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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.
That's about the most sane take possible, to be quite honest.
The reason 'tech' has gotten so far without being regulated is simply because Gov't doesn't understand it, and it moves/changes so fast that they can't get out ahead of it to put down serious roadblocks before its already jumped to the next big thing. They've only JUST NOW sort of caught up with Social Media tech with this recent TikTok bill.
Also the general gridlock and incompetence that's accumulated lately.
Now that the tech sector is becoming more centralized, it is more legible to government actors since they can identify the chokepoints to control to bring the industry and customers to heel.
So expect it to keep getting worse, but slowly, and in fits and starts, even if there is no grand central conspiracy.
Perhaps the even more blackpilling perspective is that this is just how things naturally trend when there's a 'commons' resource that manages to elude being exploited and enclosed by existing entrenched players. Free Software is a somewhat nonclassical example of a 'commons' that throws off tons of benefits as externalities. Lord knows I've used dozens upon dozens of free, open source, and other non-commercialized programs over the years. I hate hate hate the idea of subscribing to a piece of software I'd only use intermittently and, even after paying, could lose use of at any time.
VLC, Windirstat, 7zip, GIMP, LibreOffice and Coretemp, just off the top of my head are some of my favorites that each have a very specific role and do it very well (or well enough) so I can thumb my nose at commercial alternatives.
But unlike a 'classic' commons, the software well can never 'run dry' since as long as someone, somewhere is willing to eat the (trivial!) cost of hosting the software download, then copies can be distributed endlessly without ever depleting the supply, and the marginal cost of each additional copy rounds to zero.
But every other player in this system aside from the cooperative users sees this commons as an opportunity. And what they always want to do is enclose the commons, exclude free-riders, parcel it up, and then sell access to it. If you can make people pay even $1/copy for something they were previously getting for 'free,' you've diverted part of that that huge 'surplus' into your pocket.
You already see the low-grade version of this with sites that will re-host free software but bundle it with something else that they can use to make money, or at least have ads on the download site.
So whether it's governments cracking down, OSes limiting the code that can be run to an approved list you have to pay to get on, or Software companies buying up the licenses to open-source software and shutting down the free distribution of same (apparently the VLC guy has turned down sizable offers), eventually this commons WILL be enclosed, and you WILL be made to pay to acquire and use it on your own machine. For now, at least, you're allowed to fork projects before they sell out.
Of course, I also worry that they're going to remove consumer access to hardware altogether, allowing you to only purchase gimped, centrally controlled machines and most of the programs you run will be on an Amazon Web Server somewhere such that if they DID decide to lock out certain software, you wouldn't even be able to futz with the machine itself to hack it into compliance.
Because whenever the market sees some kind of consumer surplus, the incentives ultimately push it to attack it from every possible angle until it wiggles in and can consume said surplus, returning us to the 'efficient' equilibrium it really wants to maintain. And since you can't really get rich by advocating for open-source software, few are likely going to man the wall to defend the surplus against these attacks.
I hear this a lot, but is it actually true?
Relatively few people in government have actual professional-level expertise when it comes to finance, manufacturing, workplace safety, international trade, or nuclear energy, but the government seems to regulate those things just fine. (Arguably what we call "tech" is easier to understand than those things, at least the parts of it that are salient for regulation.)
If by 'just fine' you mean shut down and prevent their use from delivering benefits, sure.
Reminder that if we had a halfway sane authoritarian government anywhere in the west, nobody in that country would be burning hydrocarbons for heating or cooking unless they were out camping.
I don't understand this example. Are you implying that a sane authoritarian government would exert their power to ban the burning of hydrocarbons for heating or cooking?
How is that in any way sane, especially if they don't have the power to stop other countries from doing it? Unless you are advocating for this sane authoritarian government invading all the others and maintaining this ban through force of arms, in which case it makes more sense, but still a fair ways away from 'sane'. Doing so would require the development and manufacture of weapons at scale, which unfortunately requires large amounts of hydrocarbons.
No, I'm implying that a western country that nuclearised very heavily would have cheap power and wouldn't require even having gas lines going anywhere but into chemical plants.
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But if they had real winters, everyone would all be out camping because it would be warmer than sitting in their cold homes "heated" by inadequate electric heat pumps erratically supplied by an overloaded grid.
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That's likely a contributing factor to why tech is seeing far more innovation, far faster, than finance, manufacturing, international trade and nuclear energy. Everything before it is already stuck under a pile of stupid regulation.
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You know, for clarity's sake, I'll specify that those endowed with legislative authority in Gov't don't really understand it.
Plenty of agencies snap up tech-savvy employees, especially in the intelligence branches, and they presumably get regular briefings on new tech developments.
Finance is a funny bird because of the revolving-door between the regulatory agencies and the financial institutions. Gov't "understands" finance because the industries are heavily tied together, which is not (currently) the case with the tech industry.
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