The future might just be software freedom (and less e-waste) | Hacker News Reader

The future might just be software freedom (and less e-waste)

thederf.com

12 pointsthederf6 comments

> If writing, maintaining, and deploying software stops being the hard part, all three of those gaps start closing. The freedoms we value become accessible to a much wider range of people, and they will be able to use them on a wider range of otherwise “waste” devices.

It is incorrect to speak about "freedom" and "ownership" when you have willingly traded in your agency to an AI to "do the legwork" for you. You may own the files the AI has created and can run them, but you do not truly own the underlying capability to create or modify them independently (so free software principles kinda stop applying)

For all software, you have a conditional freedom entirely dependent on an external service. Should the service change, disappear, or become inaccessible, you suddenly ran out of "freedom"; you cannot understand or fix the code, or adapt (not create) solutions to novel problems without the AI's mediation.

All you have is the illusion of freedom wrapped in dependence.

This argument would be more compelling if self-hosted, open-weight models didn't exist.

open-weight models are still not open training; that you can run the weights doesn't mean you know what training went into them

Sure, but those goalposts have shifted from "you have a conditional freedom entirely dependent on an external service". If you run an open-weight model on your machine, you are not dependent on an external service. The model will not change, disappear, or become inaccessible.

If we go with your argument then nobody has had any freedoms or agency at all. You need a library and other people to tech you useful skills, you need a car to get to a job, you need a farmer to farm the food that you eat, you need an engineer to create the device you're using the internet through. Etc. Etc. Etc.

I would compare this to building something out of wood. I use power tools that I can't make myself (at least not without a significant level of effort). I could still build without power tools and succeed if needed, but for the time and effort I want to spend I'm beholden to the power tool companies.

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