https://public-interest-tech.com/
Mr. Schneier and friends have created a new website to promote a change to the socio-economic technical milieu we are currently facing.
He suggests we need to have "public interest technologists" to help the situation.
He writes:
"We need technologists who work in the public interest. We need public-interest technologists.
Defining this term is difficult. One Ford Foundation blog post described public-interest technologists as "technology practitioners who focus on social justice, the common good, and/or the public interest.""
Is he right? How can this be implemented without becoming as riddled with government agents, spies and mafias as the key positions of our corporations and institutions are right now?
Full disclosure: this writer has been a public interest technologist for a while now and I have actually alluded to the need for something like what is being suggested on multiple occasions, 'a different kind of organization' is the way I put it, way back a few months ago.
Discuss.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @10:13AM
No, that's closer to the ethos of Free Software, which is different from open source.
The fact that you can make a living from something doesn't mean it's ethical to do so. Proprietary software is necessarily an attack on people's freedoms, and therefore should not exist in any form.
I've seen you attack Free Software (and "open source" I guess) in a number of places. But, the alternative is proprietary software, which is far worse for freedom and gives corporations and/or the developers massive control over your computing. With how ubiquitous computing is now, software freedom is more important than ever.