Work Reform @lemmy.world Twoafros @lemmy.world 5 mo. ago

Cooperative ownership as the next step of free open source software

Link to original post: https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/111932214690841585

Link to news link shown in the photo: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/mozilla-lays-off-60-people-wants-to-build-ai-into-firefox/

Cooperative ownership for all businesses too!

33 comments

Firefox is developed in the open and accepts outside contributions already. The only thing this is adding is a paid membership.
- A paid membership to vote on changes and additions to the program. I think that would be pretty beneficial honestly.
  
  So instead of a free vote you only get a paid vote?
  
  Don't need a co-op for that. Just fork it and make the changes.
The mass won’t even consider being part of a paid membership of a cooperative that’s only purpose is a web browser. That would be the way to drive them even more into Chrome or Safari.
- i don't think you need to be a paid member to use the finished product. membership is for having a say in what will be changed.
  
  This has some serious "only landowners should be allowed to vote" vibes
  
  I will say directly that this model of governance is incompatible with the tenets of free software.
Well this just sounds like Librewolf with more steps
- And hopefully Librewolf keeps AI out of their code.
You see cooperation, I see a subscription.
- If there was legal ownership that would be different. But it's open source so cooperative ownership doesn't add much. It's already there for everyone to use and modify as they like
Yeah, I remember how the "community" reacted when they made that homophobic asshole quit. They still won't shut the fuck up about it, about how mozilla cares more about wokeness than the browser whenever there's a girls' coding initiative or the like. I don't want those assholes having a say in anything.
I don't see much benefit of a fork being a member coop, since the product is already free. I could potentially see a worker coop - if this fork was intended to make a profit, and the people working on it are then incentivized to improve the product because they'll personally benefit, then maybe we'd see more movement and innovation.
- The fork is to preserve the core browser experience and provide security updates. If you hate AI jank bloating software, your best options for a browser is ~~Chrome~~ suffering. Certainly, you can refuse updates on Firefox going forward if they commit to this path, but you’re a single missing patch away from being an easier target for bad actors to exploit your security vulnerabilities
  
  nothing stops forks from implementing the same security features....
Inb4 Google buys up 51% of memberships and "vote" to move Firefox to Chromium.
Interesting!
Where's the article/postlink itself? Can't find it. :(
- Here you go: Link to original post: https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/111932214690841585
  
  Link to news link shown in the photo: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/mozilla-lays-off-60-people-wants-to-build-ai-into-firefox/
  
  I also edited it into the body of the post for easy reference.
  
  Thanks! After further looking, I noticed that the ars technica article actually didn't actually say anything about cooperatives, which was the reason why I wanted to read it in the first place. Therefore I deleted my request.
  
  Kudos to you for sharing/editing it, still! (:

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