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



Hi Thomas,

A mammoth reply...


On Thu, 24 Oct 2002, Thomas Berker wrote:

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. 

OK, this should probably be a totally different thread, but that's 
something I don't agree with. There's nothing magic about 'digital 
reproducability'. The same things applied to cassette recorders in 
relationship to radio, or VCRs in relation to television (the fact that
these are broadcast media makes far more difference than the 
analogue/digital difference). Or photocopiers in relation to print.
I'd say instead 'gpl + cheap and widely available equipment for
repraduction'. Saying 'gpl + digital reprocability' hides the dependence 
of FS on large-scale factory-based manufacture, plus makes 'digital'
seem something which it isn't.

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?

Except that you don't have to control what the receiver does - the law
and the original copyright holder do that.
 
Even weirder, it makes no sense to pass the original on at all (I suppose
you can set up a new download site for a piece of gpled software, but
that's generally fairly pointless). What you can do, is pass on improved
versions of the program - you have to add your own present to it before
you can meaningfully pass it on.

So yes, I guess you're right that 'gift' is not something that helps to
explain it to people who don't know about the topic in the first place.
But I still think it's a useful idea in itself - the fact that it may not
help in 'propaganda' doesn't mean it is wrong.


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.

They are also not 'gifts' in my sense, because they can't be added to and
passed on. These are just normal parts of the capitalist economy with no
relation to FS. It's integration into the gift economy (being circulated
and added to) which makes something a 'gift' not just the fact that it
is given away.

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.

I'd agree it's not the 'magical touch of FS', and also agree with your
explanation as part of the reason. But i don't think it's the entire
reason; there is something more structural in the capitalist economy
itself which is pushing them into this. Here's an example: Long before FS
was any kind of force, Sun came up with the Sparc in a situation where
Intel was already the near-monopolist. As a tactic to break into Intels
market, they made the Sparc architecture freely available; the hope being,
that if it was made by a range of smaller companies (who would not make it
if they had to pay fees to use it), then it had more chance of succeeding
- generally no-one will use a device only available from one source. In
the end, that architecture was used by the ESA to design a space-worthy
processor; they gpl-ed their design, with the result that currently the
only gpl-ed processor in manufacture is a SPARC. But the origin of this
isn't in any way I know of because of the political/economic clout of FS
(which I think fits with your general argument, in spite of conflicting
on this particular point).

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. 
Yes. I pushed that argument a bit, partly as a reaction to Johan 
Soderberg's argument (as I understood it in his paper) that commercial
involvement in FS was a danger, with potential exploitation of FS 
creators. Which it obviously is as well, I just don't think that's the
whole story. After all, the classic method for the spread of Linux has
been through use in sub-parts of the company, often not officially
sanctioned by the directors. I'd see this as something even more 
effective - at very the least the company developers involved in it will
now be far more likely to be involved in FS development outside work.  

And, repeating myself, it's not the fact that the software is a gift
that makes the difference; it's the fact that part of the company is
now inserted into the gift economy, which means that some people in the
company are now working in a different way. For example, from a situation
where all decisions are made by a manager, they are now in a situation
where they can tell the manager 'you can't decide that because it doesn't
fit with what the outside developers would accept'. It's a partial loss 
of control for the company hierarchy.

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.

I'm still not convinced it's only a metaphor. I'd rather see it as one of
two ways of looking at what's happening. You can understand everything in
terms of a theory developed to explain capitalism: competition based on
scarcity, marginal costs, etc; which obviously explains some things well,
but badly distorts others (none of the papers that try to bring FS back
in to the marginalist fold seem at all convincing to me). Or you can say
there are two radically different things going on here, each of which
needs its own theory. In the case of FS the theory still needs developing
(I don't think Marxism helps very much as a potential alternative theory,
because basically as soon as it has said 'there is no exchange value
involved here' there's little positive contribution it can make). Now if
something like the 'gift' view is part of this theory, then it's going to
explain what's going on in conventional firms just as partially as 
marginalism explains FS. So you need both theories at the overlap, because 
reality has both kinds of phenomena.

Ooof, too long....

Graham 



Thomas

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