"WE know", That'd be you leaders of the Free Software world, would it? "Richard, Eric, Bruce" I call them Dick, Rick and Brucey, but then I'm closer to them than even you are ,"We've been patting ourselves on the back long enough now." Well, perhaps you have but Stallman's released a lot of code, ESR is a paper-millionaire and Bruce has a kid,a wife and a good job at an ethical company ,"We need to boil these issues down " You need to boil your ego down ,"I don't care how" I don't care what you care ,"GET US A SPOT ON 60 MINUTES! " That would be a royal us? Perhaps you could get yourself a life instead Oh, sorry, I'm back now, just thinking aloud for a second, what's that? a clarion call to action!!! Lead me!!!!
Emmm...that's the point of fighting the law isn't it? We make sure it never gets on the books and then it doesn't matter whether or not anyone is ignorant of it. The point is...this is a bad law...not that ignorance is a defence.
The first line which you left out, due to either ignorance or distortion was:
First they came for the communists
Apart from that your post is complete blather. You should get some sleep and you shouldn't post at (+1) unless you have something really important to say - otherwise you show up when I'm cruising at Threshold 2 and it pisses me off. Thanks Crush
The whole H1-B thing coupled with the shortage/problem of getting green-cards is a scam to screw over foreign workers. H1-B allocations should be decreased and Green Cards increased. Being tied to your employer sucks and if we're buying into the global economy and free-flows of goods and services then why not free flows of labour too?
All this is by way of saying that your idea, whilst an excellent one, will not be implemented because it ignores the real agenda - keeping wages down and profits up.
with your main point, but I'd have to take issue with the statement that:
Perl also suffers from a syntax problem. Perl has chosen highly compact notation that can scare even the mosty hardy Perl programmer.
I'm assumint that you're referring here mostly to the special variables. You can use the more abbreviated syntax if you like, you can also do things more explicitly and plainly and define everything carefully. It is nice to have a quick'n'dirty when you get used to it though.
Again, though, I agree with your main point that data-type issue would be possibly bad for a beginner.
I never said that innovators were motivated soley by greed.
No, but you imply it again and again in your posts, for instance this
The core of the issue is that many inventions take a staggering amount of effort to commercialize, and no individual or company could afford to spend years working on something unless they receive a limited monopoly
only makes sense if one assumes that one is operating in a capitalist society where funds for development have to be raised on the promise of a future return on a time-limited monopoly. Imagine an alternative where the community decides that certain things are useful and desirable. Communal resources are then available for development of those things and the resources go to those that are able to pass peer review. Not really very different from trying to convince angels to invest in a project. The difference is that the profits from it don't all go to the angels, they go back to the community. More efficient.
A very eloquent and rational defence of the need to maintain property rights in a capitalistic society.
In a society in which we must struggle for our food and happiness against one another it is absolutely essential that there should be a system of the type that you outline.
I think that you fall into error though when you allude to the failure of State Capitalism in the Eastern Bloc as proving that there is no alternative to a capitalist system that enforces property rights.
You say that you are responding to the idea that IP-rights are a plot to keep us enthralled by The Man and a perceived call for the communizing of intellectual property.
I agree with you that they serve a useful function in this society, that they foster and reward innovation. How is it that they do this? They give money to the innovators - for what? So that they can have a better life. This implies that the only and sole motivation of the inventor is to prevent himself from starving. If this is so, then you are correct, there is no other way to advance technology than handing out sweeties to innovators. I believe that you are wrong however, most people that innovate do it because they are smart and interested. They like it!.
You can't escape from the fact that either you characterize innovators as responding solely to stupid greed or else you are missing out an important part of the argument - motivation.
To begin with, absolute freedom is a fallacy. The Western notion of freedom ends when it interferes with someone else's rights. In this way, autonomy is checked by non-harm. In a Marxist society, you are free to be helped by your society to reach your goals, but you lose autonomy.
I agree with the premise. I don't agree that there is some sort of difference between fundamental reaosning that applies in the "Western" (as you call it - meaning capitalist) societies and the Marxist/Leninist/Stalinist ones. Bothe apply the principle that one's freedom stops where someone else's rights are being encroached upon. In both these cases autonomy is lost. The M/S/L societies just have a different interpretation of where that boundary lies. They claim that it is infringing someone's rights to allow their labour to be exploited for an employers profit. If the goods cannot be produced without all then the goods should be shared with all. It's like a machine with many parts. If it can't function without one of those small cogs (or a janitor in society) then that cog is essential to the machine and deserves an equal share.
That said I agree with the rest of your post. I suspect that the comment you're replying to is a troll though.
Dude, the "you guys" part refers to whom exactly? If you're referring to Stalinism, rest assured, neither I nor anyone else that's an anarchist has much love of Stalinism - anarchists were among the first to be killed by the Bolsheviks when they objected to the lack of democracy and justice and the take-over of the soviets. W.r.t. the number of people killed by different ideologies - well from our perspective Capitalism is killing people today and has killed lots more than 30 million. We want to fix it and we don't believe that letting things run along the way they are now just because we're fat and content is the way to do it. Don't trivialize. Make a serious effort to understand your world or else you're just a passive conformist. Yup, there's lots more to life than DVDs but this is part of the new control that will constrain us if we don't defeat it.
How many more must die until we live in what you'd call Utopia?
How many more have to die before you admit that things could be better and that we should strive for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
I actually didn't know that studios made most of their money at the theatre. I love the movies too, but I'm pretty sure that I've got enough self-restraint not to give money to these guys if its got a chance of being effective. It'd be good to be able to let them know that their dip in revenue is due directly to this though. Anyone seen any co-ordination happening with some sort of on-line petition/pledge not to go to the movies?
Dead right. To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw on the contradictions imposed by his postion of being both a landlord and a socialist critic of landlords:
I agree that the first thing is trying to find out what is wrong and explaining why it is so. Unless there is a general,shared understanding of the problems then there can be no concerted democratic action to fix them.
Because even if it is I agree with it!. It doesn't directly addresses any of the points raised by Brian's article and so I don't think that you can accuse him of putting flowers on our chains. However the idea that we are going to be able to overthrow things through Free Software is something that's touted happily and is almost a naive expression of Marxist ideas about the means of production. And so in that sense I agree that it is not probable that just because there is some free-code that this will sweep us on into a new millenium of libertarian artisans forging a new society. Like you say:
We need to stop kidding ourselves.
You left out some framing and context about where these quotes are from:
The quote about the chain comes in a discussion about religion and how criticism of it is necessary in Germany from Contribution To The Critique Of Hegel's Philosophy Of Law
Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man to make him think and act and shape his reality like a man who has been disillusioned and has come to reason, so that he will revolve round himself and therefore round his true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves round man as long as he does not revolve round himself.
Even if your post is a troll, I agree that that is what most of us do with our shallow political philosophies that avoid the reality that any revolution will be a class revolution.
Could you provide context for your "opposing interest quote"? Here's a nice one where he talks about how one only sees parliamentary activity of 2 kinds, the compromise kind that
is the parliamentary activity of free traders with protectionists, gold standard with silver standard men, pro and anti-Trust people -- in short, elements who stand upon the common ground of the capitalist system.
and the other kind which is by socialist representatives who admit no compromise with the capitalist regime.
How very odd. I don't think that things back in times where farmers actually did farming in the majority of any society did they usually have such complex relationships
There are literatures that represent the first-person account of what it is like to be a "farmer" struggling to make a living from the soil. Good example would be the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh who wrote (3!) autobiographical works: The Green Fool, Tarry Flynn and I forget the other. He cursed the work that he had to do and felt that his neighbours were different (read his poem Stoney Gray Soil for a expression of the hatred of the land). What I take from this is that most people are non-reflective, non-idealistic but that regardless of the conditions there are people that imagine. Providing the material comforts is good, but people that are dull under oppression will still probably be dull under comfort - look at the proliferation of stupidity and mediocrity here: McDonalds, automobiles, TV.
Also, Kavanaghs poems demonstrate great jealousy and kindness. The only difference between me, you and people struggling on the soil is that we're fat and they're thin.
Ancient peoples? well take the Norse sagas - the Edda or the Saga of Burnt Njal or whatever - plenty of hatred, jealousy, one-up-manship, love and admiration in the small, extremely poor 11thC. communities of Greenland there.
Dude, you're too late, that sounds like a good project but check this out:
A replacement for the the dancing Paperclip! - this one I call "The Pogoing Office-Shredder", it's a sort of friendly welcome-to-the-window-cum-help-interface thing but it has true UNIX functionality as opposed to the silly windows thing. It pops up whenever you leave your mouse static for too long on an application. It doesn't just suggest things - it allows you to say, "Yeah go ahead and carry out the suggestion", so for example it says "You can remove all your files with rm -rf/, would you like to try this?" and you can click on Yes or No. I know a lot of people will disparage this initially, but just think of the rapid learning curve and the feeling of feedback and control the user gets. Maybe we could merge projects?
I have other theme ideas for Shredder, how about an Elvis-style PHB? or a Hula-dancing File Cabinet? We should really make it themable
A lot of people have learned to use the Windows and Mac GUI's; people assume that means they're easy,
Agreed! I find it interesting when I try to use a w95 box or a Mac - I find them both a real pain in the ass to use and definitely non-intuitive (Quadra is easier), but my wife who uses them regularly finds them fine. Yeah, I can get along with it, but some things take me a little longer to figure out than I care to admit. There's a whole visual language to be learned with every interface and users of each one asume that it's a natural easy thing.
I think the bottom line is to provide a stable constant thing that people feel they can learn - it's worth their investment of time because it's going to be still the same in essentials years down the road. I actually think that GNOME does a good job here.
Fair enough. For an interesting perspective which tries to walk the tight-rope between the sovereignty of the individual and the necessity of some sort of community may I suggest:
The Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists, by Ida Mett, Pietr Arshinov, Nestor Makhno, Valevsky and Linsky.
These were mostly survivors of the Bolshevik purges who realized that while they valued individualism they needed some sort of collective action in order to overcome their enemies. Similar conclusion were reached by the Friends of Durutti in the wake of the Stalinist and Socialist betrayals in Spain.
I'm guessing you may be familiar with all that already, but if you're not you might find them interesting.
Open source isn't a Marxist "class struggle" -- it is an evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma.
There's no reason to suppose that the two things are exclusive of each other. Class struggle can be seen to incorporate elements of the Prisoner's Dilemma within it and the Prisoner's Dilemma can be set up for situations that include class as a factor.
As far as all the genetics stuff goes, well, there is considerable debate over it and speaking as an evolutionary biologist I can assure you that the simplistic "selfish gene" paradigm is considered by many to be misleading. For alternative view check out the work of S.J.Gould and especially Richard Lewontin.
I agree heartily with the idea that we've got to study altruism and communication and the PD.
Work on tools and technologies that decrease the upfront investment required to make and distribute a movie. Cheaper and better cameras and lighting equipment. Digital storage and projection technologies that make it less expensive to create and distribute 'prints' of a film to theaters
This sounds like a positive strategy. As a check on how realistic it is, the music industry ought to be a fore-runner of this - I'm surprised that there aren't more indie bands putting up web-pages with mp3s. Also surprised that there aren't any centralized distributors for them - but then I'm pretty ignorant on that side of things.
Regarding the anticapitalist bent, I was specifically referring to the Linux Journal article, not the media in general.
Well, then you shouldn't have referred to an article as: the media
I'm glad to see that you're familiar with the opening quotes of Proudhon, perhaps you are also familiar with his argument that property and trade are the province of the bourgeosie who should take their own rhetoric about freedom more seriously and carry the revolution to its only logical conclusion.
Your statement that freedom is not solely about making money suggests that your acquaintance with Proudhon is passing.
Think about it, and remember that whether you consider yourself a right-Libertarian, a liberal, a conservative, or an Individualist Anarcho-Syndicalist,
Anarchists fall into three main categories:
Individualist/Philosophical/Egoist/Libertarian
Communist
Syndicalist
The last two are perhaps more similar than the first group. Yes, this is a rough, very-arguable typology but the essential point is that Anarcho-Syndicalists are NOT reasonably called Individualist. They believe in "One big Union, One Big Strike" an extreme form of collective action, using the allowed forms in our society (examples IWW=The Wobblies, SAT (a Swedish Trade Union). Individualists tend to be more inspired by the ideas of individual action and the writings of Max Stirner (The Ego and Its Own) and William Godwin (Enquiry Concerning Political Justice) and in the latter part of the 19th C. in the U.S. Benjamin Tucker.
Communist Anarchists exist in a state of tension between the demands of community and individuality - examples (Spain 1936-The Friends of Durutti, post-Kronstadt-Libertarian Communist's "Platform of Libertarian Communism" by Ida Mett, Pietr Arshinov et al, also Peter Kropotkin identified himself as Anarcho-Communist)
Food Not Bombs are cool though - ideology in action!
Imagine what were to happen if, in protest of the recent attacks against the linux community, we were to coordinate a general strike?
If it were effective it would be smashed by the police unless there were enough people in the whole nation behind it convinced that there was a different way of organizing the world. Things are this way because most people believe in them.
Note, I am not being defeatist, just warning that strikes that challenge authority in a half-assed manner usually end up being squashed unpleasantly and then, rather than being radicalised people are frightened off. Even situations where there is mass popular support (Allendes' govt) can be squashed by the plutocrats (admittedly with US help).
Open Source is a revolution? I hope so. I like your spirit! DOn't listen to me! Fight on!
Slashdot Mirror
"WE know",
,"We've been patting ourselves on the back long enough now."
,"We need to boil these issues down "
,"I don't care how"
,"GET US A SPOT ON 60 MINUTES! "
That'd be you leaders of the Free Software world, would it?
"Richard, Eric, Bruce"
I call them Dick, Rick and Brucey, but then I'm closer to them than even you are
Well, perhaps you have but Stallman's released a lot of code, ESR is a paper-millionaire and Bruce has a kid,a wife and a good job at an ethical company
You need to boil your ego down
I don't care what you care
That would be a royal us? Perhaps you could get yourself a life instead
Oh, sorry, I'm back now, just thinking aloud for a second, what's that? a clarion call to action!!! Lead me!!!!
Ignorance is not really any defence.
Emmm...that's the point of fighting the law isn't it? We make sure it never gets on the books and then it doesn't matter whether or not anyone is ignorant of it. The point is...this is a bad law...not that ignorance is a defence.
First they came for the communists
Apart from that your post is complete blather. You should get some sleep and you shouldn't post at (+1) unless you have something really important to say - otherwise you show up when I'm cruising at Threshold 2 and it pisses me off.
Thanks
Crush
All this is by way of saying that your idea, whilst an excellent one, will not be implemented because it ignores the real agenda - keeping wages down and profits up.
C
Perl also suffers from a syntax problem. Perl has chosen highly compact notation that can scare even the mosty hardy Perl programmer.
I'm assumint that you're referring here mostly to the special variables. You can use the more abbreviated syntax if you like, you can also do things more explicitly and plainly and define everything carefully. It is nice to have a quick'n'dirty when you get used to it though.
Again, though, I agree with your main point that data-type issue would be possibly bad for a beginner.
Another classic I'd like to add which falls into the fantasy category is Watership Down (I unfortunately don't remember the author).
Author was Richard Adams, also wrote an anti-vivisection novel called The Plague Dogs.
No, but you imply it again and again in your posts, for instance this
The core of the issue is that many inventions take a staggering amount of effort to commercialize, and no individual or company could afford to spend years working on something unless they receive a limited monopoly
only makes sense if one assumes that one is operating in a capitalist society where funds for development have to be raised on the promise of a future return on a time-limited monopoly. Imagine an alternative where the community decides that certain things are useful and desirable. Communal resources are then available for development of those things and the resources go to those that are able to pass peer review. Not really very different from trying to convince angels to invest in a project. The difference is that the profits from it don't all go to the angels, they go back to the community. More efficient.
In a society in which we must struggle for our food and happiness against one another it is absolutely essential that there should be a system of the type that you outline.
I think that you fall into error though when you allude to the failure of State Capitalism in the Eastern Bloc as proving that there is no alternative to a capitalist system that enforces property rights.
You say that you are responding to the idea that IP-rights are a plot to keep us enthralled by The Man and a perceived call for the communizing of intellectual property.
I agree with you that they serve a useful function in this society, that they foster and reward innovation. How is it that they do this? They give money to the innovators - for what? So that they can have a better life. This implies that the only and sole motivation of the inventor is to prevent himself from starving. If this is so, then you are correct, there is no other way to advance technology than handing out sweeties to innovators. I believe that you are wrong however, most people that innovate do it because they are smart and interested. They like it!.
You can't escape from the fact that either you characterize innovators as responding solely to stupid greed or else you are missing out an important part of the argument - motivation.
To begin with, absolute freedom is a fallacy. The Western notion of freedom ends when it interferes with someone else's rights. In this way, autonomy is checked by non-harm. In a Marxist society, you are free to be helped by your society to reach your goals, but you lose autonomy.
I agree with the premise. I don't agree that there is some sort of difference between fundamental reaosning that applies in the "Western" (as you call it - meaning capitalist) societies and the Marxist/Leninist/Stalinist ones. Bothe apply the principle that one's freedom stops where someone else's rights are being encroached upon. In both these cases autonomy is lost. The M/S/L societies just have a different interpretation of where that boundary lies. They claim that it is infringing someone's rights to allow their labour to be exploited for an employers profit. If the goods cannot be produced without all then the goods should be shared with all. It's like a machine with many parts. If it can't function without one of those small cogs (or a janitor in society) then that cog is essential to the machine and deserves an equal share.
That said I agree with the rest of your post. I suspect that the comment you're replying to is a troll though.
How many more must die until we live in what you'd call Utopia?
How many more have to die before you admit that things could be better and that we should strive for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Don't be smug.
I actually didn't know that studios made most of their money at the theatre. I love the movies too, but I'm pretty sure that I've got enough self-restraint not to give money to these guys if its got a chance of being effective. It'd be good to be able to let them know that their dip in revenue is due directly to this though. Anyone seen any co-ordination happening with some sort of on-line petition/pledge not to go to the movies?
Who should know about this better then I?
I agree that the first thing is trying to find out what is wrong and explaining why it is so. Unless there is a general,shared understanding of the problems then there can be no concerted democratic action to fix them.
Cheers
Crush
I wrote "he" for the last quote, and it was actually DeLeon not Marx.
We need to stop kidding ourselves.
You left out some framing and context about where these quotes are from:
The quote about the chain comes in a discussion about religion and how criticism of it is necessary in Germany from Contribution To The Critique Of Hegel's Philosophy Of Law
Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man to make him think and act and shape his reality like a man who has been disillusioned and has come to reason, so that he will revolve round himself and therefore round his true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves round man as long as he does not revolve round himself.
Even if your post is a troll, I agree that that is what most of us do with our shallow political philosophies that avoid the reality that any revolution will be a class revolution.
Could you provide context for your "opposing interest quote"? Here's a nice one where he talks about how one only sees parliamentary activity of 2 kinds, the compromise kind that
is the parliamentary activity of free traders with protectionists, gold standard with silver standard men, pro and anti-Trust people -- in short, elements who stand upon the common ground of the capitalist system.
and the other kind which is by socialist representatives who admit no compromise with the capitalist regime.
What fun!
How very odd. I don't think that things back in times where farmers actually did farming in the majority of any society did they usually have such complex relationships
There are literatures that represent the first-person account of what it is like to be a "farmer" struggling to make a living from the soil. Good example would be the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh who wrote (3!) autobiographical works: The Green Fool, Tarry Flynn and I forget the other. He cursed the work that he had to do and felt that his neighbours were different (read his poem Stoney Gray Soil for a expression of the hatred of the land). What I take from this is that most people are non-reflective, non-idealistic but that regardless of the conditions there are people that imagine. Providing the material comforts is good, but people that are dull under oppression will still probably be dull under comfort - look at the proliferation of stupidity and mediocrity here: McDonalds, automobiles, TV.
Also, Kavanaghs poems demonstrate great jealousy and kindness. The only difference between me, you and people struggling on the soil is that we're fat and they're thin.
Ancient peoples? well take the Norse sagas - the Edda or the Saga of Burnt Njal or whatever - plenty of hatred, jealousy, one-up-manship, love and admiration in the small, extremely poor 11thC. communities of Greenland there.
I don't think your point stands up.
A replacement for the the dancing Paperclip! - this one I call "The Pogoing Office-Shredder", it's a sort of friendly welcome-to-the-window-cum-help-interface thing but it has true UNIX functionality as opposed to the silly windows thing. It pops up whenever you leave your mouse static for too long on an application. It doesn't just suggest things - it allows you to say, "Yeah go ahead and carry out the suggestion", so for example it says "You can remove all your files with rm -rf /, would you like to try this?" and you can click on Yes or No. I know a lot of people will disparage this initially, but just think of the rapid learning curve and the feeling of feedback and control the user gets. Maybe we could merge projects?
I have other theme ideas for Shredder, how about an Elvis-style PHB? or a Hula-dancing File Cabinet? We should really make it themable
A lot of people have learned to use the Windows and Mac GUI's; people assume that means they're easy,
Agreed! I find it interesting when I try to use a w95 box or a Mac - I find them both a real pain in the ass to use and definitely non-intuitive (Quadra is easier), but my wife who uses them regularly finds them fine. Yeah, I can get along with it, but some things take me a little longer to figure out than I care to admit. There's a whole visual language to be learned with every interface and users of each one asume that it's a natural easy thing.
I think the bottom line is to provide a stable constant thing that people feel they can learn - it's worth their investment of time because it's going to be still the same in essentials years down the road. I actually think that GNOME does a good job here.
The Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists, by Ida Mett, Pietr Arshinov, Nestor Makhno, Valevsky and Linsky.
These were mostly survivors of the Bolshevik purges who realized that while they valued individualism they needed some sort of collective action in order to overcome their enemies. Similar conclusion were reached by the Friends of Durutti in the wake of the Stalinist and Socialist betrayals in Spain.
I'm guessing you may be familiar with all that already, but if you're not you might find them interesting.
Open source isn't a Marxist "class struggle" -- it is an evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma.
There's no reason to suppose that the two things are exclusive of each other. Class struggle can be seen to incorporate elements of the Prisoner's Dilemma within it and the Prisoner's Dilemma can be set up for situations that include class as a factor.
As far as all the genetics stuff goes, well, there is considerable debate over it and speaking as an evolutionary biologist I can assure you that the simplistic "selfish gene" paradigm is considered by many to be misleading. For alternative view check out the work of S.J.Gould and especially Richard Lewontin.
I agree heartily with the idea that we've got to study altruism and communication and the PD.
Work on tools and technologies that decrease the upfront investment required to make and distribute a movie. Cheaper and better cameras and lighting equipment. Digital storage and projection technologies that make it less expensive to create and distribute 'prints' of a film to theaters
This sounds like a positive strategy. As a check on how realistic it is, the music industry ought to be a fore-runner of this - I'm surprised that there aren't more indie bands putting up web-pages with mp3s. Also surprised that there aren't any centralized distributors for them - but then I'm pretty ignorant on that side of things.
Regarding the anticapitalist bent, I was specifically referring to the Linux Journal article, not the media in general.
Well, then you shouldn't have referred to an article as: the media
I'm glad to see that you're familiar with the opening quotes of Proudhon, perhaps you are also familiar with his argument that property and trade are the province of the bourgeosie who should take their own rhetoric about freedom more seriously and carry the revolution to its only logical conclusion.
Your statement that freedom is not solely about making money suggests that your acquaintance with Proudhon is passing.
Think about it, and remember that whether you consider yourself a right-Libertarian, a liberal, a conservative, or an Individualist Anarcho-Syndicalist,
Anarchists fall into three main categories:
The last two are perhaps more similar than the first group. Yes, this is a rough, very-arguable typology but the essential point is that Anarcho-Syndicalists are NOT reasonably called Individualist. They believe in "One big Union, One Big Strike" an extreme form of collective action, using the allowed forms in our society (examples IWW=The Wobblies, SAT (a Swedish Trade Union). Individualists tend to be more inspired by the ideas of individual action and the writings of Max Stirner (The Ego and Its Own) and William Godwin (Enquiry Concerning Political Justice) and in the latter part of the 19th C. in the U.S. Benjamin Tucker.
Communist Anarchists exist in a state of tension between the demands of community and individuality - examples (Spain 1936-The Friends of Durutti, post-Kronstadt-Libertarian Communist's "Platform of Libertarian Communism" by Ida Mett, Pietr Arshinov et al, also Peter Kropotkin identified himself as Anarcho-Communist)
Food Not Bombs are cool though - ideology in action!
Imagine what were to happen if, in protest of the recent attacks against the linux community, we were to coordinate a general strike?
If it were effective it would be smashed by the police unless there were enough people in the whole nation behind it convinced that there was a different way of organizing the world. Things are this way because most people believe in them.
Note, I am not being defeatist, just warning that strikes that challenge authority in a half-assed manner usually end up being squashed unpleasantly and then, rather than being radicalised people are frightened off. Even situations where there is mass popular support (Allendes' govt) can be squashed by the plutocrats (admittedly with US help).
Open Source is a revolution? I hope so. I like your spirit! DOn't listen to me! Fight on!