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.
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.
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.
Yes, as an anarchist I regularly point to FOSS as a plausible example of it working
likewise as a socialist. it’s a good example the profit motive rule is bullshit.
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.
It’s a great book, and very relevant.
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 ;)
Open source is not literally communism, but I do think it’s one of the best examples to demonstrate that anarcho-communism is plausible.
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.
Yeah we do live in a capitalist world
You obviously want WTFPL instead of MIT for that.
Yeah that’s even better
But I believe in a world where no license would be equal to that
Yes. Not going to happen. The next best thing would be to shorten copyright protection to 10 years. (Also not going to happen, but easier to convince people that we should try this.)
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.
No there are clear rules
Anarchism doesn’t mean, there are no rules. Read the wikipedia article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
While not explicitly so, FOSS as a concept aligns very closely with far left anti-capitalist principles. The existence of corporate and right-winger-owned FOSS projects is a bit of an oxymoron, but doesn’t discredit the fact that it’s inherently a far left concept.
Anarcho Communism
Well who lives in that castle over there?
No one lives there.
On second thought, lets not go to Camelot, 'tis a silly place
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.
But you can fork it and make your own thing. Standard hierarchy has much more power over resources. Git’s hierarchy is almost simbolic.
Fuck yea! I’m not those dumb tear down the government people, I’m the make it redundant pragmatic people. I will go as close to my ideal state as possible.
I’m going with communalism. And its even simpler. A group of like minded people wanting to be creative nd share creativity without monetization. Seems more akin to artist movements to me. And I’m all for it.
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
I think FOSS enable those kind of communities but I don’t think FOSS as a concept is any of those things. those communities could equally work with a non FOSS license (eg one that prevents commercial use or a license that allow usage only by members of a specific community). They uses existing licenses because they go momentum and have legal precedents that allows people to defend their rights.
Most FOSS licenses were specifically designed to allow profiting from the wok of others, even the GPL. Just see how many billion dollar companies (think Azure, AWS, etc) profit from projects without giving anything back.
