Re: [ox-en] Translation complete: GNU/Linux - Milestone on the Way to the GPL Society
- From: Tom Chance <tom tomchance.org.uk>
- Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 14:51:16 +0000
Stefan and others,
On Sunday 12 Dec 2004 20:03, Stefan Merten wrote:
As most Oekonux texts this one also can be commented on as an
OpenTheory project under
http://www.opentheory.org/gplsociety/text.phtml?lang=en
I couldn't see where to make general comments on that page, so here are some
thoughts I had whilst reading it.
1) GNU/Linux has exchange value, and that is significant. You dismiss the fact
that companies have based profit models on Free Software as being temporary,
something that will disintegrate when all software is released under the GPL
(what about other licenses?). Of course for hackers, the exchange value is
irrelevant - or rather, invisible - to the account of their mode of
production. They are working outside of the capitalist paradigm, unalienated.
But is it not significant that a product and a mode of production that is
unalienated, that isn't created fetishistic commodities, can also have an
exchange value? GNU/Linux is embedded in a capitalist paradigm and is, at the
same time, challenging it and making it irrelevant. It strikes me that
because of this, GNU/Linux poses part of an answer to Andre Gorz's challenge
to find spaces within capitalist society in which life unfolds freely, and
that can become increasingly broad with time.
2) Why have you not accounted for paid work on GNU/Linux? Many hackers are
paid full or part time wages for their work on Free Software projects, and
wouldn't be able to dedicate anywhere near the amount of time that they do
otherwise. This fact raises two questions: a) are they still unalienated? And
b) will this cease to be relevant as the proprietary software industry
withers away, leaving the only gpl society? You also have to account for the
subtleties of the hackers' positions, including those who would otherwise
work for free but are able to do more work when paid; those who would do
exactly the same work anyway but happen to be paid; and those who have no
committment to Free Software and just happen to be paid for working on Free
Software.
3) Section 3.3 presumes a certain ideological committment on behalf of the
hackers. In particular, you discount paid work, the desire for market share
as evidences by dedicated promotional teams in many projects (e.g. KDE, Gnome
and OpenOffice.org), and you make an astonishing and vague remark about
users / consumers that seems to have no evidence. As an idealised explication
it works, but as an analysis of the mode of production that GNU/Linux
represents it's wildly inaccurate and simplistic. I think it would be worth
treating this section more with the latter of the two approaches, conceding
the differences between the ideal and the reality, opening this area up to
further research.
Otherwise, I enjoyed the paper. I found it both informative and illuminating,
and useful for an undergraduate dissertation I am writing on the Hacker Ethic
and alienation (n.b. in Germany you call what I am writing an undergraduate
thesis.)
Kind regards,
Tom
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