The Myth of Neutral Code

The article argues that the perception of software becoming "radicalized" is a false nostalgia, as open source was originally founded on explicit moral and anti-authoritarian principles by Richard Stallman in the 1980s. In 1998, industry figures rebranded "Free Software" as "Open Source" to strip away its political and ethical language and make it palatable to corporations, creating the illusion of neutral, apolitical code that never actually existed. The current emphasis on codes of conduct and accountability represents a return to the movement's foundational values rather than a new corruption of them.