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Free Software And Its Revolutionary Social Implications
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Dec 11, 2001 04:22 AM
from the ideas-to-argue-about-over-coffee-and-beer dept.
from the ideas-to-argue-about-over-coffee-and-beer dept.
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."
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Free Software And Its Revolutionary Social Implications
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Interesting contrast with the First Monday piece (Score:4, Interesting)
What OpenSource does (Score:3, Redundant)
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.
Inexplicable (Score:2)
Theorize away! Academics will build their arguments and even create detailed demographies [firstmonday.org], without a demonstrable conclusion. And still, the development will continue, undisturbed.
computer programs and other "commodities" (Score:5, Insightful)
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" (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
- 1 troll == article. (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
i.e.
Another important factor is that capitalism is in deep crisis.
how does that relate to free or open software? NOT. Free or open software is about coding, not about freedom of speech, or software that cost nothing (if you do not value your time).
the only useful thing in the whole artilce is the fabber link. Now that was stuff i did not hear of. [ennex.com]
--posted as ac because i am ashamed i reacted to the troll.
Re:- 1 troll == article. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Free Software Being Marxist/Communist isn't flame (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [scientium.com] are possible, then maybe we'll see a resurgence of communism/Marxism as a major political/economic movement.
How do you make free _goods_? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Seperate the "FSF vs OSI" from the economics (Score:2, Insightful)
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).
Funky (Score:2)
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
*sigh* (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Socialism (Score:1)
If Free Software does want to be the primary bussiness model it has to to find a motivation for most developers at first.
Look at Europe (Score:1)
We can't escape... (Score:2, Insightful)
(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
Re: Open-source interview (Score:1)
It's interesting for me to finally read about the definitions of these areas. For me, when you say "Free software", I immediately think of "Free as in RealPlayer" (i.e. closed source, utterly commercial, probably spyware, but it costs nothing to download)
And yet when you say "Open source", it means to me, "Open as in Apache" (i.e. something with which you can tinker, something you're free to distribute, something you can give to friends)
I realise you'll all slate me as being completely wrong, but if the distinction between Free Software and Freeware is too blurred even for me to see at a glance, what hope stand business users of understanding the philosophy?
The need for human labor is not decreasing! (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
I don't feel so enlightened (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Spare me the evangelism (Score:2)
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)
So what do the Peons do? (Score:2)
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?
I'm confused... (Score:1)
But presumably most of this money comes from people working in proprietary software who also use GNU tools or whatever.
So if all software was free (which is what Stallman et al. want, isn't it?) where would the FSF get money to feed itself?
Or am I missing something? Somebody please explain how the system works.
jingoistic (Score:2)
Jingoistic: Extreme nationalism characterized especially by a belligerent foreign policy; chauvinistic patriotism.
Warmed over Marxist pablum (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
so, no change? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Unity of Open Source, Free Software and M$ (Score:1, Redundant)
We need unity, and if you can stretch your hearts, not only between these 2 factions, also with the much hated microsoft, even though I myself find it hard to think and write such a thing.
If you ask bill gates ( for example, in this [usatoday.com] recent interview) what motivates him, he says it's because he wants a computer in every home, because he wants things to be simple to use, he wants to be involved. It's a good vision, even though he's distorted in the way he carries it out.
That's why we need unity. How memorable would it be if a person like Gates turned around and said he was wrong, and he was sorry for his limited vision on the impact of his efforts on society, that now he saw how important the method was as well as the aim.
And same for this guy in this article: Seems to me he also is attached too much to the end product than the process. The process is what we will be living through for the rest of our lives. The end product is just a party one evening. Why don't we concentrate on improving the process of getting to our different software utopias? Utopia will always be 5 steps away, that's what utopia is there for in the first place - to move you forward.
For example, computers may well be doing the kind of hard labour that clerks and secretaries used to do, but you can't predict the entire universe: that's rationalism, and that's what the great belivers in Taylor and Ford used to believe in. Better to believe that in a social environment, the best solution comes from your interaction with that environment: Social constructionism puts for the point of view that reality is constructed through our interactions, not through planning it out beforehand. Look at the work of agile methodologists for example: make small changes in increments and you have a chance to see if that's really the best way forward. Utopian visions of societies are flawed already: it might be perfect is everyone was a communist, or if everyone was a capitalist, but the reality is most people are somewhere in between(or nowhere near either), and so is reality!
But we all want to do good and change the way things are, why can't we work together and use dialogue to build our future instead of wasting time fighting between each other?
Oh, dear (Score:2)
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.
Man Alive (Score:1)
This guy is actually talking about how everything could be GPL'd. This is Marxism with a new name, nothing more. It's fashionable to say "GPL" in a an article, and IIRC it was the same in the 1890's.
The most valuable resource we have is people, and we don't need them creating art and coding another damn window manager. Get over there and answer that phone, sweep that floor, and shovel that turd. Our most valuable resource is the expenditure of energy by the masses. BATTERIES.
If there really was a need for sysadmins, I would see ads for them, and have a better job. If there really was a need for basket weavers and crappy golf players, we would see a demand for it. Face it people, no one cares about your self-unfolding hobby or "talent", we need someone to haul this sack of coffee beans down the mountain for delivery to Seattle.
If this type of system he describes (again, the only reason this got ANY attention at all was because of the OSS software spin) was the optimal system, we would be living it right now.
To think that software will save the day, or that a licensing model will free us from our "chains" is BULLSHIT. Get real. Read the end of the article where this Utter Idiot spouts his simplistic "GPL Society" vision. Same damn flawed arguments put forth by the Marxists. GPL Society??? What, are you going to tell me that my mind/body and any derivatives (does that include my poop?) are open to the public and must be released after any modification? Cool, cuz I'd really like to get busy with Shannon Elizabeth.
Open Source Shannon Elizabeth!
What a crackpot. Some things are more valuable than others. I have something you want/need, but it is in short supply. If you want it, you will have to trade/barter with me for something of equal value. How hard is this to grasp? I can't believe that this issue is still being questioned. The only thing he did get right was that free software is available because the basic needs of others were already met, allowing them to create Free software. I have stated the same before and been flamed for it. Fuck that. Nobody has time to code, and then give it away, all the while with an empty belly. Free Software is a luxury. Someone, somewhere had to get stepped on in order for you to sit in a comfy chair and write software for free. Now how utopian and altruistic is that?
Warmed Over Marxism (Score:1)
I didn't find the article "enlightening" or "entertaining." It was just warmed-over-Marxism. Marx and Engles did make some worthy points in their Communist Manifesto, and they are historically important for having inspired the Russian Revolution, etc., but I doubt that Marxists have anything interesting to say about the "revolutionary social implications" of free software or of anything else that's really happening today. In fact, I suspect that their ideological furvor and their proclivities for endless argument might actually impeed the progress of free and/or open software, though not fatally (I hope).
The problem is linguistic (Score:2, Insightful)
Software to change the world? (Score:2)
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....
Freedom is BAD (?) (Score:1)
This is a very scary statement. Suddenly, all my lefty-liberal theories don't seem so nutty after all.
this guy is smoking crack (Score:1)
I had to stop reading at this point. Appart from the GPL, the "non free" project most militant about its license is OpenBSD. Security requires transparency about your methods, yet obscurity about your deployment. Nobody in the security business goes around advertising the location of their sensitive parts.
OpenBSD was not created for business.
Let's look at OpenSSH. There are compilation options which allow you to defeat, at compile time, features you don't wish to deploy. There options are in a header file. If you change this header file, you have changed the source. Haven't you? If OpenBSD were under the GPL, I guess you'd have to publish those changes. Wouldn't you?
It's quite possible to embed in source code all kinds of information which other people have no need or right to know. OpenBSD does a great job of keeping the rights parts of the source code free to inspection. That hardly makes OpenBSD the "running dog" of corporate perversity as this interview seems to imply.
Get you bets in! Nature wins when?! (Score:2)
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 [mindspring.com], but one thing at a time.
Coder - Creator or employee? (Score:2, Insightful)
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?
It is all about me (Score:2, Insightful)
Like prosuming (Score:1)
This can be compared also with pro-suming of the 80 s, where decorating your house and doing some handcrafts would be more preferred then staying in office or making money with a second job.
Capitalism is failing? (Score:2, Insightful)
"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
Jingoistic? (Score:2)
How typical of left/liberal thinking; if you don't agree with us, you are a bad person! LOL.
If you don't agree with me, you're a pedophile. (Score:1, Insightful)
Which is funny, because I would have enjoyed and agreed with the article -more- if I hadn't felt someone would be pissed if I didn't.
Of course I'm right, and if you don't agree, you're a pedophile.
Grow up! (Score:2)
It isn't capitalism or communism... (Score:1, Insightful)
In a new age it is meaningless to talk about things in terms of the previous age. This would be the equivalent of talking about CEOs' in terms of divine right.
Capitalism only exists for material goods that have scarcity. Communism is about workers controlling the means of production.
Well, I own dozens of computers. I own computers that are more powerful than super computers of just 20 years ago. I have instant communications with anyone in the world. I can protect my files from any power in the world for at least a few years.
In the information age I have more power than the most powerful men in the world just 50 years before.
This communication has allowed us to develop software products that rival those from capitalist developers costing billions of dollars to produce. And we share that software between us all, effectively sharing billions of dollars of wealth.
If you can't find a way to make a living off of these resources, then you really aren't trying very hard.
Marx, Free Software and Robots (Score:2, Insightful)
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 [egold.com] 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).
========Jingoism? Here? Never... (Score:1)
No enlightenment here. Moving along...
Jeff
If exchange value=0 then money not needed. Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
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
OSS: Because it just makes sense (Score:2)
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 the rest of the audience? (Score:2)
Talk about flame bait... Geez!
Irony (Score:1)
I refuse to subject myself to this delusions of grandeur as much as I refuse to belive the capitalists!
free as in enterprise (Score:1)
From what I understand, it's got something to do with Open Source not "being a business". They seem to acknowledge that a business has the right to compete freely with them, but Open Source does not.
What every American kid learns in grade school is the phrase "free enterprise", not "free business". MS's business model is wonderfully broken in today's world, and good old Darwinian selection should be allowed to decide which is the fittest type of software enterprise.
Look up the word "enterprise" at dict.org.
Most of the entries use words like "activity", "courage", "boldness", "energy". Great name for a spaceship
Ironically, it is only a recent entry from "The Free Online Dictionary of Computing" which equates "enterprise" with "business".
Marxisim = evil, Open Source = good (Score:1, Flamebait)
It is very dishonest, and exact opposite of open source. The GPL specifically is about me making decisions about code and information in my posession, and those who I interact with that noone else can impose on me wether "enlightened" or not.
When people talk about the freedom to copy, it is not like the false freedom for me to move into your house or impose on your resources. One is an infinite resource, the other very limited. Making them like they're the same is simply dishonest, and then going a step further and equating it to Marxisim (which promotes the latter) is even more dishonest.
robert pirsig and buckminster fuller (Score:1)
reading this article reminds me of ideas and philosophies expressed and explored by robert prisig (mostly in lila, his follow up book to zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance) and by buckminster fuller in his various books
fuller in that scarcity is an outmoded mind-think and that through technological sophistication and a focus on life-enabling tech rather than life-destroying tech (i.e. military) we can attain abundance for all
pirsig in his idea of increasing static levels of morality - per se - atomic -> biological -> social -> intellectual
importantly pirsig explicitly and fuller implicitly showed that it is wrongheaded to attack the levels below (and especially the most recent level below) as they have their own intrinsic morality and have provided th foundations for th new transcendent expression
so i like how in th article th interviewee also stresses how capitilism has enabled th new emergent mind-think to emerge - and will keep enabling it
th moral of th story is not to get ideological and see it as a struggle between capitalism and gpl-society - it is only a struggle if we perceive it as such and if by our arrogance we engender resentment
- one does not stand in front of a lion and proclaim loudly how one is fundamentally more evolved than it does one? - no, one simply takes precautions not to arouse a lion's interest and keep out of harms way knowing that th lion has it's place too
perhaps this is th lesson th romans were trying to teach the christians? :)
Re:Head Up Own Arse Syndrome (Score:2, Insightful)
Show me someone who knows anything about a topic who isn't biased.
more bugs ? (Score:1)
And i wonder if MS who sure also looks for bugs in NT and creates patches for them, tells you what they found, i think they just instead make a global patch and maybe they corrected over a 100 bugs in that ? do you know, does anyone know except MS ? maybe they dont solve bugs cause noone wrote a exploit for it and its a hard piece to rewrite cause it would take a lot of time, and they really want to use that time elsewehere, do you know ? no only MS knows...
So i guess you just cant compare linux and NT in that way, sorry to say but true...
Quazion...
My seconds of trolling and flameing..
Things that mark you out as a SlashDot Prick [TM] (Score:1)
* Spelling Porn as Pr0n (I was around in the cool old days, oh yes)
* www.goatse.cx
*
* Can you install Linux on it? (before trolls took this over (me included))
Any more anyone - perhaps we can get the definitive list and get it added into the Lameness filter
Re:Bin Laden KILLED!!! (Score:2)
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.
Re:I herby found... (Score:1)