> There's nothing about Stallman's idea that demand > we all have equal ownership of anything or a > state-controlled economy.
There's nothing about communism that demands these things either. Leninism, Stalinism, and socialism in general certainly require state-controlled economies, but communism does not. Communism also only endorses the collective ownership of the means of production, ie factories and land. The whole idea is that the workers who actually produce an item get the economic benefit from it. The members of such a factory/commune democratically decide what to do with their product and participate in the market.
> Even if a law was passed tomorrow that said all > new software must be created under the GPL, the > result would not be the end of programming as a > means of gainful employment in a capitalist society.
Of course not, but such a law would also never be passed *in a capitalist society*. It's not a capitalist's sort of law. And of course a capitalist orginaztion would find the most efficient means of maximizing market share, that's what it's designed for. The whole point of my argument about Open Source is that it encourages, and almost depends upon, people who participate without economic incentive. Open Source products typically try to make the best piece of software they can make. Microsoft simply wants the largest profit, so they maximize the cost/benefit curve, ie, they spend as little money as possible to provide a product that is just good enough to eliminate their rivals. That's capitalism. Open Source is about constant revision and improvement.
> It's important to remember that copyright is not > a fundamental part of capitalism.
No, it's just so useful that every capitalist economy has created it in some form or other, and the most capitalistic societies have created the harshest versions of it.
> Non-cooperation and gov't granted monopolies > just aren't fundamental tenets of capitalism.
Maybe not basic tenets, but they are certainly natural outgrowths. Non-cooperation stems from the problem of information, and if a particular corporation has information that it's competitors don't, then it has an advantage in the market. As for monopolies, every capitalist system has naturally gravitated towards monopolies, barring a governmental decision to stop it at some point via anti-trust laws. As for the government granted part, I agree, but Microsoft's status isn't government granted.
> Stallman's open source is about the freedom of > information, and not unnecessarily reproducing > work due to a gov't granted monopoly.
Regardless of the reasons it was initially implemented, you have to look at why it's been successful. Information is still not free, and it's still necessary to reproduce work done by corporations who won't share. There has to be something else to it.
> It is also part of communism where the group tries > to centralize all of the means of production.
While this is certainly true of the USSR, it is by no means part of overall communist ideology. Lenin said, essentially, that the general public was too stupid to know what they really wanted, so the proletariat, the smart guys who just happened to be in power, got to tell them exactly what they should be doing. They're the ones who centralized everything. A straight communist society (as oppposed to Marxist or Leninist) would simply consist of factories that were controlled by its workers and owned by its workers, just like we see the Open Source community today.
There has been a huge push from Western Society to equate Communism with the governments of the USSR and China and Cuba, etc. They are more accurately 'State Capitalist' societies, where all the means of production are controlled by a single party. Communism is really terribly benign, although basically totally unworkable on large scales (because, as I've said before, it requires all citizens to work with foreign entities the same way).
> and production for individual benefit becomes illegal.
This is exactly what the FSF is about. Down with Intellectual Property, Software Patents, and Copyright Law, all of which were instituted to ensure the individual the right to profit off of the production of ideas.
That's a very ambiguous statement, "to move forward". It implies, as I said above, that everyone in the group has the same mindset.
Communism, unlike capitalism, doesn't require competition, however. This is pretty obvious when you look just at how many different linux distros there are. In a competitive/capitalist environment, these would have all fought amongst themselves for market share until there were just a few left, or one.
This is why Gates & Co. hate the Open Source community so much. If Firefox was a regular corporation that made money off of sales, well, they *know* how to run them into the ground. After all, they've had lots of practice at running small corporations into the ground to secure their own market share. And everyone who uses Linux instead of Windows eats into their market share, as well. Since they can't compete economically, they have to compete legally. Becasue, from their point of view, it's the market share that's important.
RE: 'gov't and lawyers shutting down competition', this is standard practice for everybody. Mega-corps, mom&pops (who will lobby the local chamber of commerce to prevent big chains from entering their areas), communist governments, and the open source community, who are actively taking many issues to the courts.
IE, the gov't and the courts are the referees for the game, and are used by everybody.
Technically, Mr. Gates is right. The whole Open Source idea is a communist idea, not in terms of Soviet Russia (where software owns you) but in terms of a community of workers all banding together to produce their own labor, instead of selling themselves to the capitalists.
Seriously, folks, the current situation of Linux v. Microsoft is exactly what Marx and Engels were talking about.
What the Open Source community has is what all communist countries thus far have lacked, which is the admission of only like-minded people. For a commune to work, the citizens must all have similar ideas with respect to how to interact with the outside world. In a nation, where all citizens just become communists, this simply isn't possible.
The Bhopal disaster isn't necessarily the worst industrial accident. Many people give that distinction to the collapse of the Baia Mare Dam, a tailings dam for a gold mine, holding water laced with cyanide and heavy metals. It dumped on the order of 100,000 cubic meters of this stuff into the Danube, killing tons and tons of fish and poisoning the drinking water of millions in Hungary. Luckily, the Australian parent company had an excellent Public Relations contract; this wasn't even news in Europe, much less in the USA.
Here's one link to it. http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/mdafbm.htm l
Slashdot Mirror
> There's nothing about Stallman's idea that demand
> we all have equal ownership of anything or a
> state-controlled economy.
There's nothing about communism that demands these things either. Leninism, Stalinism, and socialism in general certainly require state-controlled economies, but communism does not. Communism also only endorses the collective ownership of the means of production, ie factories and land. The whole idea is that the workers who actually produce an item get the economic benefit from it. The members of such a factory/commune democratically decide what to do with their product and participate in the market.
> Even if a law was passed tomorrow that said all
> new software must be created under the GPL, the
> result would not be the end of programming as a
> means of gainful employment in a capitalist society.
Of course not, but such a law would also never be passed *in a capitalist society*. It's not a capitalist's sort of law. And of course a capitalist orginaztion would find the most efficient means of maximizing market share, that's what it's designed for.
The whole point of my argument about Open Source is that it encourages, and almost depends upon, people who participate without economic incentive. Open Source products typically try to make the best piece of software they can make. Microsoft simply wants the largest profit, so they maximize the cost/benefit curve, ie, they spend as little money as possible to provide a product that is just good enough to eliminate their rivals. That's capitalism. Open Source is about constant revision and improvement.
> It's important to remember that copyright is not
> a fundamental part of capitalism.
No, it's just so useful that every capitalist economy has created it in some form or other, and the most capitalistic societies have created the harshest versions of it.
> Non-cooperation and gov't granted monopolies
> just aren't fundamental tenets of capitalism.
Maybe not basic tenets, but they are certainly natural outgrowths. Non-cooperation stems from the problem of information, and if a particular corporation has information that it's competitors don't, then it has an advantage in the market. As for monopolies, every capitalist system has naturally gravitated towards monopolies, barring a governmental decision to stop it at some point via anti-trust laws. As for the government granted part, I agree, but Microsoft's status isn't government granted.
> Stallman's open source is about the freedom of
> information, and not unnecessarily reproducing
> work due to a gov't granted monopoly.
Regardless of the reasons it was initially implemented, you have to look at why it's been successful. Information is still not free, and it's still necessary to reproduce work done by corporations who won't share. There has to be something else to it.
> I remember a time when the size of my genitalia wasn't an issue. My friend, there has *never* been such a time.
> It is also part of communism where the group tries
> to centralize all of the means of production.
While this is certainly true of the USSR, it is by no means part of overall communist ideology. Lenin said, essentially, that the general public was too stupid to know what they really wanted, so the proletariat, the smart guys who just happened to be in power, got to tell them exactly what they should be doing. They're the ones who centralized everything. A straight communist society (as oppposed to Marxist or Leninist) would simply consist of factories that were controlled by its workers and owned by its workers, just like we see the Open Source community today.
There has been a huge push from Western Society to equate Communism with the governments of the USSR and China and Cuba, etc. They are more accurately 'State Capitalist' societies, where all the means of production are controlled by a single party. Communism is really terribly benign, although basically totally unworkable on large scales (because, as I've said before, it requires all citizens to work with foreign entities the same way).
> and production for individual benefit becomes illegal.
This is exactly what the FSF is about. Down with Intellectual Property, Software Patents, and Copyright Law, all of which were instituted to ensure the individual the right to profit off of the production of ideas.
That's a very ambiguous statement, "to move forward". It implies, as I said above, that everyone in the group has the same mindset.
Communism, unlike capitalism, doesn't require competition, however. This is pretty obvious when you look just at how many different linux distros there are. In a competitive/capitalist environment, these would have all fought amongst themselves for market share until there were just a few left, or one.
This is why Gates & Co. hate the Open Source community so much. If Firefox was a regular corporation that made money off of sales, well, they *know* how to run them into the ground. After all, they've had lots of practice at running small corporations into the ground to secure their own market share. And everyone who uses Linux instead of Windows eats into their market share, as well. Since they can't compete economically, they have to compete legally. Becasue, from their point of view, it's the market share that's important.
RE: 'gov't and lawyers shutting down competition', this is standard practice for everybody. Mega-corps, mom&pops (who will lobby the local chamber of commerce to prevent big chains from entering their areas), communist governments, and the open source community, who are actively taking many issues to the courts.
IE, the gov't and the courts are the referees for the game, and are used by everybody.
Technically, Mr. Gates is right. The whole Open Source idea is a communist idea, not in terms of Soviet Russia (where software owns you) but in terms of a community of workers all banding together to produce their own labor, instead of selling themselves to the capitalists.
Seriously, folks, the current situation of Linux v. Microsoft is exactly what Marx and Engels were talking about.
What the Open Source community has is what all communist countries thus far have lacked, which is the admission of only like-minded people. For a commune to work, the citizens must all have similar ideas with respect to how to interact with the outside world. In a nation, where all citizens just become communists, this simply isn't possible.
It's only been around since '97.
Oh, wait, I thought you were talking about slashdot.
Er, well, at least the original poster is your wife's son, perhaps by a different man.
You know what? Just ignore this. You are happily married to a faithful spouse.
The Bhopal disaster isn't necessarily the worst industrial accident. Many people give that distinction to the collapse of the Baia Mare Dam, a tailings dam for a gold mine, holding water laced with cyanide and heavy metals. It dumped on the order of 100,000 cubic meters of this stuff into the Danube, killing tons and tons of fish and poisoning the drinking water of millions in Hungary. Luckily, the Australian parent company had an excellent Public Relations contract; this wasn't even news in Europe, much less in the USA.
m l
Here's one link to it.
http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/mdafbm.ht