Re: [ox-en] Translation complete: GNU/Linux - Milestone on the Way to the GPL Society
- From: Tom Chance <tom acrewoods.net>
- Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2005 14:52:51 +0100
Ahoy,
On Sunday 02 Oct 2005 11:56, Stefan Merten wrote:
9 months (293 days) ago Tom Chance wrote:
Though it's a long time ago since your post I think replies make still
sense.
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
A general remark: Please note that this paper is rather old and based
on the knowledge of this time. In some areas it is a bit outdated
therefore.
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.
Well, if you take the formulation from the blotter "Free software is
as worthless as the air to breathe" then things probably get clearer.
Literally everyone bases its operation on "air to breathe". Workers
simply breathe it and where you use compressed air in industry the air
to be compressed is taken from the air to breathe. In no instance the
simple, plain air to breathe has an exchange value. But in each
instance exchange value is generated based on it's existence.
I think there is a fundamental difference here and this should not be
confused.
I don't understand what you mean here. Just to clarify, re-reading what I
wrote, I'm not endorsing exchange value but rather pointing out the
quasi-reformist potential of a mode of production that both satisfies some of
our requirements, and can fit in the capitalist system.
2) Why have you not accounted for paid work on GNU/Linux?
At the time the paper was written this was not such a big issue than
it is now. While I'm at it I'd like to emphasize that much of the
basic work necessary for the success of Free Software has been done in
the Double Free mode. Only when Free Software became to be successful
Simple Free modes began to grow in number.
Really? As far as I'm aware people have been employed and writing a lot of the
core free software code for over a decade now, and certainly a significant
proportion for years. But more on this in a moment...
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?
Meanwhile we introduced the terms Single Free Software and Double Free
Software. Double Free Software is created in an unalienated way while
Single Free Software is the result of wage labor and the freedom only
applies to the user.
As far as Oekonux theory is concerned one of the cornerstones is that
Free Software is successful because it focuses on the use value of the
product and not on the exchange value. Clearly at least asymptotically
this is not possible if you have the exchange value on your mind. This
focus on use value is the inalienable feature of (Double) Free
Software that makes up for its success. If this would not be the case
then there is no real explanation for Free Software being successful
at all. However, reality shows that Free Software is successful even
*against* a fully developed market.
I'm not sure why you think that hackers who are paid to hack are still
alienated (and presumably also exploited?) I know several people who are in
this position and they enjoy almost complete creative freedom, they work in a
community of hackers, they don't lose control of their products, they don't
produce for exchange value alone (or even primarily). I think the danger of
your single and double freedom model is that it makes a false distinction
around exchange value, when in fact the reality is more complex.
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.
I think questions like this are hard to answer because they are
talking of the intermediate time between two eras. Such intermediate
times are, however, extremely hard to predict. If you use pictures
from chaos theory here these are the times when there is the real
chaos between two attractors.
It's not necessarily about intermediate times. My second point in that
paragraph is why I think reality is more complex than your single-double
model.
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.
Can you expand on that?
I'll expand on my last sentence, because I think the first part of that
paragraph is fairly obvious (e.g. "GNU/Linux is created on a voluntary basis"
and "there are no monetary reasons for developing GNU/Linux" have been false
since the mid-1990s).
The whole section makes a good manifesto for the future, but you frame it as a
description of what GNU/Linux is today (or was at the time of writing). As
such it carries no force since it is just fanciful, like those on the left
who claim Cuba is a socialist paradise, or those who say liberal democracy in
Iraq is imminent. As it stands the paper has some interesting ideas but is so
inaccurate that it really doesn't have much merit, in my opinion.
You could make a much stronger case for getting towards that ideal future if
you clearly set it out as a manifesto and described where reality today
differs from that ideal, just as you have done for example with your
single-double model. You could then try to suggest how we might get from
where we stand today to the ideal, or at least propose that as an area for
further research. For example, in my dissertation on the Hacker Ethic and
meaningful work I concede that increasing numbers of people are paid to work
on the various components of GNU/Linux, analysed how their mode of production
affects various Marxist concerns in production (exploitation, immiseration,
alienation, etc.), briefly brought in the fact of employment, and then
suggested that it was a distinct improvement. More work on how payment fits
into the hacker mode of employment is one interesting research area...
Regards,
Tom
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