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Re: Gifts? (was: Re: [ox-en] Richard Barbrook article)



Hi Graham,

being a German native speaker I am not sure either whether I really understand the so-called key concepts discussed at oekonux.de. Anyway, I agree with your definition of 'doubly free software' and will try to tie in with it.

So, Free Software (FS) is produced freely in a new way and distributed freely in a new way. I guess the latter part is quite clear: GPL + digital reproducability cancels bourgois proprietorship and Internet + digital reproducability revolutionises global distribution. We need a new name for the resulting exchange of goods indeed since it does not follow the hegemonial capitalist rules of exchange. Those are inextricably intertwined with private property (addressed by gpl) and scarcity (crushed by digital reproducability and the infrastructure provided by Internet and other ICTs). I agree that there are similarities to the exchange of presents. It is morally not accepted to sell a present. It really somewhat magically happens during the act of giving a present that it is kicked out of the otherwise allencompassing capitalist mode of exchange. The bad news: It is kicked out of every kind of exchange as it is not accepted morally to pass on a present as a present either. This was different at other times and at other places. Using the metaphor 'gift' nowadays we would have to stress this difference all over again. And the difference the GPL makes is not easily explained: "It's like a present, it's for free and you are not allowed to sell it. You can do everything with it, you are even allowed to pass it on as a present as long as you can make sure that the receiver does not sell it." That is quite a weird gift, isn't it?

Regarding the side of free production you raise interesting questions. How would production of these weird gifts look like? Does it have to be differently organised? You write:

At 17:42 22.10.02 -0400:
Now they are not producing a potential gift, but an actual gift. To do this,
they have to become partly absorbed in the new economy. They have to
let their design decisions etc be at least partly controlled by the hordes
of Mozilla developers who are not part of AOL and have no connection with
their commercial interests at all. Their own staff have to be using free
software for development. Their staff have to learn how to work in a
co-operative way; etc. In other words, if a company is genuinely producing
a gift it has to be partly taken over by the new potential mode of
production - obviously they are going to gamble that this will only be
on the fringes of the company, that they can limit any damage from it,
and control it if they need to. Which may or may not be true.

... which may or may not be true, right. Quite obviously many of these companies bet on FS because it is the only way to 'compete' with Microsoft. It is somewhat ironic that the daunting market power of MS's monopoly - a capitalist success story - has these impacts. I think the 'gift' metaphor up to a point really does contribute to an explanation of what is happening here. Companies are giving away presents since the early days of capitalism. They simply do that to increase market shares. Be it the king or a minor bureaucrat flattered by beautiful presents, be it the consumer choosing WalMart because some goods are sold there below the production costs, all these 'gifts' are very common capitalist investments. However, presents like this surely are not produced differently and it is difficult to see why they should. So, something else is happening and my guess would be that it is not the magical touch of FS, which is responsible for new modes of production within Sun, IBM, etc. I rather think that in order to do what capitalists do - defeating their competitor - they have to build political alliances with groups that hate Microsoft even more and which have the power to stop Gates. And if you want to work together with those nerds coding FS you have to sing along their tunes. And these nerds actually are in an extraordinarily strong position because they do not need Sun, IBM, etc at all.

We will see whether behind their backs the special nature of FS as gift that is left in exchange will make a difference beyond that or not. After all, Mozilla, once given as a present is living on its own life providing FS users with a nice browser component.

What I wanted to say is that we should be aware that 'gift-economy' remains a metaphor and that at certain points we maybe should get off the metaphor in order to understand what is going on. In the case of major companies adopting FS power games, alliances, and competition might explain more than the metaphor alone.

Thomas

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