A few of the posts/threads here and around the web have raised an idea of limiting usage to certain ideals, be them political (e.g. no-ICE usage only, progressives only, anarchists only), or technical (e.g. open/libre-sourcers only), however much like how code of conducts do, so far the initiatives seems focused on publishing openly, then restricting usage for honest people (dishonest people don’t care about the restrictions, and will use it unrestricted regardless).
However, this still gives the most valuable resource, the source and consequently the binaries, including the awareness of the source and binaries, away to those who can just reverse engineer your work, or just use it dishonestly against the creator’s restrictions.
I’m thinking instead it would make more sense, for open-source communities to act more like companies, or rather, coalitions. Where you sign an agreement, then you get access to all the software of the coalition while you uphold the agreement.
For political coalitions, there would be a governing board that would certify one’s conduct, and if they violate, then they get booted from access, or fined or whatever, according to the coalition’s contract.
For technical coalitions, such as for open/libre-sourcers only, such governance could be zero-trust and automated, such as logging into your github, and checking the open-source to private repository ratio for your active organisation; and if say a piece of the coalitions software appears inside a private repository, then they are revoked or fined or whatever, according to the coalition’s contract.
This would ensure that access and collaboration remain restricted and empower only trusted actors; which is that, of returning the benefit of closed-sourcers (keeping secrets) back into the libre-source community, such that the playing field levels, and so the libre-source world aren’t just taken advantage of by the secret-keepers.
Philosophically, it seems a lot of the trouble of the current landscape has been a lot of the early cyberpunks (the founders of FLOSS) had an individualistic hope that seemed to assume that FLOSS could defend itself organically because individuals overall want to manifest such ideals, and as such could defend itself against collective threats; which seemed reasonable until the last 15 years of so of intense monopolisation of everything. This would at least be a way of “fighting back” in a fair fight; so that individual software developers can defend themselves together for the ideals they wish to spread; against other collectives who wish to spread other ideals; rather than just being used without return.