[AktiviX] Open source and anarchism: What can anarchists learn from the Free Software movement?

[j.martin.pedersen]

On Tue, 2003-10-14 at 14:34, Robin Green wrote:
> Personally I'm not an anarchist

nobody is perfect

>  and I don't think free software projects are
> necessarily good examples of anarchist successes either.

how would you know, then?


> 2. The model (whatever you want to call it) of a typical free software project
> is quite restricted to just software production and doesn't apply to wealth-sharing,
> decision making about other things,

any idea, by way of structural analogy, can berelated to any domain of
ideas, and there is certainly an emerging body og morphogenetic
occurrrences to testify to the opposite of what you are saying.

You can try to prove them wrong with analysis, but ideas never did pay
much attention to the supposed/imposed illusion of the one and only
Truth when people see in them liberatory and emancipatory aspects. It is
in the eye of the beholder - just because you can't see it, doesn't mean
that it isn't there.

>  or wider social relations. It's really
> rather limited. In other words, current free software production is often embedded
> in capitalist societies,

everything is, have you heard of the Spectacle and other such
theoretical perspectives that have been prevailing in revolutionary
theory for decades?

>  self-evidently, and therefore it's not very similar at all
> to the "ideal anarchist (non-)state"

what is that then - i thought that the anarchist ideal was a product and
consequence of continued practices and theoretical reflection upon it in
order to establish a foundation for organisational change, so certainly
it can only be seen through continued experimentaitons with trial and
error - and the trial and error process is the exact power of the free
software mode of production, since cyberspace provides the options of
experimenting with architectures of organisation.

All such previous attempts of anarchist realities have been crushed by
the state - in fact any alternative idea of modes of production and
organisation that goes against central authority will and always has
been crushed by the state.

That is why there is a structural analogy between anarchist projects and
free software production.

Just becase Linus is a self-important central authority and a vague
libertarian-ish capitalist wanker, is doesn't mean that another project,
even a kernel, could nbe organised differently.

>  because of
> law and order problems for one thing).

explain?


> Cheers,

/m