On the workers.coop forum there is a thread about the Cooperative Digital Infrastructure Manifesto, a document that, in terms of it’s demands regarding software licenses is, in my view, basically pointless, there is now a open Loomio group to discuss it and I’ve posted this comment there:
Why is the manifesto not really demanding anything in terms of software licenses?
. 2. Call for and support open-source and source-available tech development, based on open standards, to ensure standardization doesn’t pave the way only for commercial platforms.
Corporations like Apple, Amazon and Google, support, develop and release open source software, Microsoft makes Windows source available — as far as I can see, as it stands, the manifesto makes no software license related demands that these corporations don’t already comply with?
Shouldn’t we be calling for copyleft (and perhaps also copy far left) software licensing? Don’t we want to see more co-operation and sharing? None of these corporations support copyleft software licenses because they don’t want to be forced into sharing, they want the freedom to be able to privatise code, what is the point of co-ops also advocating for the same thing that the big tech corporations are already doing?
I wouldn’t support Webarchitects signing this manifesto as it currently stands.