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Did John Galt use free software?

• lqdc13 11y ago
  Free software in its current state is basically communism.
  • teekert 11y ago
    You are mixing up economical and personal benefits, here's what Linus has to say about this philosophy: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18419231 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18419231 To me Ayn's philosophy fits perfectly to this graph, it all boils down to this: Is there anything to gain for me (or my loved ones.) Imo Ayn's one-liner captures the essence of this graph. Edit: Of course loved ones or just 'a good feeling about yourself' are perfectly good reasons (the best?) to do something for someone else. This is not selflessness. Going to Africa to help children while every fiber in your body hates them, that is selflessness: the total disregard of what you yourself desire.
    • lqdc13 11y ago
      You can view communism in terms of "selfishness" like this too. Everyone selfishly wants bread and the only way they can get it is by contributing their labour. I think "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" fits much better. Everyone is contributing what they can for free to the common knowledge base and can use everyone else's stuff also for free. You can view it as "prestige" currency too, but that doesn't break the paradigm.
      • vezzy-fnord 11y ago
        You can't extrapolate conclusions like this out of a political slogan. Free software doesn't have any inherent slant, it's a way of using copyright law to ensure a given set of terms favorable to contribution and research propagate. You can certainly observe that it operates in a dynamic similar to a gift economy, and that it has an ethical position as well, but not a political ideology with all its baggage. The FOSS market is determined purely by individual interests of programmers and the people sponsoring them. It doesn't really hit any equilibrium of utility, only what authors want to work on.
        • lqdc13 11y ago
          I wasn't talking about free software as in GPL. Just the free as in beer kind that sometimes happens to also be open source and/or GPL. If you ignore past attempts of implementing communism and limit the discussion to just what its goals are, we can see open source software as a microcosm of communism. The only thing that doesn't fit very well is "ownership of means of production" but this is already assumed to be free, because people have to have a computer to begin with to participate in it. There is no food or water involved so those don't apply. Everything else is almost exactly communism. Absense of social classes: check Absense of state: check Absense of money: check Obviously it is not what Marx was describing, because it wasn't meant to be a mini-society that depends on capitalism for its existence, but I didn't mean to take it that far.
          • vezzy-fnord 11y ago
            Absence of social class is debatable as most projects are structured hierarchically, and then being a FOSS celebrity does give you advantages. Not that those contradict anarchist principles, necessarily. Absence of state is true for all software development until it isn't. Computer networking enables you to do things unfavorable to nation states up to a point, but at the end of the day there are various ways it can intervene to enforce copyright, patent or other form of law. Absence of money isn't true. It's simply utilized differently than simple per-unit consumer transactions, though those aren't out of the question either.
            • mseebach 11y ago
              > Absence of money isn't true. The fact that this thread sit under an article titled "Should I work for Free" is a pretty big hint...
            • lqdc13 11y ago
              Communism does not stipulate that there is no organizational hierarchical structure. Absence of state is true because within the microcosm, you can contribute from anywhere in the world and receive the software for free as well. Basically you don't even know where the people you are dealing with even live most of the time. This is no state by definition. Let's say you contribute to "NSA open source repository". Still there is no state because you can contribute from anywhere in the world and get the code as well. Absense of money is true by definition. We are talking about free as in beer software here.
      • fche 11y ago
        One problem is the question of who gets to decide "ability" and "need" - since in that totalitarian world this is not voluntary & self-asserted.
        • lqdc13 11y ago
          Communism has nothing to do with totalitarianism though. EDIT to clarify: Here is a good link: http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/difference-between-communism-and-totalitarianism/ http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/difference-be... Basically they are so different that totalitarianism is considered far right while communism far left on the political spectrum.
          • deleted 11y ago
            [deleted]
          • fche 11y ago
            "has nothing to do with totalitarianism" So it just hasn't been done right yet ...? "totalitarianism is considered far right" This passive-voice definition is unauthoritative and wrong. Check a dictionary instead.
            • lqdc13 11y ago
              I think you are conflating the two because of the case of Soviet Union. A) Soviet Union was not communism. Communism never happened. Communism/communist society is an ideal. B) Soviet Union was a totalitarian state, yes. C) One of the main concepts in communism is that there is/should be no state. Totalitarianism assumes that there is a state. This is in every definition of communism and totalitarianism. Here I'm going to quote it from the first line of each from Wikipedia: "Totalitarianism is concept of a political system in which the state holds total control over the society" "Communism ... absence of social classes, money, and the state."
              • fche 11y ago
                "Communism ... absence of [...] state." So yeah, "hasn't been done right yet". Could you hypothesize who in a true-scotsman communist non-state would regulate people's output ("ability") & input ("need")? Who would enforce the laws? If "everyone and anyone" is an enforcer, then claiming there is "no state" is sophistry.
      • crusso 11y ago
        I would amend that to say, "From each according to his ability, to each if someone with the ability cares to provide it for free." If production of free software was directed by need, there would be a lot more free toolkits for the healthcare industry and a lot fewer free games and software dedicated to distributing free porn.
        • lqdc13 11y ago
          I agree, but two points regarding need: a) people make stuff that they need themselves and share it so in a way it is need-based. b) yes it doesn't work in situations where there is need but no ability. I am guessing such situations are rare, because projects in many cases are willing to make modifications to help a large portion of their users. Also because there are usually enough people able to do these things to fit most needs. Finally, if you are a part of this microcosm, you can probably code yourself.
          • crusso 11y ago
            a) "need" in the Communist/Marxist sense is definitely not the same as "want". I know that need and want exist on a continuum, but most software development is pretty firmly in the "want" neighborhood. When Marx used the word "need", he was talking about safety, food, shelter, clothing, etc. Porn and video games aren't the modern day equivalent of those things. That's part of the reason why the Marx philosophy doesn't necessarily match up with FOSS. b) Even ignoring "need" vs "want", tell that to my mom's quilting club. The venn diagram of quilters and coders has an extremely small intersection. The same can be said for tons of activities that old ladies and women in general enjoy.
      • TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
        >Everyone is contributing what they can for free to the common knowledge base and can use everyone else's stuff also for free. Not necessarily. In reality the flow of IP-value is largely one way. Many corporations have done incredibly well out of FOSS without offering much in return. Just because Famous Router Company puts up source code of firmware it has glued together from various FOSS projects doesn't mean FRC has made a significant contribution. (Some corps do, of course. But even there they don't share other core IP as they would in a genuinely flat FOSS economy.) In fact FOSS is about commodification, not innovation or invention. If innovation happens, it's usually in developer-land. FOSS culture doesn't seem all that interested in solving new classes of problem in user-land. So "according to his (her) needs" is very limited and partial.
        • lqdc13 11y ago
          Just because we have this conversation and there is some indignation over companies not contributing back to the projects they use shows that we expect them to contribute according to their ability. I agree that it isn't perfect like every other implementation of communism because some people don't contribute back. But we can just pretend that their ability is zero. Then it still works.
        • dublinben 11y ago
          >without offering much in return This is why strong copyleft licenses are so important. As you've said, most companies will do the absolute minimum required of them.
  • vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    Please elaborate how.
    • lqdc13 11y ago
      elaborated above.
    • to3m 11y ago
      Please see page 129,473 of your copy of Atlas Shrugged.
  • VLM 11y ago
    Logical proofs and reason have historically been highly ineffective at convincing people with this axe to grind (perhaps a paid for axe...). A strategy that MIGHT be more successful, or at least a new strategy, would be to set up an actual communistic free software ecosystem and then demonstrate that no one uses it and it has basically no overlap with the existing non communist ecosystem. "The world is flat" "Well OK if you're so sure, then we'll build something that depends on it being flat" "Well that didn't work, I wonder what that implies about the world being flat?" You could consider it a performance art project. I would. I am serious although I have the wisdom to know I do not have the ability and skills at this time to do it. And if anyone wants to pick up the (red) banner and run with it, I'd cheer them on. Historically going back 10-20 years there were linux distributions from communist countries, but I'm talking about real commie software, as in a commune of devs with an explicitly communist license. If nothing else is accomplished, writing and publishing the official explicit CPL Communist Public software License would tend to take the hot air out of some sails... One problem is I'm not a communist. Finding one might be an excellent first step for the project. Its going to require deep domain specific knowledge.
    • lqdc13 11y ago
      There have never been any communist states. In western countries communist state refers to states with Leninist-Marxist ideology that some would argue are in fact not even socialist states. My argument is that we don't have to create a communist software ecosystem because the current FOSS one that you probably use yourself already is very close to communism. Probably as close as it can get given that it exists within a capitalistic society.