This thought came to me in the shower today. Open source checks most of the boxes. It is a collaborative, worker owned (develloper-owned) project, that tries to flatten hierarchy. Especially if you look at something like Debian ), which really tries to have a bottom-up structure.
Of course, there are exceptions, considering there are a lot of corporate open-source projects, that are not democratically maintained and clearly only serve the interest of the company, who created it (like chromium for example).
So I am mainly talking about community-oriented FOSS projects here.
And if you were to agree with my statement, would you say that developing FOSS software is advancing the goals of the anarchist / communist project, because it is laying the groundwork infrastructure needed for a new kind of economy and society?
Thought this could be an interesting discussion!
Honestly, yes, I think it’s one of the best examples of anarchism in action the world has ever seen. And an especially pertinent example to point out to those who’d say things like, “Why would anyone do work or innovate without a profit motive?” Lots of good and innovative software, made without any profit incentive by a collective of people who are working on it just because they want to and they enjoy it.
Meanwhile we have many capitalist groups stifling innovation in the name of profit. It’s more profitable for them to prevent competition than to compete for the best product.
I spent hours every day either taking pictures of organisms or identifying them online, just for the sake of it and without financial reimbursement. People who say you need a profit motive to do work are just passionless and detached from the world…
People who say you need a profit motive to do work are just passionless and detached from the world…
You might even say they’re feeling alienated, as a certain German economist might say.
Cory Doctorow has a novel “Walkaway” which is basically “what if society but FOSS”. It’s really good!
To answer your question, while it has a lot in common with anarchism I don’t think anyone benefits from trying to fit it into a predefined political box. It’s something new.
Wow, I didn’t think, I would get such an interesting book recommendation out of this. Thank you so much!
My pleasure! It kind of reminds me of Snow Crash in that it’s really fun and adventurous but also made me think deep thoughts.
Cory Doctorow is prolific and has written a ton of other great and highly interesting stuff as well. He’s a very intelligent fellow.
I do not.
FOSS is the natural conclusion of public code having a negligible cost to supply once it has been produced. Ideally it takes IP out of the equation and allocates compensation towards development rather than rent extraction.
FOSS is a question of centralization & authority vs decentralization & freedom.
It can definitely be a form of praxis.
Sorry for being a bit of an idiot, but what is praxis?
The textbook definition would be the application of theory to action. It’s basically leftist slang for putting the theories of socialism/communism/humanism into practice in a real way.
Alright, thanks ;)
Only if you use GPL, not MIT.
I think MIT is anarchistic license. You can do whatever the fuck you want with it, but for this shit to work for both of us, you really should collaborate
Further, GPL relies on enforcement from an authority on copyrights, which is exactly the opposite of what anarchists suggest
Yes although what tends to happen is the capitalists just take MIT licenced code and make bank off it.
This is all moot now that LLMs can launder the code anyway.
tl;dr : No, FOSS project are used by military and fascists
long: It’s link to a common misunderstanding of “mean of production”. FOSS developers do not own the mean of production. Mean of production is not just the tool to produce goods and services, but all the industry needed to make them available : promotion, distribution, … Socialization (for anarchists) or collectivization (for comies) of industries mean that workers own and manage (or self-organized) every establishment needed for this and organize together to get their power back. In this case, we could abolish some industries, change them, or choose where to send the production or not. This is the same for cooperatives and self-managed places; it’s may be some interesting experience or complementary with class struggle, but is not a revolutionary move in itself
I often think of community run open source free license software projects as an example of communalism, personally. Maybe when I learn about more forms of anarchism and socialism there will be other ideas that feel more apt to describe it
BoringCactus wrote a tentative post-mortem to “open source”/free software (five-and-a-half years ago already?!) that I find/found interesting and somewhat relevant to your question.
That was indeed a really interesting read! It really made me think more deeply about software licencing. I didn’t quite understand what the authors problem with GPLv3 was though? That the companies are scared of it? Isn’t that kind of a good thing? I don’t want amazon to make massive profits off of my work, because if that’s possible to do, then that would necessarily mean, that my goal as a developer (to protect my work from exploitation while helping the common good) isn’t working. I am curious what you have taken away from the essay though? How do you protect your code from corporate exploitation?
The author of that piece would say you protect your code by not open sourcing it (or by using a license that grants no rights to use said source). It’s an incredibly frustrating piece to me, because it presents hampering corporations as more important than not screwing over individual FOSS users.
The reason they blame GPLv3 is because they claim the open sourcing requirements within it are so onerous that corporations just avoid it, making it so that rather than corporations contributing to that software, they often end up supplanting it with their own versions that have alternate licensing, which then not only denies the original author any benefit, but even makes the corporation ‘look good’ to people who don’t realize or care what happened.
It’s so frustrating to me because they’re doing this whole “pragmatism over idealism” claim, while also not acknowledging that FOSS as a movement is the only reason any corporation open sources anything now. They certainly didn’t used to. But the author seemingly would rather people not have any tools made with or by companies, who are benefiting from them financially, than have both corporations and individual users benefit from them. That’s ideology over pragmatism as well.
Capitalism is bad, but it’s bad because it entrenches profit over morality, via the mistaken belief/ false premise that competing interests will average out in the end. It’s not bad because every single output it creates is somehow evil incarnate, which seems to be the author’s gist.
If we take the words of Saint Richard Stallman as true in the sense that in his day all software developmet was ‘open’ but at some point some decided for whatever reason to start “closing” stuff then one could say all software development did not have any anarchist or communist intention in the beginning, it just turned profit-driven in the way.
I was introduced to communism/socialism through Linux.
No. I’m staunchly anti-communist and also a staunch supporter of free software. It’s also possible to have another combination of beliefs on these things, but these are mine.
I suggest reading the section “Why Don’t You Move to Russia?” of this: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.en.html
By contrast, I am working to build a system where people are free to decide their own actions; in particular, free to help their neighbors, and free to alter and improve the tools which they use in their daily lives. A system based on voluntary cooperation and on decentralization.
Thus, if we are to judge views by their resemblance to Russian Communism, it is the software owners who are the Communists.
I agree with that. Free software is about building a society more strongly based on individual rights. At least Marxism-Leninism certainly isn’t about that, though anarchism can be argued to be to some extent.
While I agree, that Marxism-Leninism or Russian-Style “communism” have nothing to do with free software, I would also not call them real communism. Marx litteraly defined communism as a classless, stateless society. There is no such thing as a communist state. I also would argue, that free software is fundamentally anti-capitalist, because it rejects the basis of capitalism, which is private ownership of the means of production (which in this case would be software). So, in my opinion you cannot simultaneously believe that capitalism is the best way to organize software development while believing that free software is the best way to organize software development.
because it rejects the basis of capitalism, which is private ownership of the means of production (which in this case would be software)
No, it doesn’t. Companies developing software for internal use, including as part of a “means of production” (e.g. robot firmware at a factory), and keeping it secret from the public is completely compatible with free software. It’s only when software is distributed to other people/entities that the free software movement insists that the recipient should also have freedom (including to run a business with it or any modified version of it).
Are you shure about that? Because that would mean, that every piece of software, that hasn’t been released to the public would automatically be free software, which would make the label pretty meaninglessness.
Yes. There are several sections on gnu.org that talk about this, these are the ones I was able to quickly find.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html
The freedom to make and distribute exact copies when you wish. (It is not an obligation; doing this is your choice. If the program is free, that doesn’t mean someone has an obligation to offer you a copy, or that you have an obligation to offer him a copy. Distributing a program to users without freedom mistreats them; however, choosing not to distribute the program—using it privately—does not mistreat anyone.)
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.en.html
Free software is a matter of freedom, not access. In general we do not believe it is wrong to develop a program and not release it. There are occasions when a program is so important that one might argue that withholding it from the public is doing wrong to humanity. However, such cases are rare. Most programs are not that important, and declining to release them is not particularly wrong. Thus, there is no conflict between the development of private or custom software and the principles of the free software movement.
Nearly all employment for programmers is in development of custom software; therefore most programming jobs are, or could be, done in a way compatible with the free software movement.
Not really.
I compare it more to fan fiction and amateur writing. Some is a great read, much better than the garbage you might find on NYT’s best seller list. Very talented people doing what they love and trying to be of service to others along the way. FOSS often seems more of a passion project for the creator(s) than an anarchist/communist project, IMHO - although there are obvious parallels.
It’s an observation of Marx, I think correct, that society organises in a manner aligned around the means of production. Agrarian -> feudal, industrial -> capitalist etc. I think the essential distinguishing feature of software vs capital goods is that software can be copied without the loss of the original. Hence I think the concept of ownership fails and the mode of production becomes anarchist.
Anarcho Communism
I consider FOSS a step toward prefiguring an anarchy.
Current source control management systems however perpetuate heirarchies with roles such as maintainer and developer with different permissions. I like to keep the permissions similar for roles. I might take away foot guns like force push from developers.
Another problem limiting anarchy is consensus. Getting agreement from everyone effected is still not quite there in the merge request process.
