[plug] Open Source and Communism

[Chris Caston]

A good article to read on this subject is:

The capitalist view of open source.

(http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-05-18-007-20-OP)

It basically describes software as a form of wealth and a product of
mans mind. According to Ayne Rands theory Lassie Farez (sp) Capitalism
man or (woman) can do whatever they like with their wealth.

They could flush it down the toilet if they so wished. They could
certainly release it under a license such as the GPL.
 
In my opinion its important to see things in perspective. I'm a
Christian and I keep my distance away from idealogy and that includes
both capitalism and communism.

I see open source as a best practice but am careful to not take it to
seriously. I don't want to see software or anything else you may wish to
put a fancy coptleft licnese on become a poltical debate. 

Imagine a whole society built using the ideals of open source. 
Even if it were possible you could waste a greate deal of your life
trying to achieve it.
 
regards,

Chris Caston 

On Sun, 2002-11-17 at 13:58, Leon Brooks wrote:
> There have been a couple of comments linking Open Source and Communism bandied 
> about recently, so here are a couple of points have have pre-pondered (ie 
> they are preponderous points) before the topic comes up.
> 
>  * Open Source is going to happen anyway - whether or not it is
>    government funded/sponsored/legislated and regardless of the
>    philosophy behind it - for financial reasons. It's sad that most
>    people diving into it seem to be blind to its more important
>    attributes.
> 
>  * Open Source is different to Communism in several important ways.
>    The most obvious is that when you share your cow's milk, you have
>    less milk, but when you share your software's source, you end up
>    with *more* software.
> 
>  * The second most obvious is that in Communism as she are practiced,
>    control is centralised; in Open Source - particularly the GPLish
>    flavours - control is carefully and deliberately decentralised.
>    Most successful projects operate in `benevolent dictator' mode,
>    but by their very nature what little control they have is purely
>    by mutual assent.
> 
>    In point of fact proprietary software is closer to Communism in
>    this regard, and Open Source closer to Anarchism.
> 
>  * Communism's theoretical basis is `from each according to his
>    ability, to each according to his need' but Open Source's paradigm
>    more closely resembles `from each according to his need to solve a
>    problem, to each according to his ability to use a search engine'.
> 
>    If that needs explaining: the more you need a solution, the more
>    inclined you will be to adapt or start an OSS project to provide
>    that solution. The better able you are to drive a search engine,
>    the more likely you will find the most appropriate pre-existing
>    solution.
> 
> Cheers; Leon
> 
>