The Myth of "Neutral Code"

The claim that software was once a neutral, meritocratic utility and has only recently become political rests on a false history. The free-software movement launched by Richard Stallman in the 1980s was explicitly concerned with freedom, autonomy, ethics, and resistance to authority, though recognizing his historical role does not excuse his later conduct. In 1998, advocates introduced “open source” as a more business-friendly frame, emphasizing engineering and economic benefits rather than free software’s moral and political commitments. This rebranding helped attract corporations, but also made a temporary, sanitized phase of software culture seem like an apolitical norm.

The piece argues that neutrality is applied selectively: developers often accept GitHub’s restrictions under U.S. export-control laws as ordinary business, yet condemn community rules at the nonprofit forge Codeberg, including a vote to restrict repositories dominated by AI-generated material to protect server capacity and code safety. Corporate and state power thus passes as neutral, while collective governance is branded political. Unmoderated platforms also make choices, often leaving volunteers to bear the costs of abuse, spam, and infrastructure use. Maintainers and communities have the same freedom to refuse work or set boundaries that contributors have to create and publish software. Codes of conduct and resource limits therefore do not mark open source’s corruption; they reconnect software freedom to the people, labor, and consequences behind it.