Ethical Technologist Issue 1: Extractive capitalism, the need to enforce CoCs, and the coming post-open source revolution

Howdy!

Welcome to the first ever issue of The Ethical Technologist! For this first issue, I selected several standout articles and Twitter threads that caught my attention this week; I didn't really intend on a theme, but one emerged nevertheless: That when we choose not to regulate our communities, powerful actors can easily game the system to their advantage—and to our disadvantage. The selections skew somewhat towards issues surrounding ethics and open source software, which is a particular passion of mine, but my overall aim for this newsletter is to create a conversation around ethics in tech more generally.

This week, explore: The history of a controversial new software license. How one economist's discovery explains why codes of conduct are not enough. What happens when you build a low-friction, anonymous chat platform. How extractive capitalism is destroying the very foundation of digital commons. And the shape of the coming post-open source revolution. Here, then, are five (five!) long-form reads, one for each day of the week.

[ ⚔️ The Battle for the Heart of Open Source ]

First up, Tatum Hunter has published the first in a series of articles covering the birth and growth of the Ethical Source Movement. Her first article is a great introduction to the origins and battle over Coraline Ada Ehmke's Hippocratic License. This is a great read if you've never heard of it, or aren't sure what it is, why we need it, or why it's controversial.

https://builtin.com/software-engineering-perspectives/ethical-source-hippocratic-license

[ 💡 Racial Violence, Innovation, and Why CoCs Aren't Enough ]

I love the Planet Money podcast. This summer, they've been covering how racial injustice in the United States impacts the economy, and one episode in particular stood out to me. Dr. Lisa Cook has found that, contrary to the received view, solid patent laws are insufficient to spur innovation: She has data that proves that racial violence stiffled innovation among Black inventors and researchers in the 20th century. This finding is fascinating in itself, but there's a direct lesson for us as well. We know that having a code of conduct is important for a thriving community, but it's insufficient: It must be consistently and fairly enforced as well. It's a lot of work, but Dr. Cook's findings show us just why it's so important.

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/12/876097416/patent-racism

[ 💣 Destroying the Toxic Product You Built ]

James Socol built, and then purposely destroyed a successful chat platform, TodaysMeet. In this recent Twitter thread, he shares his story of coming to realize that his low-friction, anonymous chat platform was a vector for bullying and extreme harassment. Despite the good his product was providing for many, he eventually realized that the only way he could prevent the harm it caused was by shutting it down. His story reminds us that we must always keep in mind how the technology we build can be used to oppress others, and to keep community safety a product priority from day one.

There's a lesson here: how a tool is used, and misused, is the responsibility of the creators and maintainers. If you're in tech, if you have a platform that enables users to interact, that means you.

https://twitter.com/jamessocol/status/1299142661660700672

[ ⛏ Extractive Capitalism is Destroying Digital Commons ]

Community based peer production, such as open source software, creates a lot of value. But, as Bodó Balázs argues in a recent paper, the most powerful organizations are in a far better position to extract that value, and they have no incentive to return any of it to the creators. The mechanisms of digital commons that were meant to liberate are now being co-opted to reinforce established power structures.

Maybe, only a certain degree of closure of the commons can empower those who put labor into their production. Maybe closure enables the community to capture the fair share of the value they produce, and to provide the resources necessary to preserve the commons for the long term. Maye, the utopia of the commons must be rethought in the rather dystopian terms of closure.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3502119

[ 🏛 Why We Need a Post-Open Source Movement, and What it Requires ]

Finally, from my own blog, I preview the talk I'm giving at the first ever State of the Source Summit. Open source's reluctance to regulate access to the pool of open source software has, ironically, resulted in the creation of a set of implicit, invisible regulations that promote open source to oppressors and rewards creating weapons. I think it's time to think about what a post-open source movement looks like: What it is, why we need it, and what it will take to bring it about.

What got us here was the assumption that open source required no regulation. Since software is infinitely abundant, the thinking went, it would be wrong to place restrictions on who can contribute to or access open source software. The thing is, when we explicitly refuse to regulate communities, they end up regulating themselves in ways that are usually unpredictable, and often insidious—and that’s precisely where open source ended up. Open source operates on a system of invisible, implicit rules, rules that benefit the powerful.

https://don.goodman-wilson.com/posts/post-open-source-world/

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That's it for this week! Thanks to our amazing content editor, Amy Goodman-Wilson, for all her hard work getting this first issue out the door.

And thank you for subscribing. If you enjoyed this issue, tell your friends! If you have an article that should be featured in an upcoming issue of The Ethical Technologist, let me know by either replying to this email (what, a newsletter you can reply to!?), or pinging me on Twitter.

Until next time,
yours,
Don Goodman-Wilson