Free Software And Its Revolutionary Social Implications

Jizzbug writes: "OpenFlows has an interesting interview with Stefan Merten (of Oekonux in Germany) on the implications of Free Software in regards to social change (for the better). It'd be interesting to see what kind of famous Slashdot flamewar will erupt in response to the ideas set forth in this interview. Those in the audience that are freethinking and not jingoistic should find this a very enlightening and entertaining read."

Comments

computer programs and other "commodities"

[nusuth]

When I see interviews or articles like this one, I always wonder where people get the idea that computer programs are something like other commodities. Computers are not like any other production tool invented in the whole history of man, computers are general purpose. That is whatever you do with a screwdriver is set (that does not mean you can't find creative uses for it) but with different computer programs and a little bit of hardware you can make a computer do whatever you like. Therefore computer programs are giving a useful existance to computers, without them nothing can be done by computers. Producing one for your own needs is relatively easy (how could you make a car yourself, ground up?), getting, changing and sending one is much to easier than with physical goods. The only major investment is time in producing one.

On the other hand producing physical goods require physical resources. A physical good is not instantly transportable, infinitely reproduceable and generally doesn't stay the way it was during usage. The tools for producing them are specialized and one can do very little to change them without those tools. People do and will need physical goods.

Therefore drawing conclusions about general econmic trends by observing trends in open source/free software concepts/community is fundementally wrong. There are just too many differences. Unless/until somebody invents a general purpose things builder (like you give it blueprints and the machine creates whatever it is out of dirt) a true information society is not be possible, and open source ideas ar not applicable to general economy.

Re:computer programs and other "commodities"

[Saeger]

Unless/until somebody invents a general purpose things builder (like you give it blueprints and the machine creates whatever it is out of dirt) a true information society is not be possible

What you say is absolutely true. One of my favorite quotes goes: "What the computer revolution did for manipulating data, the nanotechnology revolution will do for manipulating matter, juggling atoms like bits." -- Ralph Merkle

Right now, we're necessarily stuck between these complementary revolutions (by quite a few decades--seems to be the natural order of things), and most of our (IP greed) problems stem from the this.

We have general purpose computers, but no general purpose "replicators" yet. And so, since food, and other goods/services, are still physically scarce, some people will want... no, need... to make information artificially scarce in order to inflate its value enough to exchange it for food.

But once the necessities of life are essentially free, society can at long last end the rat-race and live in a stress-free gift economy (99.5%); a life based on fulfillment, rather than mundane survival. Oh, and just because capitalism isn't a driving force anymore, it doesn't erase the human COMPETITIVE forces at work; progress will still continue without the fear of starving.

(the other 0.5% is the amount of capitalism we would still need. You know... a form of "privelage currency" that you can strive for in order to trade for physically scarce things like prime Earth real-estate on the beach, or to meet a physically scarce celebrity, or to grease that NWO politician, or what have you.)

Re:computer programs and other "commodities"

[renehollan]

When I see interviews or articles like this one, I always wonder where people get the idea that computer programs are something like other commodities. Computers are not like any other production tool invented in the whole history of man, computers are general purpose.

Whoa, there! (gee, moving to Texas is rubbing off on me)

Don't be so quick to throw out a useful model (i.e. capitalist economy).

First, of all, other things are general purpose as well: a pen or pencil can be used to write many different things in different styles, a stove can be used to cook different kinds of food, etc. There are limits to their generality, of course, but the same is true of a computer: a computer can be used to develop and run code, but not cook dinner (at least not without an appropriate interface).

Similarly, do not dismiss Free Software as not fitting in a capitalist economy. Eric Raymond's observations about egoboo and gift economies are not simply a feeble attempt to fit a square peg into a round hole. The essence of capitalism is that exchange of goods and services leads to greater value for all voluntary participants. The only thing special about Free Software is that value is not derived from possession of a scarce good, but rather an automated means to reduce effort.

To continue: the worth of a program is the automation of a task that it provides. This value is not lost if the program is shared, but is very much a real, tangible value: an accounting program saves me the trouble of balancing my books by hand. Because programs have value, the effort to produce them is undertaken: while the program provides value every time it is run, the effort to write the program need only be expended once. It just depends on how badly one wants the corresponding process automated.

The collaborative process traditional with major, popular, Free Software progrms is nothing more than capitalist efficiency at work: the efficiency provided by a cooperative. If the development effort can be spread out, but the fruits of the labour freely replicated, the cooperative mechanism provides tremendous efficiency: for minimal effort, one can contribute to the production of a program that provides value not diluted by the number of contributors.

None of this is inconsistent with capitalism.

However, there is a wrinkle to all this that is, perhaps, inconsistent with capitalism. So far I've been describing utility value: the value that a program has to reduce work through automation. However, if a program is scarce, it also has value because of it's scarcity. In a world where the right to use and share a program can be restricted, via, for example, license and copyright, it is natural that a program can be made scarce, in the legal sense.

It also serves a valuable purpose: people who could not otherwise contribute to the development of a program can fund it's development by paying to license it. Such scare software can not, by definition, be freely shared, but this does not detract from the value it's creation provides to those who pay to license it and those who are paid to create it. Of course, once created, and paid for by enough licensees, there is no need to maintain scarcity, save the desire to leverage the scarcity itself for pure profit on the part of the program writer or writers.

Even this is not inherently evil: if there is risk in not finding enough willing licencees for a piece of scare software, then surely there should be the potential reward of more than enough. Note that, since this risk is minimized for the developer with subscribed production of software (that is, development starts, when there are enough committed licensees), the moral justification for continued artificial scarcity drops. However, suscribed-software production is a rarity. Perhaps, because the production risk has been transfered to the subscribers: there is no guarantee that what is produced, if anything, will work, or be what they want. The closest we have to subscribed-software production is public ownership of corporate producers of scarce sofware.

Yet another facet of the scarce software phenomenon is the willingness of it's users to put up with the scarcity. But, there is an advantage to them to do this: it excludes those who can not afford to license the software from benefitting from it's value. Some of those others might be competitors of the willing licensees and by excluding them from access to scarce software that would reduce their operating costs, a competetive advantage is gained. This is the classic "barrier to entry" in a market.

So, artificial software scarcity permits the production of software where otherwise there would be none, by providing for an increased reward in the face of increased risk. For those who would argue that the availability of software, at any price, is better than the non-availability of same, this is in no way immoral. Nevertheless, there is this nagging feeling that the production of similar free (i.e. non-scarce) software is somehow "better", and "more fair", because no one is excluded from the benefits it provides, and no one suffers from a loss of utility value because of others' gain thereof. The counter, of course, is that because production of new things of value is not bad, the benefits derived from any scarcity value associated with their production are not ill-gotten.

And here lies the rub: scarcity value is threatened by the abundance that Free Software represents, and the moral justification for scarcity value driven production is erased when non-scarce alternatives are available. Free Software production, conversly, is threatened by the lure of benefits available to those who seek to derive value from scarcity. No wonder both Microsoft and RMS are upset about the consequences of each other's philosophies!

Given that the moral justification for scarce software production evaporates when free alternatives are available, does that mean that such production should be, somehow, outlawed? No, this is not necessary, and would presume that no one derives value from the differences between free and scarce versions of the same software. It is not necessary, because a free market will naturally result in abandonment of a scarce good when a cheaper (yes, free as in beer) alternative is available that is perceived to be just as useful. Of course, it would be imoral to try to interfere with such a transition. It is fortuitous indeed then, that free as in speech does go hand in hand with free as in beer.

Perhaps that is the transition away from "a capitalist" ecomomy that is being described -- the replacement of scarce goods with non-scarce ones. But it is wrong to view this as somehow non-capitalist -- post-scarcity, perhaps, as far as software is concerend, but certainly very capitalist. And indeed, it would be folly to try to extend this to goods and services that do not have the potential non-scarce attributes of software.

- 1 troll == article.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it is time we get to moderate the editors as well. This article is nothing but a meta story about a list.

This is not about discussion but about cold ware politics. It is very close to calling linux a communist OS. (Hmm, it is used in china?) the word "marx" and capitalism are used so much, but only to trigger response.

i.e.
Another important factor is that capitalism is in deep crisis.
how does that relate to free or open software? NOT. Free or open software is about coding, not about freedom of speech, or software that cost nothing (if you do not value your time).

the only useful thing in the whole artilce is the fabber link. Now that was stuff i did not hear of.

--posted as ac because i am ashamed i reacted to the troll.

Sweet jesus

[Anonymous Coward]

What a terribly boring article. People need to learn that when you write for the web, longer is not better. That could have used some serious editing.

Seperate the "FSF vs OSI" from the economics

[Telex4]

I think people need to seperate the two halves of this article into "Free vs Open Source" and "Free Software and capitalism".

The first half gives a very informative account of the rift between Free Software and Open Source which is often overlooked, despite its being repeatedly stated by the Free Software Foundation. "Open Source" is about releasing source code for programs to increasive the quality of the product, and the productivity of the project. "Free Software" is about releasing the source code under a binding lisence to ensure all end users have the freedom to use the program as they wish. People love to scoff at "GNU/Linux" enthusiasts, but they forget that the Linux kernel is under the GNU GPL, and that without The GNU PRoject it's unlikely the Linux project would ever have grown so large.

There's also a tendency to talk of more links with proprietary software. There have been so many articles on /. of late where columnists laud StarOffice and Macromedia Flash because they're "flashy and cool", and who suggest that the open source and free software communities should embrace proprietary software, miss the point entirely. GNU/Linux only developed so quickly because of it's open source development, and we can only use it in the ways we love because so much of it is released under the GPL. It's an important point to keep in mind.

As for the discussion of Marxism in relation to Free Software, I'm sure plenty of ignoramuses will be posting saying how the author of the article must be a communist pig, and that he obviously wants to hijack Linux to take down President Bush. Hmm. Righto. It's an interesting discussion, though I get this sinking feeling whenever I hear the words "Marxism" and "contemporary" in the same sentence, given that so many of his ideas are completely outdated (like his idea of shareholders, being the workers in the companies, as opposed to the opportunist investors of today).

*sigh*

[Afty0r]

No matter how important the 'information industry' becomes, we will never be able to replace our basic needs such as food, warmth, clothing and water.

What these leftist and marxist supporters like to believe is that given a nice society everyone will contribute like a good little puppy, what they neglect to face up to is reality : there are bottom feeders everywhere, and there always will be. People leech and feed from the profit of others when they can, and the only way other than (financial/material) incentives to make a population work is at the wrong end of a gun.

As countless visionary rulers have discovered over time, this approach works well for a short period of time, but the population is unhappy, the system suddenly no longer works, violent overthrow occurs, and we start a new system.

As disgusted as I am by some of the facets of capitalism as it is implemented in our current USA/Western Europe + others way, it appears to be working well, because the only people within the system sufficiently angered and upset to bring violence to bear are the groups like those who attacked the world trade summit. Many of these people have been observed to turn up to various rallies and demonstrations and initiate violence, which leads me to believe they attend for the violence, not for the ideals.

Capitalism sucks, nearly as bad as every other system of economy.

Re:- 1 troll == article.

[Hektor_Troy]

Free or open software is about coding, not about freedom of speech, or software that cost nothing (if you do not value your time).

That is your oppinion, not a blatent fact. To me, free and/or open software is about freedom of speech, just as it to some extent is also about gratis software.

As a programmer I value free and/or open software, because I can learn from them, and because it is a way for me to express myself, just like artists express themselves through their art.

As a software user, I value free and/or open software, because it is often gratis, and because I "know", that even if the author of the program decides to discontinue support of it, it will probably still be able to get support for it, as there are probably some knowledgable people using it, who knows just how to fix a problem, be it a work-around or a patch for the program. I am yet to see a user-created patch for Windows 3.1...

Linux being a communist OS? Nope, hardly. Is it a marxistic OS? To some extent - maybe you should read up on marxism and not just go with the McCarthyism definition of everything socialistic being evil.

Re:Head Up Own Arse Syndrome

[nmos]

"I tend to lose all interest in their views as I know they're biased."

Show me someone who knows anything about a topic who isn't biased.

Free Software Being Marxist/Communist isn't flame

[Carnage4Life]

This is not about discussion but about cold ware politics. It is very close to calling linux a communist OS. (Hmm, it is used in china?) the word "marx" and capitalism are used so much, but only to trigger response.

It is sad that many people like you due to Cold War propaganda and misinformation somehow equate Marxism and Communism with evil. The fact of the matter is that the basis behind Marxism is how to benefit society as a whole while not exploiting the workers in the community and creating classes of haves and have-nots. Unfortunately Marxism, like democracy and capitalism, is an ideal that has yet to be properly implemented in reality on a large scale, although some would say that there are communes in various parts of the world that are Marxist.

The problem with communism in the real world is that it came up against a number of harsh realities such as the fact that goods and services are not infinite, and cannot be distributed to the populace as if they were. This is not the case with software or any other sort of intellectual property.

With Free Software, the most able developers can distribute the fruit of their efforts to multitudes of users with little, if any expectation of reward. To each according to his ability (i.e. contribute what you can be it code, documentation or testing) and to each according to his wants (everybody gets the software they desire) is close to becoming a reality in the microcosm that is the Free Software world and this was exactly one of the guiding principles of Marxism.

However, I don't believe this means that Marxism/Communism is about to make a comeback in the political/economic arena any time soon. Instead I take it to be an indication that if technology advances to the degree that devices like Star Trek replicators are possible, then maybe we'll see a resurgence of communism/Marxism as a major political/economic movement.

We can't escape...

[wild_berry]

The article makes so many interesting statements. I was intrigued. Here are my opinions on it:

(1) Western culture = capitalism
I disagree. One of the things we're supposed to be free enough to do is live as we like, and that may mean discarding the trade-for-self-beneficial-profit system we're in, but...
we can't escape: Mankind will always have physical stuff you need to swap for other physical stuff someone else needs. The need brings value, the value brings barter and trade. And we're back in business. :-)

(2) Information Society removes us from production
I think that someone else has said this, but we still need to produce stuff to wear, food to eat, houses to live in cars to drive and computers to code on. Admittedly much of the production of this stuff occurs outside Europe and the US, but...
we can't escape the fact that, for the claims of liberating people from production into an information society, the producers of our goods (in overseas nations) are vastly underpaid for what we pay the TransNational Corporations who make them and their countries don't benefit for that work.
The fact that more than half the world doesn't have a phone makes me suspect that we're living like Marx did, comfortably in bourgeoise London while the people who might benefit most from our thoughts are not even equipped to join the discussion, yet looking up to the Western/Capitalist way to answer their problems.

(3) GPL society will do away with man's selfishness
I *really* don't believe that. The whole capitalist system, even at its roots is bounded in benefitting self in trade of anything you can sell. So what's going to remove this from people to happily share their ideas. I think that if people have the security to spend their days as they please, without worrying about tomorrow and the troubles it might bring, then they can begin to stop meeting their own needs...
we can't escape this selfishness. Or can we? There's nothing I've heard anyone in this discussion say that provides that. I'll get flamed for stating this outright, but I believe there is an answer. E-mail me.

take care.
Ken.Lewis

The need for human labor is not decreasing!

[mareksquonk]

One development is the increasing obsolescence of human labor. The more production is done by machines the less human labor is needed in the production process.

I think this is shallow thinking, an illusion in progress, because "production process" is more interconnected and harder to contain in one bucket of isolated money/goods/value added than the interviewee lets on.

Human labor is always increasing because there are more humans laboring with more opportunity to labor at something, and therefore is always more needed; ie., there is a yawning and only getting wider permanent shortage of it because more things go undone, and the undonness of things in the world is only increasing -- thanks to production and creation of resources, as well as waste, want and web, and also, the loss of ecosystem and resources.

It is the displacement and barriers which come about from various turmoil, ranging from eco-calamities and wars to local economical or production hiccups that derail the effectiveness of any one human's labor, to the point of belittling or endangering the human.

The true invariant is having a unit of actual time to fill per human. What goes into it, by definition, is the human's labor and the complement of it, everything else. But even in such a binary division, the conception of free time does not respect this division: One's free time may well contribute to one's human labor.

I'm hopeful about free software, as adding flow capacity to the human exchange manifold, but I don't buy the obsolescence of human labor.

Re:I don't feel so enlightened

[abe ferlman]

First, you cannot expect a 'self-unfolding' project to provide food for you, or heat for your house, or schooling for your kids. You can only dedicate time to these projects when your basic needs have been met...

That's where the robots come in. Quoth Stallman:
"The waste inherent in owning information will become more and more important and will ultimately make the difference between the utopia in which nobody really has to work for a living because it's all done by robots and a world just like ours where everyone spends much time replicating what the next fellow is doing."

The only way I can have a better chance is if I can offer some incentive to the teacher
Perhaps you should live in Lake Woebegone where the children are all above average. What is it that makes you think you couldn't find a good teacher in a society not based on money? What about all the people who would like to teach but end up working for corporations because teacher's pay is so shitty? What about the reduced overhead for the creation and distribution of textbooks in a copyright-free economy?

Third, there will always bee a huge horde of people who ONLY take
Exclusive ownership of information benefits these people. The GPL society as described can handle freeloaders, what it has a hard time with is exlusivity.

If all needs are provided for, luxuries become paramount and exploitation is EASIER
Hence the flood of immigrants away from the relatively wealthy US to the relatively poor Mexico to avoid the exploitation, right?. I thought you were a capitalist?!

I don't think it's quite as correct to say that greed breaks the GPL as that the GPL accomadates greed and demands an end to information-envy. It is the conrol, rather than the hoarding, of information that makes the GPL society difficult to realize.

Warmed over Marxist pablum

[laetus]

Until the 1970s capitalism promised a better world to people in the Western countries, to people in the former Soviet bloc and to the Third World. It stopped doing it starting in the 1980s and dismissed it completely in the 1990s. Today the capitalist leaders are glad if they are able to fix the biggest leaks in the sinking ship.

This guy has obviously never heard of the business cycle and transformational technologies. We happen to be at a nexus where the business cycle is bottoming exactly at the time when we have so many promising technologies that will transform society (biotech, nanotech, etc.)

Capitalism works. It's just cyclical. The Marxist utopians always wait until the bottoming of an economic cycle (hence his "sinking ship" metaphor") to wave their red flags and proclaim capitalism dead. And yet, the cycle continues and we'll be on our way up again soon.

As for the capitalism's promise to better the Third World, no such promise existed. Capitalism promises that if you create a fair market, lower barriers to entry, and allow people to innovate and work hard, you'll prosper. The Third World's poverty is not because of capitalism but despite it. If the Third World would get on board, clean up their corrupt governments and change the culture of always wanting a handout, maybe capitalism would work for them.

Ask post-war Korea and Japan about how fast an economy can be rebuilt (within a generation!). You just have to have the culture to do it.

Re:Interesting contrast with the First Monday piec

[DOsinga]

The first article goes into why it seems that Open Source is incompatible with usual capitalism, but is not. People join Open Source projects not because they want to give something back or because they have a wealth surplus, but because they expect to economically gain from it.

The second article thinks that Open Source heralds the second coming of Socialism and will ultimately defeat Capitalism and the reason for production. (Each accordin to it's needs).

The problem is linguistic

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is the multiple uses of the word "free". RMS likes to say "free as in free speech, not as in free beer". Lessig has a better approach in his new book. Free translates into both "libre" and "gratis". Free software is as in libre, not necessarily as in gratis. The reason for the choice of the term "open source" was an attempt to work around the lack of respect in the business community for things that are gratis. The business community greatly respects things that are libre, as in free enterprise.

Re:I don't feel so enlightened

[tdye]

Okay, so I bashing you, that's how I start MY long posts :-)

LOL

It's necessary to trade your work power/knowledge for things that you want/need.

This is what I'm saying! It works VERY well for Free Software, but it just can't work for the 'GPL Society' that the article talked about. Even if you provide everything that everyone wants, you still need some mechanism to trade the things that retain their value after the (heh) GPL Revolution. Trade means capitalism! You can't replace capitalism without Star Trek style replicators or some other mechanism to render EVERYTHING valueless. Even in Star Trek, you had to compete to get to go into space... non-replicatable skills like leadership or mind-reading still have value, and they are traded for space-exploration.

Do I need a huge house? No. Do I need a 100.000 dollar car? No. You have to see these flaws on the human desires, and critize them, to support free software. In a world with 3 billion people suffering from hunger, to discuss our meat is a little selfish.
If we do lower our futile desires for such useless itens, we can begin to see where Free Software can help us.

I completely understand and respect your position on this. Sure, I don't need a $100,000 house... but I might want one. And what's wrong with that? The folks suffering from hunger probably wouldn't mind one either, given the choice between that and a UN tent or a hut in the mountains. The thing is, you can't translate that into an entire social system, because while you're very altruistic, I might not be... and if I have skills that you can't replicate, you'll have to put up with my terms whether you like it or not. A social system needs to be able to allow those generous people to give without being throttled by giving the greedy ones the ability to screw the entire society. A GPL Society as described in the article places MORE power with greedy dishonest people, not less.

Also, you can't always expect a brilliant brain surgeon to take the same compensation for his efforts that an unskilled Somali farmer takes.

I program on PHP for living. I can survive only on this, for a long time. I do not empty my client's wallet for anything I develop. I think that before I even begin to think about how much I want to get from a project, I need to think if it is a reasonable amount.

The thing is, you don't make money from PHP. You make your money by trading your semi-unique skill for some dollar amount. It's good that you charge a reasonable price, because if you didn't you'd starve or change your mind. If, however, you were the very best PHP programmer on the planet, you could charge a lot more. The capitalist system allows you to do that... but don't think you live on Free Software. You live on trading an uncommon skill for currency. You sell your knowledge of Free Software. If everybody knew PHP, then the PHP code would never feed you, nor would your PHP skills... it's not the Free Software that feeds you, and it can't because I'll never pay you for PHP (and neither will anyone else... it's free!).

If you have 2 teachers like this, the need is lowered. If you have 3, 4, 10, 20, 150, 400, 1000, 00, your argument fails completely.

Ahh... but you can't have 100,000 BEST teachers. You can only have one of those, and that one person has a limited amount of time for teaching, and a limited class size. If I want my kids to learn from the ABSOLUTE BEST teacher IN THE WORLD, then I need to offer something as incentive so the teacher will pick my kids and not someone else's.

In the real world, this should fall into tiers... the best teachers make the most money, and so on, down to the crappiest ones, and I trade my skills for the best teacher they will buy me. (of course, the various governments break this system for general knowledge classrooms, and so you rarely get any highly skilled teachers who actually teach anything because their teaching skill has little value)

But if this person realizes that he's got there with the help of others, he will help someone who wants to be like him. If he doesn't want, it's a character flaw.

Maybe it is a character flaw in your worldview, but a social system that demands its members accept a particular attitude must either:

1)Enforce this attitude through constant monitoring and punishment for wrong thinking.

2)give up altogether and find a system that accomodates undesirable people without punishing everyone.

3)suffer a violent revolution as the people get tired of being told how to think.

How does the GPL Society force people to be nice and give of themselves? It requires altruism on the part of the overwhelming majority, which is COMPLETELY unrealistic.

You analized the monetary reward of the free software movement, while I analized from another perspective

I think Free Software is great! I just think that trying to translate that into an entire social system is a cracked idea that can never be anything more, and IMHO should never be anything more.

Coder - Creator or employee?

[jeff13]

Open Source software vs. Microsoft/Apple software.
Ask yourself, would you rather write great code for yourself, and thus sell it for your own benefit... Or - would you rather be a Micro$oft or Apple employee? Now from the customer end - would you rather agree to the Micro$oft license or the Open Source License? Which one allows you the best options? Which one places you in danger of losing your privacy and even inaliable rights? Which is more expensive? Which is free?

Why these questions cause giant flame wars on /. only goes to show that most programmers are really great at what they do... but they aren't particularly wise.
P.S. I love using the word inaliable because the M$ spell checker doesn't understand it. Curious no?

It is all about me

[PineHall]

People look after their own self interests. People will not reach out and help others until they are certain they have "enough", and that is a little more than they feel is necessary for others to have. Capitalism works because it is based on the idea that people will look after themselves. This is also why Capitalism needs to be restrained to prevent people's selfishness from oppressing others. This so called "GPL Society" assumes that people are naturally good and will share equally. Not true! It is a society that will not work.

Capitalism is failing?

[Freedom Bug]

He makes a bunch of excellent points, and then he says this:

"Another important factor is that capitalism is in deep crisis.Until the 1970s capitalism promised a better world to people in the Western countries, to people in the former Soviet bloc and to the Third World. It stopped doing it starting in the 1980s and dismissed it completely in the 1990s. Today the capitalist leaders are glad if they are able to fix the biggest leaks in the sinking ship."

By what measure is it failing? My preferred measure of well being is life expectancy: it correlates well with income, and is a good general, objective measure of quality of life. In has increased from 42 to 49 in sub Saharan Africa, from 53 to 64 in the undeveloped countries and from 71 to 76 in the first world.

What's another good measure? Let's use people in extreme poverty. It's remained relatively constant since 1950 at about 1.2 billion people. At the same time, the population of the world more than doubled. In other words, the world gained about 3.4 billion "not poor" people.
Open source will change the world, and it will change economics. But in the realm of scarce goods, capitalism works. No other century in history was as good for the human race as the 20th, despite the efforts of Hitler (6 million Jews), Stalin (20 million Ukrainians and rural Russians) and Mao (30 million)

Bryan

If you don't agree with me, you're a pedophile.

[Chris Burke]

I love how Jizzbug implies that if you don't like this article, you're a close-minded nationalist. That's an underhanded way to try to get people to agree with you -- akin to saying "if you don't vote for my repressive 'anti-terrorist' legislation, you hate America".

Which is funny, because I would have enjoyed and agreed with the article -more- if I hadn't felt someone would be pissed if I didn't.

Of course I'm right, and if you don't agree, you're a pedophile.

It isn't capitalism or communism...

[Anonymous Coward]

What most people don't realize is that we have entered a new age. Capitalism and Communism are about the Iron age and talk about control over the means of production.

In a new age it is meaningless to talk about things in terms of the previous age. This would be the equivalent of talking about CEOs' in terms of divine right.

Capitalism only exists for material goods that have scarcity. Communism is about workers controlling the means of production.

Well, I own dozens of computers. I own computers that are more powerful than super computers of just 20 years ago. I have instant communications with anyone in the world. I can protect my files from any power in the world for at least a few years.

In the information age I have more power than the most powerful men in the world just 50 years before.

This communication has allowed us to develop software products that rival those from capitalist developers costing billions of dollars to produce. And we share that software between us all, effectively sharing billions of dollars of wealth.

If you can't find a way to make a living off of these resources, then you really aren't trying very hard.

Marx, Free Software and Robots

[ruzel]

Anyone who is driven in the software industry to create a situation in which everything is free simply does not understand human nature. Benefits arise from curiosity, whether those benefits are money or ego or status. And the production of energy and ideas in a human body is not free either (i.e. you need to eat and be able to afford your computers)

Money is not going to go away any time soon. It may turn into something that is no longer just faith, but it is not going anywhere. There are two problems that Marxists (of any color) can never seem to grasp:

1. Corporate Capitalism has caused major price *gaps*. The prices we use for things like CDs are way out of whack because of IP law. That does not mean that the MPAA is going to come crumbling down tomorrow and prices will go to zero. On the contrary, over time, prices will decrease to incredibly small amounts. The same goes for energy.
2. This is far-fetched, but I still think reasonable. Marxist never seem to understand that what Karl Marx considered the proliteriat lacking in the means of production would eventually become so stupid that they would be incapable of handling or even revolting to regain the rights to the means of production. Only I'm not talking about humans -- I'm talking about the mechanical proliteriats that are gradually replacing human proliteriats.

Things as complex as economies, countries, and even corporations just don't change overnight and they don't generally change in huge extremes. Most software might become open source, but most of it will never quite be free as the market redistributes itself. I've said that I'm more than willing to pay an independent programmer ten bucks for his widget but that I've never paid Adobe the hoards of money they want for their behemoths (most of the features of which I don't and can't use).

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Re:I don't feel so enlightened

[Kwil]

Maybe it is a character flaw in your worldview, but a social system that demands its members accept a particular attitude must either:

1)Enforce this attitude through constant monitoring and punishment for wrong thinking.

2)give up altogether and find a system that accomodates undesirable people without punishing everyone.

3)suffer a violent revolution as the people get tired of being told how to think.

How does the GPL Society force people to be nice and give of themselves? It requires altruism on the part of the overwhelming majority, which is COMPLETELY unrealistic.

Simple.. if you don't be nice and give of yourself, you don't get given to. That's the nature of a gift-giving society. In a way, I guess it works out as number 1 in your list. Then again, you can say that EVERY world view works out as number 1 in your list, including our current one. Right now, if you followed the tactics of a "gift-giving" world-view, you'd soon be left with nothing, because people do not feel a very great sense of reciprocity these days.

If you are the "BEST" teacher, you have a limited amount of time. Those students who you choose to spend that time with would be those of the parents who are the biggest gift-givers, because that increases your prestige in the society and makes it so that more people want to give to you, even if perhaps they don't have kids at that time.

The trick to remember in a gift-giving society is that you don't say "I want.." you say "I give..".
The more you give, the more you get. The more you get, the more you can give until you finally wind up getting the thing you want. You don't go to the teacher and say "I want you to teach my child." You go to the teacher and say "Have this thing I'm giving you. I've given my neighbors many things and they like me because of it." The teacher looks at this stuff, compares it to his/her other students and decides either "I will give your child teaching as helping you will look good for me and more people will give me things" or "You are very generous, but there are people who are more generous than you, and more people will respect me if I give my time to their children than yours. But I will give you this other thing in return for your generosity."

It's not as efficient for the individual as saying "I want" and getting that thing, but it increases the movement of resources.. as movement increases, more people benefit from the resources, and the resources people do want most will tend to gravitate toward those who can provide the most value, not just to individuals, but to the society as a whole, for them.

Now say the teacher decided your kid isn't as worth it. You can keep trying to give to the teacher, but such action is seen as crass by the society as a whole, so when individuals decide who they're going to give gifts to, they look at you and think - "He's not really generous, he only gives when he wants something, better I give to someone else as I'm more likely to get something back in return." The more people that think this, the more giving circles you get shut out of, until it starts impacting the things you actually want.

So basically, like in a free market society, some people get, and some people don't. The difference is in who gets and who doesn't. Currently, if you think mostly of your needs, you will tend to get more than someone who thinks mostly of what society as a whole needs. With the gift-giving society, this is reversed without repealing the laws of human greed.

Are some things going to be scarce still? Damn right. But those things will gravitate toward those who help the society the most. Those who happen to have those things but give little will find themselves *having* to give those things to keep themselves in the circle and keep getting anything at all. Those who have a great abundance of things (including scarce talents, etc) can keep more of what they want while still remaining in the circles.