The Anti-Capitalist Software License | Hacker News Reader

The Anti-Capitalist Software License

anticapitalist.software

14 pointsLeoPanthera41 comments

Any license with an ideological component is a timebomb that goes off when the developer decides you are no longer pure enough. You’d have to be insane to use any software with a license like this (if one was enforceable)

> when the developer decides you are no longer pure enough

Which will happen. Purity wars in ideological movements are nothing new (and far from limited to the political Left!).

E.g. Orwell was shot during the Spanish Civil War, not by Fascists, but by a different bunch of Communists on whose side he was theoretically fighting.

> You’d have to be insane

Well, this is a Marxist thing, so that box comes pre-ticked.

It's often a joke among far-left communities that garden variety liberals are more contemptible than right-wing organizations, so I believe it.

When you get to the fringes of political ideology, infighting and corruption tend to be insane. There's constant backstabbing (sometimes in a literal sense) at both extremes.

yeah I have some ML friends I followed on social media and got a first hand look at so called leftist infighting. Seems mostly counterproductive.

This seems related to the copyfarleft concept proposed by Dmytri Kleiner [1] and his Peer Production License as a first-draft implementation of the concept. That's spawned a few license variants and been debated a bit [2]. Would be interesting to know whether the authors of this license are aware of those licenses and debate, and how they see their goals as relating.

[1] http://telekommunisten.net/the-telekommunist-manifesto/

[2] E.g., https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/copyfarleft-crit..., https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2468731,

I sometimes amuse myself with the idea of creating a software license out of spite for certain organisation, a kind of black list if you will, like Arya Starks kill list but more childish. At any rate you'd probably want to look into all the ways rich people make money with not-for-profits. The difference in intent and word of law is damn difficult problem to solve.

From my understanding simply using the AGPL is enough to have most corporations eschew you (somewhat /s I guess)

For all of the GitHub supporting ICE condemnation, I'm surprised there isn't a license which forbids GitHub from using a piece of software.

How about something a bit different: a license that prevents Github hosting?

That should be easy.

You create two licenses for your software: a license for the code per se, and a separate one for your git repo of the software.

So that is to say, for instance, your program could be MIT licensed. But your git repository (all the Git objects and meta-data: commit messages, hashes, branches, tags, ...) could have a more restrictive license which asserts "this may not be mirrored on Github".

It's intriguing. If we regard the work you're creating to be your git repo, then that is not free. If we regard the work you're creating to be baselines of an artifact that you're committing to the git repo, then that is free.

This doesn't respect the 4 freedoms. If by some odd circumstance, all the FAANG companies became worker cooperatives and adopted all the requirements for this license and released new versions of their software using this license, would that really make the world a better place?

I feel without the 4 software freedoms, like with the GPL, you are not respecting the freedoms of the end user. They mention requiring, "not exploiting non-members". To me that requires the 4 software freedoms.

Is my understanding of this license and the software freedoms incorrect?

If each FAANG released backend code:

* Facebook: We'd learn what sorts of data collection and aggregation they do, and how metrics are planned and gamed.

* Apple: We'd learn something about the App Store rejection policy, and we'd also get to jailbreak and repair our phones.

* Amazon: We'd find out how their billing and egress policies really work. We'd also get to see how customers are tracked.

* Netflix: Oh look, tracking of customers, something we'd learn.

* Google: Customers, tracking, etc. But also they know stuff about their long-term hardware vendor partners.

How would this not make the world a better place? It's clearly in line with both the copyleft programme of ending copyright protections on source code, and also more general anti-corporate and anti-surveillance ideologies.

This license doesn't require them to share the source though, just limit who is allowed to use it. Is that reading of the license wrong, is my question. They specifically mention not caring if source code is shared but if the companies that utilize software licensed with this license are worker collectives or not.

Which is why I feel it would be better to advocate for the [A]GPL as that would result in the situation you describe.

Google has a public AGPL policy [0], so advocating for it will not have the effect that you like.

[0] https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/

The page you linked says Google bans the use of AGPL code in their core products.

Are you saying that since Google has a public policy banning the use of AGPL code in their products there is no use in advocating for a 4 freedom respecting copyleft license?

> An organization of people that seeks shared profit for all its members and does not exploit the labor of non-members

It doesn't make indication of the distribution of the profit. If I were a business owner couldn't I get around this by giving each employee $1 in stock options? If the value of the organization goes up there's still shared profit, no matter how minuscule it is.

Forgive my naivety, but why aren't worker-owned cooperatives considered to be profitable enterprises?

Taking an example of a typical factory making widgets, profit is essential so that the organization running the place has a buffer in case of unexpected breakdowns or room for expansion.

This agreement appears to forbid worker-owned cooperatives, since profit is essential to the orderly operation of any factory.

Without profit, there is no emergency fund and there is no preventative maintenance.

Presumably a worker-owned cooperative would fall under 2c and 3.

>2c. An organization of people that seeks shared profit for all its members and does not exploit the labor of non-members

>3. If the User is an organization with owners, then all owners are workers and all workers are owners with equal share.

If profit is shared, it's not profit the organization can use as a buffer. The organization itself requires profit. That profit cannot be distributed without putting continuity of the organization at risk.

The wording is "seeks shared profit" which does not to me read as "distributes all profit." My read is "seeks shared financial gain" (in contrast to "seeks shareholder financial gain"). Even a non-profit institution is able to re-invest it's income without being a for-profit institution.

What is the fundamental difference between a factory owned by a cooperative and a factory owned by a corporation with workers of the factory having shares in that company?

The profit objectives are identical. They have to be, because the basic realities of factory processes mandate profit for ongoing operations and expansion.

If that's true, then why is one excluded and not the other?

As I'm reading it, they would both be allowed if the corporation is owned by all the workers with equal split. I'm not seeing what in the license differentiates between the two.

Those are essentially the same thing, as long as the CEO makes the same as an entry level worker. Because the keyword is equal share. Nobody is elevated financially above another.

You could still have surplus, but workers get to vote on how much that should be, and a flat-style management system still could have managers over others who manage projects, they could pitch budget proposals and vote. Then at the end of the year whatever is left over goes out equally to all (or based on # of hours worked), as a bonus or dividend payout.

But most factories the CEO makes 50 million, the worker might get a 3% match in a 401k, and $15 an hour. In other words the ceo is making 300x more, and is definitely not worth that much. Why are today's CEO's better / worth more than 1980's, by 3-4x as much, when the average worker is not, even though productivity of workers has skyrocketed since the 80's?

As I understand it, most co-ops don't even enforce totally equal pay across the board -- they just ensure that there are no extreme income discrepancies. Rewarding workers who do a great job with a bonus makes sense even from an egalitarian perspective.

Would money set aside as a buffer to cover future repairs or fund a planned expansion count as profit? I'd say they are legitimate expenses no different than parts and material and rent expenses. Profit is what is left over after such expenses.

Note that this is how it works for nonprofit organizations under the US tax code. E.g., nonprofit universities are allowed to accumulate a buffer without endangering their nonprofit status.

First, you have to have software worth licensing, that is complicated enough to be too much trouble to be re-written.

I'm about as pro-capitalist, laissez-faire, pro-free-market as it gets. I was a literal card-carrying member of the LibertariaNZ party back in New Zealand. The spirit of this license disgusts me at a fairly deep emotional level.

That said, I think that this specific concern raised by the license is very real:

> ... If you want your code to empower students, artists, hobbyists, collectives, cooperatives and nonprofits to survive under capitalism while not contributing free labor to corporations.

I've seen a few cases where I think that open source authors and maintainers are getting it in the shorts. Yes there's value - "Egoboo", learning, personal promotion, etc. - but I don't think it's enough in many cases. For example:

* Free software that contributes to the growth and dominance of proprietary, for-profit ecosystems. E.g. I was recently back on Windows for the first time in a decade or so professionally, building an app I'd written in Common Lisp. Scoop (for package management on Windows) and Rosewell (which now supports Windows) made this super easy and pleasant. But ... why would you spend your time writing Free software to benefit such an ecosystem? Unless you're being paid for it, why not spend your time contributing to a Free ecosystem instead?

* Free software that is productised by cloud providers (e.g. https://www.zdnet.com/article/aws-hits-back-at-open-source-s...).

* Companies like Google, who are happy to build upon a plethora of open source products to generate billion-dollar profits, but who then turn around and actively give the middle finger to the communities without which they wouldn't exist (e.g. https://www.theregister.com/2019/04/03/googles_widevine_drm/).

I think it's hilarious that you're disgusted. How awful would it be if, when you purchased a computer, you were entitled to all of the code that comes with the computer, and full documentation and toolchains? How much worse would your life really get?

Edit: Please, use your words and not your downvote. Your downvotes just mean that you agree with me: Your disgust is an ironic expression of a crab mentality where you regret that other people might be able to have nice things due to us working together as a society.

I think you are attracting downvotes because you completely mistook my point.

I support Free software - financially, by evangelising it, by writing it, and by using it.

My point was that I think some large companies are getting a lot more value from their use of it than the authors and maintainers get from working on it.

(Edited to add: I agree wholeheartedly about downvoting vs. replying. I wish more people would reply instead of, or perhaps as well as, downvoting).

You are almost to one of the big tenets of Marxism: Employers have it out for employees; managers do not respect laborers. I think that what's missing from your insight is that every corporation, simply by dint of its legal structure and societal appearance, has an unfair modicum of power which it lords over the folks that actually do the work.

... which is why it's entirely reasonable for labour to unionise, to increase their bargaining power with employers.

One of the fundamentals of Marxism with which I disagree, though - at such a fundamental level that it drives an emotional response to the license we're discussing - is that paid labour is necessarily exploitation. That is, I consider the labour theory of value to be incorrect.

I'm reminded of the famous Reagan quote:

> How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin."

I think a better solution (as a socialist/libertarian) is a license where the license itself has a foundation or union.

All companies using the license commercially pay 3% of their yearly income into the fund. With a cap of 10% (if using multiple libraries/source codes).

It's spread equally to all software devs using this license based on lines of code contributed. Worker coops using the license would be free use, but would still be required to register their usage, business structure, and purpose.

You'd continue getting dividends, but as more code is submitted if you never wrote another line of code your share % would drop as more and more developers write code.

> Worker coops using the license would be free use

How is a worker co-op using the licensed software for commercial purposes different from, say, a corporation?

Because the whole point is a worker-coop doesn't pay workers shit salaries.

Developers make as much as the CEO, CFO, CTO, etc.

Even the janitor, makes the same.

Ideological contents aside:

> does not exploit the labor of non-members

This is not good legal terminology and so makes it a bad license. People who want to prevent monetization by a closed-source company are probably still better off with the AGPL.

That statement is good enough legal terminology. What makes you say otherwise? They just didn't define members, which are clearly - to me - the people with membership interests in an Limited Company, along with the managing member. Or shareholders in a Corporation.

I have no comment on the rest of the clauses so to anyone passing by, don't base any response to me as if I have an opinion.

It doesn't define "exploit the labor of non-members". What interactions with a non-member count as "exploiting" their labor?

Does this requirement mean computer components that the software is written and deployed on needs to be "conflict free", and manufactured by other anti-capitalist firms? I don't know of anything that would meet that definition.

My guess is that what it is trying to cover is having employees who are paid an hourly wage or a salary only rather than being included in the profit sharing.

If that is correct, there would be no restriction on them buying and using supplies from other organizations that do exploit labor.

That statement is good enough legal terminology. What makes you say otherwise?

No definition of "exploit". That word means different things when read in a marxist, capitalist, or legal context, and probably different things in branches of each.

I came to post the same nit, in this context “members” is not defined. And taken at its extreme (assuming an intuitive definition), it could be argued that any organization “exploits” the labor of anyone else by participating in and benefiting from the economy as a whole, not to mention specific things like roads, schools, etc.

This section needs to be clarified, as is the license is perilously unusable.

It does seem like it would be stronger if it simply stated that all employees must be equal owners.

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