Democratic GPL Software Company

Markar writes "FreeDevelopers.net is a commercial software company that plans to develop GPL software, and is the brainchild of Tony Stanco, a former Security Exchange Commission attorney. Group leadership and major policy decisions are to be voted upon by the developers, making it the first democratically elected software company. FreeDevelopers.net has earned the endorsement of Richard M Stallman and the Free Software Foundation. Details at ZDNet."

Comments

Re:I don't see this lasting

[MartinG]

> This is another one of those ideas, like
> Communism, which are only really going to work
> in some mythical fairy-tale land where people
> are good and work for the benefit of all.
> Unfortunately, we don't live in that world.

The difference here though, is that the only people in the system are those who chose to be in it. That's what makes it nothing whatsoever like communism or any other choice-free authoritarian system.

This is about _choosing_ to do whats good for everyone, much like I do already in my spare time with open source software, and so do many others.

Communism on the other hand is about forcing others to do things for the good of others whether they like it or not.

In one system, you can be a hero and be happy to think you made good choices. In the other you are a slave and you get no choice at all.

Democracy Works...But Not In This Case

[Luminous]

The only reason democracy is around is to avoid a government that is tyrannical, but democracy doesn't make the trains run on time. Democracy is woofully inefficient, relying upon a method of gathering the will of the majority and translating that will into action.

In a business, efficiency saves money, produces more, and earns more. While the end result is a dehumanizing assembly line which is the most efficient method, it also is the most authoritarian with each worker given a specific duty.

Most corporations do include an element of democracy. It is called market surveys. Taking the governance philosophy of democracy and applying it to business is a recipe for a very flat bland business. That is one of the effects of democracy, it chops off the extremes. This is good when the extremes are the hyper-negative, but bad when the other extreme is genius.

Some real considerations that should be made are in internal authority structures. We are locked into a hierarchical-pyramid authority structure. I'd like to see some experiments in other models.

I don't see this lasting

[Jon Erikson]

This is another one of those ideas, like Communism, which are only really going to work in some mythical fairy-tale land where people are good and work for the benefit of all. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world.

There's a reason why all major open-source projects to date are controlled by a small number of people. It's because it becomes next to possible to get any real direction when you've got to pander to the masses. Instead, you end up with a series of watered-down proposals that offend nobody and excite even less people, and which will make FreeDevelopers.net a hugely dull company that goes nowhere.

And of course there's the fact that the sort of thing which this company might end up being paid for is hugely boring, and open source doesn't do boring. There's no kudos in plugging away at an open source inventory program is there? It sounds far more 31337 to be a kernel hacker, and I can see people drifting away from this project as they get bored with it.

Nice idea, but it's not going to happen. Democratic software development is an ideal that just won't be successfully implented ever.