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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 ensur

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.
    - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      I always thought communism's classlessness necessitated at least some form of flat hierarchy or syndicalism where worker's collectives hold decisions democratically and directly. On the other hand, hierarchical organizations are still fine by some schools of anarchism. Right, but then absence of state is true for anything involving wide area networking. Like I said, you're simply listing an absence of per-unit sales where "free as in beer" is concerned. The money is still there in the form of sponsorships, fundraisers, consulting, premium versions, dual licensing, corporate contributors and so on. And then FOSS has nothing like syndicalism, unions, worker collectives or anything like that.
      - lqdc13 11y ago
        "absence of state is true for anything involving wide area networking" I agree, but I think we are talking about different things. Regarding money, you can be paid a thousand dollars every day for writing FOSS and putting it on github. Still there is no money within the FOSS community because everyone in the community gets it for free. And the person writing it contributes it according to their ability. Also, if Redhat sells their software to companies under a different license, again it has nothing to do with money within the community. It has to do with the larger capitalist society within which they exist.
DonHopkins 11y ago
How about political slogans like: Linux is only free if your time is worthless. Free software: more expensive than money. We make free software affordable. (That last one was Cygnus Solution's slogan by John Gilmore [1] [2], which answered the previous ones.) [1] https://books.google.nl/books?id=bjMsCKvV9I4C&pg=PA78&lpg=PA78&dq=%22We+make+free+software+affordable.%22&source=bl&ots=DZf0PYfMqu&sig=uJo8CRI5bZtTqwzSyd0M4zwXGIc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NF2RVfbiDcP7UuKcgNAI&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22We%20make%20free%20software%20affordable.%22&f=false https://books.google.nl/books?id=bjMsCKvV9I4C&pg=PA78&lpg=PA... [2] https://rapidminer.com/we-make-free-software-affordable/ https://rapidminer.com/we-make-free-software-affordable/
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  Political slogans usually aren't worth entertaining in any serious debate, that's the point. Nonetheless, I'll bite: Linux is only free if your time is worthless. That time has value is an idea that has been exploited to create so-called time-based currency and time banking. Free software: more expensive than money. The amount of man hours put in some projects means the costs of a from-scratch rewrite is probably higher than to simply bite the bullet and go by licensing terms. This may or may not be true depending on the project, though some may indeed have a utility and COCOMO score that makes it so. We make free software affordable. Pure marketing slogan, not worth discussing. Probably Cygnus' way of saying they had great support and contract development services (which they did, they're responsible for a large part of making GCC what it is today).
  - DonHopkins 11y ago
    My point is that Cygnus Solutions deftly channeled the doubts and problems raised by the first two slogans (which they didn't originate, but were going around at the time), into a successful service under the last slogan (which they did originate, in response).

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.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    I always thought communism's classlessness necessitated at least some form of flat hierarchy or syndicalism where worker's collectives hold decisions democratically and directly. On the other hand, hierarchical organizations are still fine by some schools of anarchism. Right, but then absence of state is true for anything involving wide area networking. Like I said, you're simply listing an absence of per-unit sales where "free as in beer" is concerned. The money is still there in the form of sponsorships, fundraisers, consulting, premium versions, dual licensing, corporate contributors and so on. And then FOSS has nothing like syndicalism, unions, worker collectives or anything like that.
    - lqdc13 11y ago
      "absence of state is true for anything involving wide area networking" I agree, but I think we are talking about different things. Regarding money, you can be paid a thousand dollars every day for writing FOSS and putting it on github. Still there is no money within the FOSS community because everyone in the community gets it for free. And the person writing it contributes it according to their ability. Also, if Redhat sells their software to companies under a different license, again it has nothing to do with money within the community. It has to do with the larger capitalist society within which they exist.

DonHopkins 11y ago

How about political slogans like: Linux is only free if your time is worthless. Free software: more expensive than money. We make free software affordable. (That last one was Cygnus Solution's slogan by John Gilmore [1] [2], which answered the previous ones.) [1] https://books.google.nl/books?id=bjMsCKvV9I4C&pg=PA78&lpg=PA78&dq=%22We+make+free+software+affordable.%22&source=bl&ots=DZf0PYfMqu&sig=uJo8CRI5bZtTqwzSyd0M4zwXGIc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NF2RVfbiDcP7UuKcgNAI&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22We%20make%20free%20software%20affordable.%22&f=false https://books.google.nl/books?id=bjMsCKvV9I4C&pg=PA78&lpg=PA... [2] https://rapidminer.com/we-make-free-software-affordable/ https://rapidminer.com/we-make-free-software-affordable/

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Political slogans usually aren't worth entertaining in any serious debate, that's the point. Nonetheless, I'll bite: Linux is only free if your time is worthless. That time has value is an idea that has been exploited to create so-called time-based currency and time banking. Free software: more expensive than money. The amount of man hours put in some projects means the costs of a from-scratch rewrite is probably higher than to simply bite the bullet and go by licensing terms. This may or may not be true depending on the project, though some may indeed have a utility and COCOMO score that makes it so. We make free software affordable. Pure marketing slogan, not worth discussing. Probably Cygnus' way of saying they had great support and contract development services (which they did, they're responsible for a large part of making GCC what it is today).
- DonHopkins 11y ago
  My point is that Cygnus Solutions deftly channeled the doubts and problems raised by the first two slogans (which they didn't originate, but were going around at the time), into a successful service under the last slogan (which they did originate, in response).