Re: Non-fungible token

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

On Wed, 4 May 2022 19:48:13 +0100
Ron Nazarov via <directory-discuss@gnu.org> wrote:

> On 04/05/2022 19:43, David Hedlund wrote:
> > Are there any useful non-fungible token (NFT) software that we
> > should add to the Directory?
> 
> Since there is no legitimate (non-scam) use for NFTs, no. They waste 
> electricity while being completely useless except for scamming.
There are legitimate uses (like funding Julian Assange's legal defense)
but they are on the fringe and they could probably be done in other
ways, and there are compelling arguments against funding things in this
way[1].

That said, there was a GNU project whose goal was to enable states to
do electronic voting over the Internet[2].

And while the use case is an extremely bad idea[3], having access to its
source code under free licenses and to documentation (including its
mailing lists) can help showing while in practice that this was a bad
idea. So keeping that software and knowing about it can be a good thing.

However for the directory, that raises the question here on if there are
other criteria than the licensing situation with the software we add to
the directory. For instance does the software really need to be useful?

While I'm not very active, I've been involved in two discussions about
what software to add and so far I understood the following:
- The program needs to run (also) on either GNU/Linux or HURD. So
  programs running only on Android aren't really fit for now. As I
  understand this is to help people focus on adding more programs for
  GNU/Linux or HURD.
- The directory doesn't do in depth security reviews and it's only
  concerned about the project source code, not binary releases. So if
  projects do bad things like releasing windows binaries with bundled
  non-free libraries or nonfree versions for Apple's app store, it can
  still listed as long as its source code is fully free software.

But I've no idea about criteria like if the project is maintained or
directly useful. One issue I see with a criteria like that is that
there would be a lot of room for interpretation on what constitute
'useful'.

For instance here 'scam' here could also be understood as a way to make
money and to prevent a stall of the economic system (as that system
needs return on investments to work), or a way to destroy the planet
faster.

And here if we stick to the most accepted interpretations we might end
up making the directory less inclusive as one would need to abide by
these interpretations when adding new software, and it might not even
be possible to do that as different people have different view on
things. And at the end, it's probably easier to accept broad range of
software in order to avoid endless discussions about each software that
is controversial.

References:
-----------
[1]https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/dec/23/nft-faces-of-open-source/
[2]https://www.gnu.org/software/free/
[3]Paper votes are secret and relatively secure. Nothing like that has
   been achieved yet with computers and even if one day we manage to do
   it in theory, the whole system is probably too complex even for
   people who know how to program to fully understand. While with paper
   voting it's much easier to understand. As the website explains, we'd
   also need to find 

Denis.

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