In the early days of the internet, it was a place where anyone could be anyone, and you could find anything. Marketers soon realized they could make money on the internet, but no one had figured out how yet. The original search engine included an index of all web pages, allowing users to browse the entire web.
As the internet grew, consolidation began to take over. Facebook became the place for friends, Amazon for shopping, and Google for information. Initially, these tools were great for end-users, but soon they became fantastic for advertisers, squeezing out competition. This phenomenon is dubbed “enshittification” by author Cory Doctorow.
But there’s an alternative: the free and open-source software movement. In the 1950s and 60s, hobbyists and tinkerers shared code to help each other build and learn. This social movement centered around ethics of distributing software, with four core principles:
* Software should be free for any purpose
* Code should be available for study and modification
* Users should be able to share software with others
* Users should be able to modify software
For many, it was unethical to make software proprietary or work with companies that did. This led to the free software movement.
Today, over 95% of top million web servers run Linux, an open-source operating system. Netscape and Firefox were released as open-source browsers. If the open-source movement had been more dominant, the internet might look different: users could write posts and choose which social media platform they went to, or have a single app for all friends.
Recent antitrust judgments against Google show that tech giants are on notice. Without consolidation, tech companies must compete by providing better services – good for everyone. The right-to-repair movement is taking off too. Perhaps one day, we’ll have the right to understand and repair technology – a future worth fighting for.
Source: https://theconversation.com/have-you-heard-of-the-open-source-internet-the-antidote-to-a-capitalist-web-already-exists-237641