Shinycroak

(Written on 5 July 2021) The music software MuseScore and Audacity are owned by Ultimate Guitar, a Russian corporation. The software is under GPL, but no-one trusts the Russians to respect privacy or any other human rights and of course UG can change the license at any time. The ownership of free software is a major blemish in Stallman's “use copyright to protect the freedom of the software” approach – there is always still an owner. The character of the owner is important, as is their disposition of the work, should the owner die or transfer the rights. The character of rightsholders has to be a part of our measures of freedom and openness in software development. ✺✺✺ PS: (29 November 2021) Since that time, the new owners of MuseScore and Audacity have set up shell companies in Cyprus which nominally own the software and implemented a number of unsavory practices. In response, a number of developers are participating in a fork of the original Audacity software, cal...

(Note: since the writing of the following, the Free Software Foundation has tweeted: “The FSF board unanimously condemns misogyny, racism, and other bigotry as well as defamation, intimidation, and unfair attacks on free thought and speech.” They are rejecting the criticism of Stallman as unfair and, in so doing, they aligned themselves with neo-Nazis and white supremacists. They have put themselves beyond redemption and any fair hearing for their ideas. No-one wants to listen to the logic-chopping of rape apologists – it is as bad as listening to Southern racists excusing slavery.)   This is outside of my usual ambit, and it is about cooperative software development rather than market economics, but it seems to belong here more than anywhere. People who follow free and open source software by now know that alleged harasser and rape apologist Richard M. Stallman has, by a secret process, been restored to the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation. Stallman has...

“Amazon often points to the tens of millions of dollars it has invested to enhance safety practices. Yet Amazon’s injury rates have gone up each of the past four years, the internal data shows. In 2019, Amazon fulfillment centers recorded 14,000 serious injuries – those requiring days off or job restrictions. The overall rate of 7.7 serious injuries per 100 employees was 33% higher than in 2016 and nearly double the most recent industry standard” – Will Evans, “How Amazon hid its safety crisis,” revealnews.org , September 29, 2020.

“Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Debbie Dingell, both Michigan Democrats, made a surprise visit earlier this month to an Amazon warehouse in Romulus, Michigan. The lawmakers said they were asked to wait outside for about 90 minutes before being invited in for a tour. While they waited, someone inside the building called the police on them.” – https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-21/u-s-lawmakers-call-amazon-warehouse-unsafe-after-surprise-visit Always nice to see law-abiding corporate citizens. Dingell and Tlaib were forbidden to make a video record of their visit, but Tlaib did offer a report: “Employee screening is poorly executed, cleaning is insufficient, social distancing is often difficult or impossible, and Amazon’s relentless quota system does not allow for breaks for adequate personal hygien. Moreover, if Amazon is willing to call the police on congresswomen it invited to tour its facility, we can only imagine the harassment and intimidation Amazon worker...

The wildly successful internet economy firms mostly operate by evading laws. New technology which has allowed firms to move their business to less-regulated jurisdictions and a generation of deregulation and favorable court decisions have allowed these firms to be bad places to work and bad places to do business with. Here’s a catalog of some of their abuses: Evasion of local laws through national operations . Amazon notoriously picks jurisdictions with lax labor laws for its warehouses. Uber simply ignores local laws until penalized. When penalized, they initiate political campaigns to get the laws overridden at the state level. Extortionate business practices . Doordash infamously underpays its workers. Grubhub notoriously overcharges restaurants . Uber has the resurrected long-illegal practice of raising taxi rates when demand is highest. Monopolistic practices . Enforcement in this ...

Newscaster Zach Rael (KOCO, Oklahoma City) tweets : Just got an email from Amazon’s PR team with a pre-edited news story and script to run in our shows. They are selling this as giving our viewers an “inside look” at the company’s response to COVID-19

There are widespread reports of SARS-nCoV-2 infections in warehouses and grocery stores. It is time to bring in the industrial hygienists and work out infection-control protocols. OSHA? Are you there? OSHA?