Re: [ox-en] Re: Marxists and Anarchists, was: Re: [AktiviX] Reading on politics of free software
- From: "Benj. Mako Hill" <mako debian.org>
- Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 13:57:36 -0800
On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 01:23:30PM -0500, Art McGee wrote:
I am quite a supporter of the Free Software movement. Good
to see Asa's essay pitching the movement to anarchos.
Point of clarification in regards to the United States:
Anarchists already understand Free and Open Source software by
default. They don't need a marketing pitch since they are the ones
behind so much of it's development and/or implementation.
I think I would disagree with this based on the numbers of I've
seen. I'm under the impression that the majority of development is
being done or funded by companies.
If your argument is FLOSS-developers/anarchists is a bigger number
than FLOSS-developers/population then I'd probably agree with
you.
More importantly, the less "controlled" nature of the FLOSS
development process is something that Anarchists grasp
intuitively.
Except of course the Luddite or semi-Luddite anarchists. There are many
-- but don't expect them to chime in on this list!
Marxists, on the other hand, due to their tendency to want top-down
control, only tend to theorize about Open Source and Free Software
in the abstract, but are less likely to be the ones getting their
hands dirty or actualizing the open principles of the movement into
areas outside of software.
I'd be interested to see any sort of research or numbers that support
this. Working on FLOSS in non-profit and social justice areas, I tend
to run into a large number of FLOSS developers with a particular type
of politics. When I see a political topic brought up on a large
explicitly non-political FLOSS project (like Debian) I'm given lots of
reasons to rethink any generalizations my initial experiences may have
led me to.
Regards,
Mako
--
Benjamin Mako Hill
mako debian.org
http://mako.yukidoke.org/