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A Map for the Regulation and Destruction of Free Software.
A buddy of mine shared an article about The White House warning people against programming in C or C++ and it teed me off about a conspiracy theory I've been harboring for going on 10 years now.
My baseline assumption is that whatever you choose to call this weird woke, centralized, authoritarian, elite/bureaucratic corporatist conglomerate, they want control. All of it. Over things that you would think have nothing to do with them. They want your wood ovens, your gas stoves, your gamer PCs, they really don't view anything as beyond their purview to "regulate" and make your life infinitely worse by slow degrees.
If you assume these are pathologically controlling busy bodies, which I think you are right to assume, the fact that anybody can program anything probably terrifies them. They barely understand technology to begin with. Just look at any time they haul a tech CEO before congress and attempt to get sound bites for their constituents. It's horrible. But the cat is more or less already out of the bag when it comes to open and free software. How would you put it back in?
By degrees the process is already underway, in the name of security. Most PC's sold today will only boot authorized operation systems, with an option in the BIOS (for now) to turn off that safety feature. Windows warns you every time you try to run an "unrecognized" executable, with the option (for now) of ignoring it's warning. People are far more habituated than ever to closed software ecosystems thanks to Apple and Google and the fact that most people spend more time on phones these days than computers. All it would take is to slowly shave away by degrees until the process of running free and open software is so frustrating that most people don't do it, and the powers that be can "deprecate the feature" under the rationale that it's not used anymore.
Maybe it starts with the big sellers of PCs like Dell, where they just don't have a BIOS that lets you boot unauthorized OSes. And for a while, that's fine, because what self respecting enthusiast buys a Dell? That's probably a perfectly fine security compromise for institutions that don't want to run the risk at all of some unauthorized code hijacking the boot process. Then maybe the feature gets cut from lower end motherboards. But that's fine, if it's still a feature that matters to you, you can always get a high end motherboard. Lots of features are only available on higher end motherboards. And then one day, with little fanfare at all, the feature vanishes.
So now you are stuck running increasingly enshittified versions of Windows and a few select Linux distros. So what?
Well, at the same time, imagine how Windows slowly chips away at the ability to run "unrecognized" code. Right now it's an annoying popup, same as it has been since Vista. Maybe one day the default behavior is switched to not letting you run it at all. But it's ok, there is a toggle to turn on the old behavior burried deep in the system settings somewhere. Maybe a security submenu. Then a while later they get rid of that, but if you know what you are doing, there is still a registry setting you can change. Then a while later they only support the feature on Windows Pro instead of Home. Then one day, it just vanishes.
So now you are stuck running enshittified versions of Windows that refuses to run "unrecognized" code. But it's cool, you can probably still do something to get your code "recognized" right?
Anyone who has had to do any web development probably knows about using self signed certs. Often good enough for local use, generally insufficient if you plan on letting anyone outside of your org attempt to use your system. You have to get a signed cert. And often pieces of software just expect a signed cert, and may not have any option at all to override it's refusal to work with a self signed one. I expect much the same will occur with "unrecognized" code.
All code will need to be signed. Maybe you can self sign code you've written on your local system, but nobody else will be able to run it. Unless they go through the added hoops of adding your key to some sort of key store for "recognized" code. But eventually the self signed qualities of the code will catch up to you, and Windows may just refuse to accept self signed code certs anymore. But no fear! Maybe Github or other organization will offer to sign your code for you. Assuming it meets their TOS, nobody on social media has cancelled you, and their AI hasn't rejected your project for hallucinated reasons. But eventually, however well relying on a 3rd party like Github to allow your code to run on your locked down operating system and your locked down hardware starts off, it will become a barely viable solution. And then free and open software is over.
I hope I'm just being overly pessimistic. But I honestly see this happening in my lifetime.
There was a reddit post on some sub for moderators that outlines how to increase censorship of wrongthink, while minimizing the chances of a user revolt resulting in them starting and migrating to an alternative sub, which mirrors your thoughts more or less 1:1, except it's applied to moderation. As such, I think your theory is very plausible, and I'm only hoping this level of control would outright break something in the software ecosystem, and therefore won't be fully implemented.
To extend on your thoughts, when I go full-tinfoil, I'm inclined to believe the whole culture war thing is a CIA psyop tailor-made for the specific purpose of making things like this possible. Just like Free Speech went from the foundation of western liberalism to mark of the deplorable, so is slowly happening to Free Software.
I'm highly interested in (a copy of) that reddit post, if you can recall any further details about it.
I am 100% sure @ArjinFerman has "interpreted" that post to the point where they don't want to point you to the original.
Nope. Like I said, give me a working search tool that lets me look up posts by username, and I'll find it.
Edit: If you give me the username I would be happy to find it for you, I have good luck with that sort of thing most of the time.
Cool it.
You don't get to act offended because someone didn't bend over backwards for you.
You can find most reddit posts by searching for the username in google tagged with reddit. I've never had an issue doing that to find someone's posts, hardly bending over backwards. I'm just asking for a bit of proof for Arjin's "just so", booo outgroup story. I think that is in line with this site's guidelines.
You're right though, I did not go about it in a good way, I have edited my comment into an offer for help.
The only thing I remembered about the post was a long-deleted conversation about it on another sub. I was sure I could find it through a few keywords, a username, and the sub's name, and trace the conversation back to the comment that had the link, which is exactly what I did, once I had the right tool for it. It would be fun to watch you attempt that with Google.
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You didn’t ask. Someone else asked, and you jumped on board to claim that Arjin was lying. Fine. Equal lack of evidence.
Meanwhile, he was polite enough to respond with an excuse. In fact, he did find the source. I think he has a much better claim to acting in good faith.
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