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by zitsarethecure 225 days ago
IMO FOSS "lost the plot" when we accepted the false argument that source code sharing was purely an engineering issue rather than an ethics issue.
2 comments

FWIW, it's not hard to argue that copyrighted code lost the plot at the exact same spot. It's not only FOSS' fault.
Can you explain what you mean? As far as I'm aware, ethics has always been the central issue?
ESR was pretty clear about their stance on it in this interview:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/article_246jsp/

Personally, I think the argument that "open source is a better way to engineer software" has largely proven to be untrue and FOSS' only advantage has been in protecting the rights of end users (who may also be developers).