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"

[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.

I don't feel so enlightened

[tdye]

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.

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.