they you are free to take your data between applications.
It seems to me that what you’re worried about is a tendency toward increased gating of resources that are not inherently monopolizable. Creating infrastructure that permits inherently hard-to-gate resources, like software or technological designs, to be gated more effectively creates unnecessary opportunities for rent-seeking.
On the other hand, the traditional argument in favor of allowing such gates to be erected is that it creates incentives to produce the goods behind the gates, and we tend to reap much greater rewards in the long run by allowing gates to be temporarily erected and then torn down than we would by prohibiting such gates from ever being erected at all.
The fear is that some savvy agents will erect an elaborate system of gates such that they create, perhaps not a monopoly, but a sufficient system of gates to exact increasing fractions of created wealth over time. I think this is potentially worth worrying about, but it’s not clear to me why we’d particularly focus on software as the linchpin of this dynamic, as opposed to all the other forms of gateable wealth. I think this is my primary objection to your argument.
Note that at least budgetary transparency and location of retailers with face masks are questions of data access. Sure, software is required to access that data, but it’s making the data available that’s key here. Forking software is useless without access to the data that software is meant to deliver. It’s also useless without access to sufficiently powerful computing power. For example, if I had the source code for GPT-3, it wouldn’t do me any good unless I had a sufficiently powerful supercomputer to run that code on. Furthermore, the human knowledge required to implement and maintain the code base can’t just be forked even if you have access to the source code.
Data, microchips, and expertise are where bits meet atoms. Source code is just a fraction of the total capital controlled by a given company.