Re: Linux is capitalist!

> On 5/18/06, Rod Heyd <rsheyd@gmail.com> wrote:
>         <more_rambling>

>         Frankly, I've always felt the comparisons of open source to
>         communism show a distinct lack of understanding of the
>         environment from which the ideas of open source sprang.

>         Richard Stallman is an academic and a computer scientist and
>         it is from within that environment that the methodology of
>         open source was developed.  As someone who has worked in the
>         field of the sciences, I can attest to the fact that
>         scientific progress occurs most efficiently when information
>         can be exchanged without any restrictions.  This is the whole
>         point of scientific journals, and the underlying motivation of
>         the "publish or perish" mantra in academia.  If you are a
>         researcher at a university and you aren't publishing your
>         work, then you aren't contributing and you don't deserve the
>         support of your institution. 

>         Stallman adapted the methodology used for at least the last 3
>         centuries by the scientific community to the software
>         development world and called it open source.  There is nothing
>         inherently Marxist about that.  If people want to make such
>         comparisons, that's fine, but if they do so, they are missing
>         the point *and* failing to recognize that the ideas that open
>         source came from pre-date Marx by at least 200 hundred years,
>         probably longer.  Open source is not, nor was it ever intended
>         to be a model of a socio-economic system.  The point was to
>         generate better code that is available to everyone to improve
>         and extend, nothing more, and nothing less. 

>         </more_rambling>

>         Cheers,

>         Rod

>         On 5/18/06, Victor Odhner <vodhner@cox.net> wrote:

>                 <ramble>

>                 Free Software does indeed have some strong
>                 resemblances 
>                 to classic Marxism.  What makes this possible, in the
>                 field of 
>                 software, is that a knowledge resource can be
>                 replicated
>                 indefinitely, so we can share something and still have
>                 it.
>                 Not so with physical resources:  it's always a
>                 trade-off.

>                 In the Marxist definition, Capitalism is also a
>                 central control 
>                 of the means of production, only it's for the sake of
>                 the Bad
>                 Guys, while State Socialism is for the sake of the
>                 Good
>                 Guys.  As Orwell said, all animals are equal, only
>                 some
>                 animals are more equal than others.  Owning things
>                 (or 
>                 managing them) gives us control, and people tend to
>                 like
>                 being "more equal than others".  But some
>                 concentration
>                 of power can lead to efficiencies ... within reason.
>                 An "owner" can be like Linus, or like Bill. 

>                 We are now seeing excessive concentration of power in
>                 the hands of corporations, which lots of people see as
>                 OK
>                 because they are providing us with bread and circuses.
>                 But the downside is getting more obvious, so I'm
>                 confident 
>                 the pendulum will swing, and Free Software is part of
>                 that.

>                 Constructive, generous, altruistic motives are a good
>                 thing.
>                 Selfish motives get a lot of stuff done too.  It's all
>                 about
>                 balance.

>                 </ramble>