Debian adds LoongArch support
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Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 16, 2023 23:35 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
Yes, I understand. And I also understand why Free Software advocates might think that the wider right to Freedom is outside their bailiwick.
The "manifestly against freedom" you refer to is against the freedom/restrictions you have in the country you live in this period of time.
Our understanding of freedom has expanded as time has passed. I don't know anyone who would consider massacring pro-democracy demonstrators as they were in 1989 to be a good thing. Nor do I know anyone who considers using anti-espionage laws to jail pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong to be a good thing. These things are objectively against freedom.
And I think that without personal freedom, Freedom in software is not very meaningful.
Again: I get why some Free Software advocates think this is outside their bailiwick. But that makes me very sad, not to mention pessimistic for the impact technology will have on society. I worked in software development for 33 years and have retired from that.
I don't think I could go back to it because I see so much unethical use of software and so much willingness of software developers (not just Free Software developers...) to provide software to people they know will use it unethically. From Google's "Web Integrity API" to the software developers who let Amazon time warehouse workers to the second and force up their productivity regardless of health consequences, software developers are willingly (and sometimes eagerly) helping to make the world worse.
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 10:53 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]
Part of the challenge here is that the USA also has significant anti-freedom issues of its own, and yet US citizens are preaching to the world about how the USA is "free", but their countries should do better. And this happens both with businesses (as you've described), but also with your government rules; for example, the US has previously criticised African countries for not having rules barring someone convicted of election offences from the presidency, and yet the US has, it turns out, no such rules either.
These sorts of things add up over time to a perception that it's one rule for you, and a stricter set for me, and that you consider your anti-Freedom issues to be "minor", or "one-off errors", while mine are considered to be significant. In turn, this makes it challenging to have the conversations about Freedom, since it's all too easy to turn the discussion into "I am complaining about the mote in your eye while ignoring the beam in mine".
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 12:37 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
I don't live in the USA and I agree that its citizens' freedoms are being eroded, but it is qualitatively different from what's going on in places like Russia, China, North Korea, Afghanistan, and so on.
One way to get a feel for relative freedoms of countries is to look at which countries people are seeking refuge from, and which countries they are seeking refuge in.
Another is to look at the Freedom House's freedom index which has well-defined and IMO defensible tests for how free a country is.
In pretty every measure imaginable, the United States scores much higher than China. Is the USA perfect? Of course not. Is it "free"? Yes, says Freedom House, with a score of 83/100. (This compares to 9/100 for China.)
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 13:10 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]
Right, but when the same person applauds things that the US is doing that would erode its score on those metrics, while also criticising China for being "anti-freedom" (which happens - currently, significant chunks of the Republican Party leadership are doing just that), it damages the "soft power" the US and its allies need in order to push for more freedoms elsewhere. This combination damages everyone pushing for more freedom, since it makes it look like those pushing for freedom in the abstract are doing so simply to damage places that don't meet their demands.
This differs from pushing for specific freedoms, as Free Software tries to - justifying each of the four freedoms the FSF defines individually, and explaining why each of them is a net good is not difficult. But arguing for a bundling of "be more free" brings you into the problem territory - where you're combining voices with people like Godfrey Bloom in the UK, or Ron DeSantis in the USA, who also make that argument about foreign countries, while calling for a reduction in freedoms at home.
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 13:28 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
when the same person applauds things that the US is doing that would erode its score on those metrics, while also criticising China for being "anti-freedom"
Just because some people are hypocritical, it does not excuse the oppression inflicted by the Chinese government on its citizens. It also doesn't excuse the growing authoritarianism of the GOP, as you rightly pointed out, but at least currently, the United States is objectively free compare to China.
I do agree that bringing non-software ideals into the equation leads to problems. On the other hand, even the four software freedoms speak to ethical values that are not part of the realm of software development. I think ignoring non-software freedom is equally problematic... doing so is simply a salve to the consciences of people who deep down know that they are helping some very nasty actors, but don't want to stop doing that.
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 13:47 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]
This is a specious argument. >99% of the time, the code is just a neutral tool; the one using it is the one that bears the responsibility for how they use it. Should hammer manufacturers lie awake at night or even stop making hammers because some buyers use their product to commit assault or murder?
It is damn near certain that some of the Free Software I've written has been used to directly kill people [1]. Conversely, that same code has been used to save other people's lives [2]. Does one cancel out the other? Does it matter? Consider that the overwhelming majority of its users [3] probably used it to send email and look at cat pictures. Is this "a salve to my conscience" or should I somehow have taken steps to prevent those other uses?
[I] it was used by a certain high-profile military robot manufacturer, and deployed in Iraq.
[2] The same manufacturer also made bomb-disposal robots that were sold to domestic police forces.
[3] Ie anyone with a common (at the time) chipset in their PC's wifi adapter.
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 14:11 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
Should hammer manufacturers lie awake at night or even stop making hammers because some buyers use their product to commit assault or murder?
Of course not. But should hammer manufacturers enter into an agreement to sell hammers to an organization that is widely known to use hammers to kill people? I don't think so, though I can see how you might disagree.
It is damn near certain that some of the Free Software I've written has been used to directly kill people.
It's highly likely that some Free Software I've written has been used in similar ways, at least by the administration of nasty organizations. But again: If one of those nasty organizations had contacted me and asked me to help port my software to their platform, I'd have refused.
Some thing are not in my control, and others are. Collaborating (or not) with Loongson is definitely something within developers' control.
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 14:51 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]
Going back to my example, that "nasty organization" funded a non-trivial portion of the Free Software wifi driver effort that everyone else was able to use for non-nasty purposes. Similarly, the internet itself, satellite-based navigation systems, and much more owe their existence to "nasty organizations".
> Some thing are not in my control, and others are. Collaborating (or not) with Loongson is definitely something within developers' control.
Longsoon is only a "nasty organization" by indirect association. The same can probably be said for everyone on this forum.
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 15:07 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]
You're now arguing over the degree to which Loongson are responsible for the effects of complying with local military demands to allow them access to their technology, as opposed to the degree to which you are personally responsible for the effects of funding your local military via taxes, and the degree to which other semiconductor companies are responsible for complying with local military demands.
This is not an easy argument, ethically speaking, since we're discussing you as an individual within a much larger system; the US's EAR Entity List is a simple solution that says "US allies are fine, regardless of their ethics, countries we disagree with are not fine, regardless of their ethics", and that's not a good answer to the ethical dilemma - only to the political dilemma.
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 15:12 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
You're now arguing over the degree to which Loongson are responsible for the effects of complying with local military demands to allow them access to their technology, as opposed to the degree to which you are personally responsible for the effects of funding your local military via taxes, and the degree to which other semiconductor companies are responsible for complying with local military demands.
Yes, of course. But I can choose to collaborate (or not) with Loonson. I can't choose not to pay taxes unless I want to ruin my life. If I thought my taxes were funding something so heinous that I'd be willing to ruin my life, I'd stop paying them, but I don't.
And yes, it's not an easy dilemma. But I think it is unethical of developers to completely push aside the ethical questions by disavowing any control they have over who they collaborate with.
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 15:22 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]
You've already said that you can choose to not pay taxes, at a cost to yourself. But you are condemning Loongson because it (effectively) has not been willing to refuse to pay taxes.
Why are you permitted to say "the cost to me of not paying local taxes is too high", but Loongson is not permitted to say "the cost to us of not paying local taxes is too high"?
Similarly, why is it bad to collaborate with Loongson, but not to collaborate with IBM, SUSE or other companies in the US and Canada? The only reason Loongson is on the US EAR Entity List is that it's not willing to refuse to allow its local government to buy its semiconductors for military purposes - but many of the companies not on the EAR list are not only willing to allow their local governments to buy their products for military purposes, but also to actively work on military applications for those products?
As an ethical argument, this boils down to "my country is right, yours is wrong", and that's problematic. There may well be practical reasons to not collaborate with Loongson (e.g. "I live in the USA, and my local prosecutors will treat me as an enemy collaborator if I do so"), but that's not an ethical basis for that decision.
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 18:17 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
The problem is that Loonsong is forced to collaborate with a dictatorship. It really has no choice whatsoever. Companies in the United States are of course subject to government rules and requests, but there is a legal framework in place for them to challenge requests they think are unconstitutional or improper.
And yes, it does boil down to the fact that the Chinese government is far more oppressive than governments in democratic countries, especially liberal Western democracies. I don't think anyone can credibly dispute that.
The argument you are making, IMO, is unethical, which is: We can't hold anyone to account because nobody is perfect. It's called Whataboutism.
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 15:17 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
Longsoon almost certainly has no choice but to collaborate with the Chinese government and military. I don't think Longsoon itself is the nasty organization here. However, software developers who do have choice over who they collaborate with are IMO being unethical if they disavow that choice and don't take ethical questions into consideration when deciding who they'll collaborate with.
I agree it's a difficult argument, but ignoring it is not the right response. I would not collaborate with Longsoon or the Chinese government. Others will make different choices. But pretending that the choices have no ethical consequences is, as I said, simply a salve to the conscience.
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 14:06 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]
But the problem is that when I can draw a direct line between the politics of someone telling me that my country is not free enough, and the politics of someone who's making their own country less free, it becomes easy to dismiss the whole bundle of "freedom" as "my country over yours".
Hence the need to focus on specific ideals; focusing purely on software freedom when talking about software means that it becomes harder to dismiss you for the hypocrisy of other people who are very happy for specific breaches of freedoms to take place, as long as it's their country doing that, and not another country.
This is also why it's worth contexualising software freedom in your system of ethics - you're telling people that yes, you'll give them the Four Freedoms, and you're doing so because you believe that it is ethically correct that everyone can study anything that interests them to see how it functions.
But balancing freedoms against each other and saying "you cannot have this freedom, because you are taking this unrelated freedom away from other people" gets people into seeing freedoms as something you can trade off against each other; does this justify stealing code from a Canadian author for your non-free product because Canadian troops under NATO command shot people in your home country? After all, we'd all agree that killing people takes away their freedom of action...
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 14:15 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
I understand your argument, but I disagree with it. No country is perfect and pretty much every person is hypocritical to some degree. But I still maintain that it is unethical to promote Software Freedom without promoting Freedom in general, and that it is unethical to collaborate with organizations that are widely known to be highly oppressive.
I'm also not suggesting that licenses should be modified to say that Free Software cannot be used in non-Free countries; that would open up a can of worms. I am suggesting that developers need to think about the ethical consequences of collaborating with oppressive organizations.
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 15:01 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]
And this is the crux of our disagreement - I believe that you should explain the ethical reasoning that leads you to promote Software Freedom, but not push for "Freedom" in general at the same time.
When you push a country to be "Free" by your lights as part of pushing software freedom, you open up the rejection of software freedom because your "Freedom" is often hypocritical as a whole; you're happy for your state to imprison people for very long periods of time because they have a different political opinion to you (e.g. that individuals taking certain drugs for recreational purposes is fine), but not for another state to imprison people for their political opinions.
When you explain Software Freedom as one aspect of a deeper ethical thought process (e.g. "I believe that you should be permitted to examine anything that affects you to determine how it works and why, hence I believe that you should have the source code for software"), you're pushing for a specific case of a more general principle, and hoping that people pick up on the general principle ("if you use it, you should be able to examine it to learn how it works") from which you've derived the special case. They can then apply that principle elsewhere, and hopefully come to further freedoms from the same principle - but they're not able to point at the specific freedoms you've advocated for and say "because you don't actually let people have this freedom, your claims about freedom are just hypocrisy, and anti-us sentiment".
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 18:23 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
And this is the crux of our disagreement - I believe that you should explain the ethical reasoning that leads you to promote Software Freedom, but not push for "Freedom" in general at the same time.
Eh? I am pushing for Freedom in general at the same time! That's the point.
I'm not sure why you assume I am happy for my state to imprison recreational drug users, because I'm not. I am against that also. (Canada's rate of imprisonment on drug use offenses is tiny... roundoff error compared to the USA, especially since cannabis was legalized.)
I posted earlier, but your argument is nothing but Whataboutism.
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 19:00 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]
This is sleight-of-hand. Those people are imprisoned because people voted (indirectly) to make drug-taking a crime. They're not imprisoned for the opinion that "taking certain drugs for recreational purposes is fine"; that is not a crime, in the USA at least, and very large numbers of people hold that opinion and none of them are ever charged on that basis.
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 15:11 UTC (Thu) by timon (subscriber, #152974) [Link]
This post is about collaborating with Loongson. Would you say that Loongson is an oppressive organization?
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 18:18 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
Longsoon is effectively under the control of the Chinese government. And it certainly does collaborate with the Chinese government and military.
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 15:03 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
I.e., there are many "left" people (e.g., as viewed on social or economic dimensions) who are quite authoritarian (some to very ugly degrees), and there are many "right" people (in economic or social terms) who are quite liberal on individual freedom.
Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)
Posted Aug 17, 2023 16:26 UTC (Thu) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]
Political compasses have been a thing for decades now. You can draw several axes (liberal/authoritarian, state/market controlled economy, conservative/progressive) and you will be able to find political parties in any combination of them. The idea that they are linked somehow seems mostly prevalent in countries with two-party systems. Multi-party systems in Europe produce political parties that are all over the map, see e.g.: https://i.redd.it/x1phskkt4q251.jpg
Comparing parties on a single axis rarely produces useful results.
But yes, there is a gentle movement to the right, the EP elections next year will be very interesting.
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