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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."
Contrast this interview with For The Love Of Open Source, which says that Open Source is perfectly rational in a capitalistic society. I think that is more convincing.
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.
Theorize away! Academics will build their arguments and even create detailed demographies, without a demonstrable conclusion. And still, the development will continue, undisturbed.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
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.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
I've read it before in lotss free software essays of varying quality, but there's still no explanation offered on how this is going to put food on my table (not in the way of making money, but in the way of literally producing the stuff and shipping it to the store around the corner), or build a computer, for that matter. I agree that the community can whip up a microprocessor design, but I'm not sure about the billion-dollar semiconductor plant to produce it...
How would that be handled, by waiting for people who think it's a cool idea? They'd have to wait for people who think it's a cool idea to build all those manufacturing tools and so on... In short, I don't think this can work.
I think people need to seperate the two halves of this article into "Free vs Open Source" and "Free Software and capitalism".
/. 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.
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
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).
In todays world the driving force of the global economy is the human brain. Thoughts occur, and are solidified into products.
;-)
The quicker you solidify your thoughts into products the more likely you are to achieve a state of temporary monopoly.
The more novel your thought, the more likely you are to achieve a state of temporary monopoly.
Free Software is simply a collection of solidified thoughts which the originating individuals decided not to sell, but to give.
This will never change the fundamentals of a temporary monopoly driven economy. It may take the cost away from certain areas. Communication gets cheaper every day - travel was expensive, then telegrams were cheaper, then telephone calls were cheaper, now email is cheaper, in most cases its free. This in no way changed the capitalist nature of society - it simply oiled the wheels.
Linux does the same thing. I can start up a small software company with a PC and Free Software, or with a PC and MS software. The first way is cheaper, therefore more likely to happen - if the Free Software is as good, or better, than the MS I am also more likely to succeed.
If Dell could start with $1000 (which he did) back in the day the next 'big thing' could be starting today with a second hand PC and Linux - total cost $500. Capitalism rocks.
Sorry if this is off topic - but I've got WAAAYY too much Karma - its no fun anymore
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.
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.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
"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.
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.
As far as I can tell, it's not in the sig (there is no sig, it's an AC!) but it's just appended to the link with a bunch of spaces (%20) in between the goatse and the site redirect that goes before it.
If you enter this in to your navbar:
http://srd.yahoo.com/* http://www.linux.com"
You can guess where you'll end up. Clever trick, but then taco said they'd have to be clever.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
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
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.
Here's the thing I don't get: (and since I don't get it, I must be a closed-minded jingoist...sheesh)
This vision, this 'rethought Marxism', doesn't have any real meat to it. Now, I'd love to join the mailing list and see if anyone has come up with any substance to back these ideas. The thing is, I don't believe there can be any substance to them.
The idea of a "GPL Society", where everyone takes what they need and contributes what they want, is fundamentally flawed. It's possible, perhaps, to get some distance towards this within a capitalist system because of the ability to convert quite a lot of labor into information transfer while also adding value. The thing is, Free software is a poor example... it exists because those people who are contributing to it do not rely on their creation for survival. Modelling an overall social system, where objects and services often cannot be translated into a digital form, on a system which ONLY exists as perfectly reproducible digital information, is a mistake of the highest order; this is where the "GPL Society" falls over. There are three big reasons why...
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... not only has Free Software grown up inside a capitalist system, it is completely dependant on that system to sustain the creators of Free Software. Only succesful capitalists have time to create things which do not contribute to their survival. The only way for the GPL society to work is to ensure that every person has, for free, everything they could need, in a manner that doesn't involve labor on the part of some other individual.
Second, even if we could completely automate every layer of food production (and every other industry and commodity) it still wouldn't work because of this sort of scenario: I want my kids to go to a good school, so I check out all the local freely offered schooling (because I live in the GPL Society, all the schooling is provided by people who want to do that sort of thing as a self-unfolding project that makes them feel good, and they get to do this because they don't need anything at all) and I decide that nobody around me can provide what I think is a brilliant education. So, I go out and find a teacher who's REALLY REALLY good... the thing is, this teacher also has 6000 other parents clamoring for her time, so she gets to choose who she picks. The only way I can have a better chance is if I can offer some incentive to the teacher; I have to figure out how I can give her something she WANTS (she's already got everything she needs). Guess what... we're right back to capitalism. Maybe she wants a bigger house and a bunch of handcarved art-nuveau accent work, and the only way I can give it to her is to get a bunch of house-building hand-carving type guys together to build it for her... but some of those guys want some incentive to drop their own architectural self-unfolding projects and come help me instead... how can I compensate these guys for their time? What if I don't have anything they want? Well, I guess I need to give them something they can use to trade for things they want... like money. Until we invent replicators, it's impossible to give everyone all the things they WANT; capitalism, and the market economy, is the only way to deal with this VERY common scenario. It's so common, most people don't even think about it anymore. It's second nature for a reason, folks, and not because you've been trained by capitalist bugaboos to think like that.
Third, there will always bee a huge horde of people who ONLY take, or who exploit the desires of others for their own gain. When exclusively taking becomes not just possible, but easy and socially acceptable, then even more people won't contribute anything back. If all needs are provided for, luxuries become paramount and exploitation is EASIER, not harder. Greed automatically breaks the "GPL Society" and any other idea that follows the same path.
Like Marx, this is a nice idea when it's kicked around by a bunch of homogenous thinkers on a mailing list, but when you try to apply it to the rest of the non-intelligencia it abruptly falls to bits.
Whatever happened to JonKatz?
Heh...my dad was employee #8 at Dell. Michael Dell used to help my Xerox my hand.
So close to being a "dellionaire" - my dad decided to leave Dell to start his own business which eventually tanked. He sold his stock options for some $12,000.
Maybe I should see if ol' Mike still remembers me...
Why contrast? The interview first goes into depts to explain the differences between Open and Free. Then it continues to debate the benefits and revolutionary properties (?) of Free Software. The article you mention is explicitly about Open Source Software.
Since both articles are about different issues I find contrasting them a little bit difficult at best, and pointless at worst.
Although the article has some strong points, especially the artificially created shortage of goods by protecting them with IP laws, a comparison of Free Software with Marxism is quite far stretched IMHO.
But it is still a very appealing model for me.
Pardon me for pissing in the punch here, but...
Free software won't change the world.
Free bread and vegetables would change the world. Free steel would change the world. Free software? It's an interesting concept for a particular industry. However, I would say 80-90% of the world doesn't give a damn about free software.
First of all, there are more important things to work for than for free software... which is why music, film, art, and literature are all not free either, and those have been important to culture far longer than software has been (collectively). Second, there are a lot of people who are not directly affected by software, how it was obtained, and who worked on it. Third, most people who use any kind of software in their day to day lives are concerned neither with the quality or the price of the software that they use... far too often the quality and price of computer hardware greatly offsets that concern, and no one cares about software unless it starts to break... and then even at that point, most people live with it and are not inclined to complain too loudly, given the overall convenience that modern computer systems provide.
Free software changing the world? Free software having revolutionary social implications? That's a tough sell. Segway has a better shot at changing the world, and I don't even know if they'll last 3 years. Please don't spout off comments like this without direct, convincing evidence to state these claims, otherwise Slashdot is nothing more than the online version of the Weekly World News, Linux edition. You might have far better, convincing arguments if you simply take a more rational view of what free software can affect.
(I'm all for free software, by the way)
Of course, you apologize in advance, saying Marxism "has yet to be properly implemented" and that its basis is to benefit society as a whole. Well, the basis behind driving drunk may be to get home safely, but the evidence suggests it's a goddamn stupid idea. Of course, maybe it just isn't always properly implemented.
You seem to agree that Free Software is Marxist. Do you think it will succeed then? You and the other both cite the ability of anyone to take whatever they want without giving back to the community. The author even boasts about how he's never contributed anything!
I guess I'm the technological equivalent of a kulak, since while I'm willing to contribute (as I have) to the body of free software, and not willing to give up my livelyhood for others. Luckily, I agree with you that "Marxism/Communism is about to make a comeback in the political/economic arena any time soon" so I don't worry about being rounded up and shot.
So contrary to capitalism, in which increasing automation always destroys the work places for people and thus their means to live, in a GPL Society maximum automation would be an important aim of the whole society.
Once things are wonderfully automated, what do the people that used their braun instead of their brains for a living do then? I think maybe smart people forget that not everyone can support themselves by sitting in some office micromanaging or writing code for the greater good of the new economy.
There always has to be jobs for the bottom half. This is just a reality of society.
... or are we assuming their usefulness will be just as passé as capitalism when that time comes?
----- rL
I think it's rather presumptuous of you to assume that "people [who use] their braun instead of their brains," in the present social order, are incapable of creative activity on their own terms.
It's that old truism: "You are what you do." If you do stupid, boring, and monotonous work, chances are pretty good that you'll end up boring, stupid and monotonous.
A postcapitalist society has the potential to really permit people to live again -- to work because they love to work and love what they do -- not out of some fallacious and wrongheaded "work ethic."
Insomuch as the Slashdot crowd is concerned, consider the early hackers.... why did they get into this in the first place? I doubt greatly that "making myself and a bunch of heartless VCs richer than snot" was high on the agenda. No, rather, it was about the love of learning, creating, tinkering... hacking.
It's the same thing that drove Beethoven. And Shakespeare. And Picaso and van Gogh. The work itself was a labour of love, not some toiling monotony. Just because the hacker's passion is technology doesn't mean this "toiling underclass" you describe don't have -- or couldn't have -- passions that are equally voracious.
I'm not so presumptuous to think that ethic -- that work should be play -- can't enrapture people who don't fit into some elite model of the "intellectual."
There don't have to be jobs for the "bottom half," because the idea of the "bottom half" is absurd.
Automation, cybernation and liberatory technologies have the potential to make work itself -- in a capitalistic sense, in any case -- obsolete.
Maybe, then, we can get back to our humanity for a change.
bacchusrx.
Life after capitalism? The participatory economics project
What does patriotism have to do with this?
Jingoistic: Extreme nationalism characterized especially by a belligerent foreign policy; chauvinistic patriotism.
Oliver's army is here to stay Oliver's army are on their way And I would rather be anywhere else But here today
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.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
Pretty much every answer that has criticised the article seems to hold the view that we are now at the pinnacle of development, at least economically. While change just for the sake of change might not alway be a good thing, nobody can argue that we don't live in a society full of change. Some of our "fundamentals truths" about human nature, for instance, may be rocked. Just be carefull about the words "never" and "always".
Also, please don't make the error of confusing "socialists" simply as believers of marx. Socialism existed before marx and has developed long after marx. The only thing that "socialism" basically implies is that the ownership of the means of production are not private. Everything else can be negotiated, some branches even think a money-based economy is a good thing.
Oh, dear, I'm going to have to explain this again, while I should be sipping my coffee.
Ideas (software, music, movies, etc) are not property.
Look through the Ten Commandments, and you'll see that it's wrong to covet your neighbor's wife, his goat, his house. But nothing about his ideas. Indeed, I suspect that if you study any religion, you'll find no reference to copyright or patents.
Copyright and patents emerged late in the last milennium... basically, intellectuals and scientists managed to convince governments to pass these laws... for their own benefit, of course.
But think about it... and go back to my proposition that ideas are not property. Like many have observed, "stealing" an idea (or copying software) does not deny its orginator of the "property". In fact, intellectual property laws serve to enforce scarcity. The theory is that more ideas will be generated by rewarding those who create them. But consider the number of people who are denied the use of the idea... is it a fair trade-off?
In fact, intellectual property laws themselves are a socialist construction (though they came into existence somewhat before socialism itself). They protect special interests (in this case, the interests of smart people) at the expense of the general public. That may not be socialism in the way the term is commonly used, but it's socialism in the sense that it's the opposite of a free market.
So Free Software is a true free-market phenomenon. Though it might go against the grain of what you think of as capitalism (i.e. big companies making money), think about it for a second. Intellectual property laws do nothing but grant monoplies on certain things. For example, Windows. Whatever the merits of the MS antitrust case, the real monopoly behind it all is the one that the government granted Microsoft for the use of the term "Windows" and for the code that makes it up. If Microsoft makes more money because of that, it's not because of free markets but because of artificial government protections. The fact that the government is now prosecuting MS for making the most of those laws is indeed sweet irony.
Socialist countries (or countries that lean toward it) will eventually find that they don't especially like Free software, because their impulse is to control. It might go against the grain in a fairly capitalist country like the US, but to the extent that it does, it's because of non-capitalist (more accurately, non-free-market) laws.
So, the terms "capitalist" and "socialist" are really not especially useful... think more in terms of free markets and controlled markets. In those terms, Free Software is the ultimate free market creation. That little or no money changes hands is irrelevant... the freedom of the software provides the public with software at a good price. THAT is the purpose of a free market economy, after all. It's not about making it easy for people to profit, but about providing consumers with goods and services at the lowest possible price.
Oh, and just so we're clear... I think that in an ideal world, there never would have been any IP laws. But I also feel that repealing them would be disastrous. Free Software serves to slowly undermine the IP laws in a non-destructive way, and that's why it's catching on.
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 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.
Would the moderator please point out, off list to shomon at softhome.net which other comment is on the topics of unity, social constructionism and utopia already? Or if you don't agree with the opinion, please post a reply, (off list too if you want), but I honestly can't find another article with the same viewpoint, and that's why I posted what I did.
Ale
Ok, I have karma to burn so here's goes my best attempt to get a -5 troll.
Software, free software could change the world? Yes. Free as in beer and speech , yes.
The Soviet Unions space program would have far surpassed ours in the 60's and 70's if they had access to our scientific research and software. Hell, the entire planet is playing catch-up to the United states in regards to space research and everyone is paying catch up to the Japan technology machine. Why is there pockets of technology in the sea of technological backwardness? One could say that eastern europe doesnt have any computers. That is pure BS, the United states threw away more computers than there were people needing them in europe just last year. Hell, I threw away 5 computers last year and 30 computers from work. All of them are quite serviceable and useable with linux and other free software. and can help students, and scientists.
The hardware and software is out there. the hardware is destroyed by morons that run our countries corperations... ("someone might get ourt plans to the XYZ dis-comboobulator" off of that computer"... but that's the receptionists pc, and that info is on the hard drive... " I DONT CARE, destroy everything including the monitor! we cant let our competitiors get an edge!"
Tis the thinking of the morons we call our CEO's CTO's and CSO's... Now the task to the free software...
The software can change the world, A free GIS system, or even a free SQL database with OS can give technology to tiny and small governments that are trying to build any infrastructure to their community. and this infrastructure is what will change the lives of the people that live there. giving them sewers, drinkable water, roads, give the rest of the world the huge luxuries like these that every western european and United states citizen take for granted every day.
This is where that free software will change the planet....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Alright ... you go do that ... because you and RMS are the only ones who care.
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.
*EEEEMMMPPP* wrong again *EEEEMMMPPP* Linux is so big because of peoples desire for options and a desire to create. Without the GNU project it would still be open source and would still thrive. It's because the GNU is a leech on the computer world and can't get their own OS working that GNU openly endorsed linux. GNU slaps its name on all kinds of things, but that's all it is ... a brand name.
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.
You show me where I can eat, sleep, live, and be comfortable for free ... and I'll start liking the boring blinking console. Until that time ... I'll keep using the "flashy and cool stuff.
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.
Here ... from your beloved gnu.org
The $5000 Deluxe Distribution includes all GNU software compiled for your choice of computing platform (microchip and operating system). Please contact the FSF Office if you are interested.
Yup, righto that's $5K American dollars for FREE software ... which absolutely amazes me because you would think they would just charge for the cost of the production because they don't really like money. But companies like cheapbytes are bad because they're a capitalistic company trying to spread linux at an affordable cost ... right?
And in the light of capitalism I will quote cartman "AH! I think yer all a bunch of goddamme hippies"
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Get your bets in on when people will stop trying to define what is happening here in this natural evolution of software development (using terms that are not advanced enough to correctly identify it, not to mention communicate it accurately and in simple terms.)
Man has developed societies over time, in order to deal with growing complexities of population growth. Perhaps the tower of babel was one such example where a problem developed in complexity?
But we learn how to overcome such problems (who knows maybe we will overcome the language barrier, thru some new and improved portable babelfish speach to text to speech converter).
And in overcomming such problems encountered in the growing population of society, we build upon common ground what we have as a whole.
In the software industry, where does this "common ground" that we are building upon exist?
Consider the roads/highways in the US, where would business be if there weren't such common pathways of the quality and quantity of US roads?
And where does the money to build and maintain such roads come from?
As others have correctly pointed out, software is unlike any other product, it's non-physical in essence, though recorded upon very inexpensive media, perhaps even pencil and paper.
MicroSoft is a good example of trying to build a tower of babel into the heavens.
Instead the natural evolution of software development is building the highway that can handle the weight and transport alot more than a stairway or elevator can.
When Bill Gates yelled piracy, he in effect cause a distraction, a detour of this natural evolution and by the carrot of money. But that was when the software industry was small enough to do so in even gaining money hungry followers to help sustain the distraction, the detour.
Much of this works that trys to explain what is going on here, does so based on the current market share. Look back what others were saying even 5 or 6 years ago and realize this. Then project forward and realize that companies like Microsoft who want to control the road/highway with toll stations, simply will not exist. Instead they wil be more like vechicle manufactures (or at least that's a good distraction for them at this time.)
Without this common ground highway, we simply cannot go as far as the population demands. And the population is going to do what is good for it, rather than for the self selected few who want to put up toll booths. Even governments are more and more supporting the common ground highway as they also need to travel over the highway.
But it's not just software, it's information too, but one thing at a time.
Open Source software vs. Microsoft/Apple software.
/. only goes to show that most programmers are really great at what they do... but they aren't particularly wise.
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$oft license or the Open Source License? Which one allows you the best options? Which one places you in danger of losing your privacy and even inaliable rights? Which is more expensive? Which is free?
Why these questions cause giant flame wars on
P.S. I love using the word inaliable because the M$ spell checker doesn't understand it. Curious no?
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.
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
Which article is first and second here?! And where the heck do you get this "second coming of Socialism" nonsense?
The article on firstmonday.org not once suggested that Free Software would undermine Capitalism, in fact showed why the existence of Free Software was essentially a product of traditional capitalist theory-- and sought to criticize works like ESRs C&B insomuch as C&B promoted the notion that Free Software was the result of some radical shift in culture specific to hackers.
The article at govtech.com clearly discusses why several world governments are looking at Free Software, and their primary reasons are national pride and national security-- with an emphasis on the latter. They don't want to be beholden to an American corpooration, especially when that company might either purposefully (with backdoors) or accidentally (by hiding mistakes until too late) compromise national security in those nations.
Neither of these articles puts any weight behind a single economic or political system or another. Simply because China is nominally Communist, this reflects nothing about their reasons for adopting Linux. Germany and France are both in the Linux-leaning camp and they are both solid democracies and capitalist economies.
I do not have a signature
My apologies... for some reason I thought I was in the comments section for the government security and linux story!
I do not have a signature
Except when you have a foolish legal construct that prevents you from tampering with the engine (some countries,) or applying or removing certain parts to increase performance.
Some countries legislate the tyre size as well- you may not substitute a different tyre size than that of original equipment. Some countries won't allow you to work on your own brakes or suspension.
Not so remote from Linux, if the US SSSCA law had been introduced and passed.
Otherwise, very remote. You cannot legally go mucking about with your engine at will. You can legally go mucking about with your kernel to your heart's delight.
So if I disagree that this is in any way enlightening, that makes me non-free thinking and jingoistic? What a biased, bigoted thing to say. In other words, anyone who doesn't espouse the neo-Marxist views expressed in this interview is labled a jingoist?
How typical of left/liberal thinking; if you don't agree with us, you are a bad person! LOL.
Making car parts is a skill, as is hacking on a kernel.
How do you think replica cars are made? how do you think hot rods are made? When some parts go out of production, people with the right tools and skills produce their own. Same as in kernels.
People stamp sheetmetal, lay up fibreglass molds, weld together tube frames, machine billet aluminum all the time. Shoot, not many people cast their own engine block anymore, but that's how it used to be done. These days, unless you're replicating a whole version of a cracked block for a restoration project, you just source a block from the same year of production- unless it's a really rare model, in which case, you cast your own.
A capitalist would not support state sponsorship of monopolies. Anyone who does is, necessarily, not a capitalist, but rather a corporate socialist. The Italian term for corporate socialist in the late 1930's was fascist (though it didn't mean then what it later came to mean under the Schicklegruber influence).
(Yeah, I probably spelled that name wrong. He's not worth looking it up, and his nickname is banned.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You're shooting yourself in the foot spewing crap like that. Money makes the world go round and even those who think they are doing something for free have to pay their bills somehow. Unless you're Stallman and have others donating money to pay your bills. but those others are making money somewhere. Try going to Fry's and telling they should give you a new computer, because you write free software. Go read some Ayn Rand and learn to be proud to be paid for hard work and intelligent thought.
Point me to this farmer who sits down and invents a generator from scratch and then tell me who's running his farm while he carries out the research involved, fool. The patents have long since expired on generators and most modern irrigation systems, but these things would not have reached their current level of development if they had depended on the work of amateurs rather than companies with lawyers and bankers.
Imagine that nobody could build roads or water systems or electric plants unless they paid royalties to some American company for the idea
Congratulations, you're imagining the USA in the period of Edison and Westinghouse. For electricity distribution, that is (the major patents on which have long since expired). If on the other hand, you think that "water systems" were invented by American companies, you're either too much of an idiot to warrant further conversation or rudely refusing to think seriously about history.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
My granddad and three associates built a car from the ground up. That was back when everyone in the country wanted to start a car company. There were 200 established automobile makers by the early '20s, and many more attempts - like granddad's - that didn't quite establish themselves.
What happenned of course was Henry Ford, and the assembly line were the individual worker didn't have to know how to build a car from the ground up, but just how to put together a small piece of it as it got to his station on the assembly line.
Free software has some resonance with Ford's method. While Linus built a kernel "from the ground up," a lot of the effectiveness of the method is because one guy can stay at one station and just work on a single, special-purpose utility (say, fetchmail). That's how must of it happens - individuals or small teams working on something only they need to fully understand, because it fits in a standardized framework - apt-get or rpm or ./configure-make-make install is all the general building capability most folks need.
The odd thing about Ford was that, while he devised a system for people with less knowledge and capability, individually, to be more productive, he didn't pay them less - instead he paid them several times more than what workers with much more knowledge and ability were getting working in "build each one from the ground up" car concerns. He response to the supposed "alienation of labor" was to be sure his labor could afford the cars they were building, and so not be alienated from them.
Of course, by the '30s Ford was a big Hitler fan - he really believed in sweeping, utopian reorganizations of society. And of course the issue in software isn't between building from the ground up or just filling one station well, but between starting with a vehicle resistant to customization deeper than the paint (or wallpaper), and one that's easy to hotrod, with many custom parts and plans available - one with more freedom.
Anyone bringing Marx into this should specify in what way Marx was wrong when he declared that "freedom" is just capitalist ideological cover, and valuing freedom to be "false consciousness." The real historical motion has been, long term, towards more freedom - the essence of capitalism is freedom in the markets for both goods and capital. Free software is nothing but the further extension of the historical wave of freedom. As such, what can it learn from Marx, who thought freedom a cruel fraud, and wanted societies to retreat from it?
It is the hope of every fascist, marxist and fundamentalist that people will back off from their movement towards ever greater spheres of freedom. Free software is a small way of saying no to their dreams of retreat for the many, and enthronement for themselves.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
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:
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).
========"So if I disagree that this is in any way enlightening, that makes me non-free thinking and
jingoistic? "
I think he was saying that if you jingoistic you won't like the article. Liking an article, finding it thought provoking, is of course different from agreeing with it.
The point is that the article uses the word "Marxist". Time and again on slashdot, if you use this word you get flamed to hell, mostly I have to say from US readers, because of the particular view of Marxism that is widely held over there. In most of Europe Marxism is a part of political scene, and adds valuable insight into our understanding. This is true whether or not you agree with Marxism.
Phil
the propaganda that had streamed into the USSR was that they'd be better off if they were a capitalist democracy. Well, now they are a capitalist democracy now and they aren't better off. Their economy - such as it was - was going down the toilet anyway.
You can't call capitalism what they practice in the former USSR. (Well, I don't know about the Baltic republics) I have heard those systems called kleptocracies ("rule by robbers"). The privatization was directed onto powerful politicians and their friends. State monopolies have become private monopolies. It's hard to tell politicians, mafia and businessmen. I read that if somebody wants to abide byt the Russian tax laws, they should pay >100% of the earnings.
Rule of law, fair trials, and equal opportunity are part of capitalism. The former USSR is far from that.
European ex-communist countries can be a better example of transition to capitalism. (Excluding former Yugoslavia).
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Good points. I did find it an interesting read, but didn't agree with most of it. Still, I do enjoy reading opposing views, even when they are way off base.
1. Free Software is both inside and outside capitalism. On the one hand, the social basis for Free Software clearly would not exist without a flourishing capitalism. Only a flourishing capitalism can provide the opportunity to develop something that is not for exchange. On the other hand, Free Software is outside of capitalism for the reasons I mentioned above: absence of scarcity and self-unfolding instead of the alienation of labor in a command economy.
2. It seems you're talking about the difference between use value - the use of goods or labor - and exchange value - reflected in the price of the commodities that goods or labor are transformed into by being sold on the market.
3. In Free Software because the product can be taken with only marginal cost and, more importantly, is not created for being exchanged, the exchange value of the product is zero. Free Software is worthless in the dominant sense of exchange. 4. The more production is done by machines the less human labor is needed in the production process. 5. A GPL Society would not be based on exchange, there would be no need for money anymore
For those who wish to write Open Source software for a living (yeah, that means earning money): Do OSS consulting and provide people with complete hardware/software solutions for all their needs. If something doesn't exist, develop it yourself and somehow tack that onto their bill, even if it's just labeled as a raw labor cost. Guaranteed, they'll still be saving boatloads of money in comparison to proprietary solutions which must be replaced every couple years. And if enough OSS geeks start doing this, it'll become easier for everyone since less of the needed software will be missing when starting out on a job. Granted, there will always be in-house programming customizations to do, but they too will become smaller.
If you truly believe in Open Source, become a master programmer make it your livelihood. Word will spread quickly if you do a much better job than all those MSCE certified dolts and help businesses reduce their fixed costs in the process. And if you find yourself earning too much money, you can always take a year off for leisure, personal education, and coding on pet projects. Sounds like a dream, but its not. However, first you must move beyond the mental box that says the only "stable job" is working 9-5 making somebody else rich. Small, flexible business are the key to the further expansion of already successful OSS.
What about those of us who are not freethinking and who are jingoistic?
Talk about flame bait... Geez!
Edith Keeler Must Die
Why was this moded down? it is not flaimbait.
Oh? Why would I want to do that? If you aren't successful, you don't eat (unless you live in a country where they support you indefinitely on the backs of the successful capitalists).
My definition of successful would be: you make enough money to provide for your needs, in a length of time which leaves some significant section of the day free for non-survival related projects.
You want to elaborate?
Whatever happened to JonKatz?
There's no denying that a world where nobody has to starve, or even work for their needs, would be better than the current one. The thing is, that has absolutely nothing to do with whether capitalism will give way to a 'GPL Society' model social system where everybody gives away whatever they like and takes only whatever they need and money disappears because nobody needs it anymore.
To digress for a bit, I'm not willing to help support a third of the population while they sit around picking their asses with a Q-Tip on the off chance that one of them might be a visionary. If he's visionary enough, he'll make it regardless. Here's an exercise for you: name for me some real visionaries who came up with their ideas after a lifetime of free comprehensive support by the government.
My point was, when you have all your needs given to you, they become valueless. Luxuries become the things with value... in fact, the ONLY things with value. When you mass-produce luxuries, then you further limit the number of valuable things (or skills), and you INCREASE their value.
Of course an excellent education isn't as important as regular meals, but when the meals are all free, made by robots, and available in whatever quantities you feel like getting, they become valueless. Eating stops being important at all, and education becomes much more important! Even a garbage man can feed his kids, but when his kids no longer have the option of laboring for currency, and don't need any skill they currently have, education becomes critical!
As regards Europeans, maybe you haven't met the Protestant folks that sit outside a school every morning in Belfast, screaming insults and throwing things at the catholic 3rd grade kids as they walk to class. Or the 'Real IRA' guys, or their Ulster Unionist counterparts. Some of those Unionists shot a random kid in his car the other day, in protest against the slow pace of IRA decomissioning! Did you get that? They shot someone because the IRA isn't getting rid of weapons fast enough! You haven't met the family down the road from me either, whos kids aren't welcome at any of the neighborhood houses (except mine) because the lady next door heard the husband and wife screaming at each other one evening.
Maybe you need to spend some more time in Europe, and some more time meeting Americans. It's never a good idea to generalize about 240 million people, whatever continent they're on.
Whatever happened to JonKatz?
100 percent code into robot
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"most people in Eastern Europe do not consider Marxism to " add valuable insight" into
anything. "
It depends what you mean when you say "Marxism" of course. I think its fairly easy to argue that the communist bloc overturned more or less every principle of Marxism as time moved on, even while they claimed to adhere to it.
Its certainly the case that most of the Europe countries has an an expressedly Marxist party involved in politics somewhere. And most of them have a more reformist socialist, or social democratic party which at one stage or another have run the country. These parties were all informed by Marx's diagnosis of politics when he was writing, even though they denied his revolutionary prognosis.
Like my original post my assertion here is that whether or not you agree with Marxism is entirely secondly to issue of whether its valuable and interesting to read. I would say that even Mein Kampf is worth reading. Although its provides less abstraction than Marx's work, and gives less of insight into modern politics, its provides a definite insight into the meaning of hate. This might be depressing, but it's definately useful.
Phil
One possible form of capital is intellectual effort, and one possible form of return is a process to reduce ongoing operational inefficiencies (i.e. an automated tool to replace manual work).
Think cost reduction as opposed to direct revenue. This cost reduction, if the cost is part of another venture, translates into increased profit in that venture, though, for most, I expect it simply treanslates into convenience.
You could've hired me.
This is coming form someone who most likely has never created anything worth a copyright in their entire life, and is addicted to some napster-clone or has taken open source zelotry a bit too far.
Please, go yell, "INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE! FREE I TELL YOU, FREE!" somewhere else. I'm all fine and dandy with you creating something and placing it in the public domain, but you're crossing the line when you expect everyone else to put what they've made in the public domain, whether they like it or not.
I'm starting to see why we differ (I think).
I view capitalist, as any mechanism for leveraging a resource for a perceived gain, but it appears that you (and the article's author) recognize this as capitalist only when such a trade would be generally recognised as beneficial.
So, highly personal activities, which might be viewed by the participant as beneficial if only for the sheer joy of doing them, are capitalist in my book, but probably not in yours. I happen to prefer my definition because the greater leverage or productivity arises out of such personal tradeoffs in a greater free market.
I suppose this only shows that reasonable people can disagree.
You could've hired me.
What I wonder though, is if the instability caused by perpetual artificial scarcity can be damped by removing some of the positive feedback elements: viz. overbroad patents. Would that be sufficient?
You could've hired me.
What makes it capitalist is the deployment of "capital" which is money or at least sufficiently liquid to be able to be deployed in a number of activities, so that there's an element of choice involved for the capitalist ("where will I deploy my capital today?"), and that the capital is deployed in order to produce something which will then be sold to recoup more capital.
Well, the choice could just as easily be what kind of capital do I deploy? A person with bread and fish has two kinds of "capital" if you will, but might only find a single person interested in either. Now, I disagree that capital need be invested to reap yet more capital, ad infinitum. This presumes that there is no value to be derived from consumption. Certainly there is value to be derived from continued living which requires that we eat (and I think it silly to consider our symbiotic relationship with the bacteria that break down our bodily wastes investment on our part).
Something which is produced to be given away free may be part of a capitalist process if that giveaway contributes to sales of something else, of course.
Well, yes, but it need not be.
I suspect that our fundemental differences lie in the fact that I consider the pursuit of individual hapiness, subject to not interfering with others' similar pursuits, an acceptable driving force for human endevour, whereas you seek to justify the process of exchange as that driving force. I do not consider the individual subordinate to the group.
Yes, because you can't take that "sheer joy" and use it to do something else; the "sheer joy" is an end in itself, something directly consumed and not a valuable input into some other economic enterprise.
And, since I value the individual over the group, I consider this perfectly acceptable -- nothing is lost if one does things in pursuit of happiness. Such activities are legitimately valuable investments of one's capital, and ultimately the desired goal of all investment.
I don't think I understand this statement - could you explain?
I believe that the motivating force behind all economic activity is individual desire, and group benefit is merely an aggregate side effect when individuals do not harm others to benefit themselves. Thus, an economic view centered on the individual serves this model better than one centered on the "needs" or "morals" of a group.
In short, I am a libertarian, and you strike me as a "socialist".
You could've hired me.
But that is not the same as "one who invests capital".
I would suggest that it is perfectly reasonable to define capital as "that which can be invested, leveraged, or traded for a more desirable thing, whether tangible or intagible"; capitalist as "one who so invests"; and capitalism as "a prevelent system where individuals are free to operate as capitalists".
Note that by this definition, kings, nobles, serfs, slaves and slave-masters, wage-earners, employers, and hunter-gatherers are all capitalist.
Not quite: serfs and slaves, in particular are often restricted by force from engaging in such transactions because they are not recognized as owning any source of capital, not even their own labour.
You could've hired me.
The problem with your approach is that it completely ignores the non-investment benefits that capitalism provides. I prefer to view those benefits as natural within a capitalist system. This does not mean that they do not fit in other systems, and some would argue that socialist systems more directly address consumptive needs, but the question, of course, is do they do so more effectively? Clearly I think not.
Witness that too often, capitalists are criticized for not being "sensitive" to comsumptive needs, as if they are somehow non-capitalist, and so ignored.
Note also, that, while non-invenstment activities are consistent with, and part of, capitalist endevours, they are not the primary activity of capitalist systens, and by themselves, or with little choise in invenstment, do not a capitalist system make.
So, no the serf, or slave, is not a capitalist, per se, but this does not mean that he does not undertake activities harmonious with such a system.
Capitalism persists when there is a preponderance of activities indicative of an investment of capital, clearly more than merely consumptive ones.
You could've hired me.
They are in fact a kind of commmunist activity, embedded in a capitalist framework, but recognisably communist (rather than, say, Socialist, even).
And that's exactly where I disagree, because the motivation is generally to scratch a personal itch, and not for some greater good inconsistent with the scratching of that itch.
The problem I have with your definitions is that anything not directly capitalist, i.e. invested for the purpose of obtaining greater investable capital, is presumed (by you) to be non-capitalist.
To wit, I would not use the term communist to describe open-source software development, but rather cooperative, because it is an investment with a personal payoff expectation. Rather capitalist, if you ask me.
A capitalist system is certainly open to such cooperation, but capitalist activities can not flourish to any great extent within a communist system, lest the needs of the one start to displace his obligations to the many. In a capitalist system, if the individual wishes to frivolously waste his capital, or altruistically give it to others, this does not undermine the system itself. Yet, if one undertakes capitalist investment activity within a communist system, the system is threatened.
I would consider capitalism a more flexible system, then, though I will admit that many situations can arise which are localy optimal (in a temporal sense), that are undesirable and the subject of attack by communist detractors of capitalism. Excessive perpetuation of artificial scarcity is one such cause of difficulty.
Yes, this has been fun. Oh, and thanks for not ripping me up over mixing economics (capitalism vs. communism) and politics (individualism vs. socialism). I was being a bit imprecise there even though socialism and communism do tend to go hand in hand.
You could've hired me.