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!
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?
Yep, and that’s why I use it.
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 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.
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.
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.
Not Communism in a political sense. More like community based, friendly software.
Open Source as in transparent or non proprietary.
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!
Cory Doctorow is prolific and has written a ton of other great and highly interesting stuff as well. He’s a very intelligent fellow.
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.
It’s a great book, and very relevant.
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.
Open source is not literally communism, but I do think it’s one of the best examples to demonstrate that anarcho-communism is plausible.
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.
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.
