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Toronto Conference On Open Source Announced

Posted by simoniker on from the worthy dept.

Simon Bates writes "The University of Toronto's KMDI is hosting a conference to debate the future of open source models of development in software and beyond, addressing how this movement will affect the way we work, learn and stay healthy. Among the 30 speakers will be Eben Moglen, Columbia law school professor and legal counsel to the Free Software Foundation, who has recently described free software as: 'a social movement with specific political goals which will characterize not only the production of software in the twenty-first century, but the production and distribution of culture generally'. The conference will be held from May 9th to 11th and will be webcast."

2 of 14 comments (clear)

  1. Programmers of the world unite! by ObviousGuy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When someone starts spouting off about production, distribution, and culture and associates those with political goals, one of those little sirens starts going off.

    Free Software is an incredibly awesome idea. It's too bad that its biggest proponents (ESR notwithstanding) speak the doublespeak of communism.

    --
    I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
    1. Re:Programmers of the world unite! by idiot900 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Free Software is an incredibly awesome idea. It's too bad that its biggest proponents (ESR notwithstanding) speak the doublespeak of communism.

      I'm not a political scientist; here is my uninformed, amateurish view:

      Socialism/communism/ is a fine idea if it is not compulsory. It's based on the ideal that the participants work primarily not for their own individual welfare, but for the good of the community, and it supports those who can't work. In Real Life, this is a terrible idea because it removes any real incentive to work - why work when those who do work don't have a much higher quality of life than those who don't?

      But in the world of open source and Free software, most programmers contribute because it makes them feel warm and fuzzy inside, and also to achieve fame and hone their skills. I've coded GPL software because I thought it was a nice thing to do. If you don't like this model, you can extricate yourself from the OSS world easily. And you won't starve or be shot by your friendly local dictator.

      So IMHO socialist ideals works pretty well for open source development. In the end it's a glorified version of community service that can happily exist within the confines of a capitalistic society. There is a distinction between OSS and real life. Make my entire society socialist, though, and I'm moving the f*ck out.