Post-FOSS: Towards a Human/e Creative Community Ethos

Summary

Let's start with the core proposition:

Born out of dissatisfaction with the morals and values of GNU/FSF/FOSS, or lack thereof, an ethos both broader and narrower in scope: the Free Software Foundation's  4 Essential Freedoms, expanded and constrained by kindness, humaneness, and a prime directive of doing no harm.

H3CC: a Human/e Creative Community Ethos for any creative community, based on 3 Core Requirements:

  • Human-centered
  • Human-crafted
  • Humane  

Specifically for coding communities, as an answer to the GNU/FSF/FOSS malaise: 

A Post-FOSS ethos, based on the 3 Core Requirements, incorporating the 4 Essential Freedoms:

  1. free to use the program for any purpose
  2. free to study and modify
  3. free to redistribute
  4. free to improve and release improvements

... given that no Essential Freedom, particularly the 1st Essential Freedom, may conflict with the 3 Requirements. 

Note:

  • Use for warfare or for violating universal human rights would be, as such, prohibited.
    (Probably not enforceable legally in any practical way, but would allow intra-community enforcement.)
  • Individual communities are free to expand the Humaneness Requirement and the resulting additional restrictions, if any, to the first Essential Freedom.
     

The scope of ethics in opensource

@riverpunk@defcon.social's recent open question and discussion on Mastodon around criticisms against the GNU/FreeSoftware/FOSS movement and the following follow-up question made me realize I'm not alone:

"Does an explicitly new [FOSS] movement need to rise from its ashes?" 

I'm not alone when I wonder about the value of Free and Open Source Software in a world where a new "Free and Open Source LLM-generated Rust clone of {{ thing }}" is released every week.

I'm not alone when I categorically reject LLM-generated creative works, whether they're art, prose, or code.

I'm not alone when I have grove misgivings about the GNU/FreeSoftware/FOSS value system when contributors to GNU tools, for instance, are not contradicting the GNU manifesto nor the Free Software Foundation's philosophy when they state that:

  1. Whatever is legal is ethical, including products resulting from forced labor if said forced labor is ethical in the contributor's jurisdiction.
     
  2. The Free Software movement does not pursue the goal of "liberty for all humanity", and whoever thinks so "is gravely mistaken.

    [ source: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2026-11/msg00128.html ]

I'm not alone in assuming that rejecting Racism, fascism, Zionism, xenophobia, transphobia, homophobia, paedophelia-apologism, and LLM-glorification in a FOSS community would be a sine qua non.

FOSS communities where "Don't ask, don't tell, and we'll get along fine" is the ethical base line are NOT OK with me.
 

 

Anecdote

I have recently left the Drupal community because it has shifted its ambition from being an amazingly flexible and powerful opensource Content Management System to becoming the leading opensource AI-enabled marcom tool for the enterprise market. 

And because its leadership was entirely silent on the Gaza genocide, and happily keeps organizing conferences in the US where both locals and foreign visitors are rounded up into concentration camps, and [insert more 4-seasonsTrump hellscaping here].

(This may or may not be related to the interests of various US-based Drupal enterprise service providers, including the project founder's own billion dollar company, that have million and billion dollar contracts with dozens of State and Federal Government clients.)

I expected my community to stand for more than software licensing and the ethical requirement of companies to contribute their fair share. 

Silly me.

 

Software is inherently political. Our morals and values are de facto reflected in our work and in our community.

If the GNU/FreeSoftware/FOSS stance is "morality outside the narrow scope of our mission is irrelevant" then I'm showing myself out.

But where to go?
 

Post-FOSS


Towards a Post-FOSS movement, then. Both broader and narrower in scope: the 4 Essential Freedoms, both expanded and constrained by kindness, humanity, and a prime directive to do no harm.

An ethos that encompasses software development, but extends to any creative community.

However we communicate, however we collaborate, whatever we do, and  whatever we build, must be based on:

3 Core Requirements

  • Human-centered
    Positivity, genuineness, and empathy in the pursuit of learning, growth, and fulfillment.

    Implies a positive outlook towards change and building something worthwile, but also a culture of learning, teaching, and nurturing.
     
  • Human-crafted
    Hand-crafted by humans, not LLMs. Explicitly rejection of artifacts that are produced by LLMs and/or related Generative AI tools.
     
  • Humane
    Powered by kindness, harm-reduction, empathy, respect for freedom, and upholding human dignity. Treat as you would want to be treated. Be kind, rewind.

    The more so towards those in a less fortunate and/or less privileged position. 

    And explicitly inside and outside the community. 

    Kind and helpful transphobes will be shown the door. Friendly mentors that are ok with genocide can go build their own club house. List of examples not exhaustive.
     

Summary (redux)

Let's take it from the top:

Born out of dissatisfaction with the morals and values of GNU/FSF/FOSS, or lack thereof, an ethos both broader and narrower in scope: the Free Software Foundation's  4 Essential Freedoms, expanded and constrained by kindness, humaneness, and a prime directive of doing no harm.

H3CC: a Human/e Creative Community Ethos for any creative community, based on 3 Core Requirements:

  • Human-centered
  • Human-crafted
  • Humane  

Specifically for coding communities, as an answer to the GNU/FSF/FOSS malaise: 

A Post-FOSS ethos, based on the 3 Core Requirements, incorporating the 4 Essential Freedoms:

  1. free to use the program for any purpose
  2. free to study and modify
  3. free to redistribute
  4. free to improve and release improvements

... given that no Essential Freedom, particularly the 1st Essential Freedom, may conflict with the 3 Requirements. 

Note:

  • Use for warfare or for violating universal human rights would be, as such, prohibited.
    (Probably not enforceable legally in any practical way, but would allow intra-community enforcement.)
  • Individual communities are free to expand the Humaneness Requirement and the resulting additional restrictions, if any, to the first Essential Freedom.
     

Next steps

Discuss.