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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."
I'm waiting for the day when we start to have tools that allow UI interfaces to be designed on the fly, kind of like a TeX for the UI.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
The views in the article are old fashioned to me. They take for granted that there has to be division. I for one, refer to the 2 movements as one: Open Source/Free Software - I don't want to divide them, specifically, because they are 2 movements with similar goals, OS for the commercial/popular side, and FS for the philosophy. I believe they only have a chance of long term existence if we treasure both as separate but meaningful means to change the way we think about software.
We need unity, and if you can stretch your hearts, not only between these 2 factions, also with the much hated microsoft, even though I myself find it hard to think and write such a thing.
If you ask bill gates ( for example, in this recent interview) what motivates him, he says it's because he wants a computer in every home, because he wants things to be simple to use, he wants to be involved. It's a good vision, even though he's distorted in the way he carries it out.
That's why we need unity. How memorable would it be if a person like Gates turned around and said he was wrong, and he was sorry for his limited vision on the impact of his efforts on society, that now he saw how important the method was as well as the aim.
And same for this guy in this article: Seems to me he also is attached too much to the end product than the process. The process is what we will be living through for the rest of our lives. The end product is just a party one evening. Why don't we concentrate on improving the process of getting to our different software utopias? Utopia will always be 5 steps away, that's what utopia is there for in the first place - to move you forward.
For example, computers may well be doing the kind of hard labour that clerks and secretaries used to do, but you can't predict the entire universe: that's rationalism, and that's what the great belivers in Taylor and Ford used to believe in. Better to believe that in a social environment, the best solution comes from your interaction with that environment: Social constructionism puts for the point of view that reality is constructed through our interactions, not through planning it out beforehand. Look at the work of agile methodologists for example: make small changes in increments and you have a chance to see if that's really the best way forward. Utopian visions of societies are flawed already: it might be perfect is everyone was a communist, or if everyone was a capitalist, but the reality is most people are somewhere in between(or nowhere near either), and so is reality!
But we all want to do good and change the way things are, why can't we work together and use dialogue to build our future instead of wasting time fighting between each other?