Political movements and Free Software (was: Re: [ox-en] Alternative currencies and Oekonux)
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 17:22:34 +0200
Hi Michel and all!
Last week (10 days ago) Michael Bouwens wrote:
Thanks for this more moderate reply, but I think the reply only
makes sense if you isolate free software from all other
developments.
I don't think I see it isolated but I see that only a very small
percentage of Free Software people is really interested in what I'd
call political movements. I'd even say that the percentage is not much
larger than among average people. And if at all they are interested in
a very wide spectrum of political ideas.
So I see a relatively sharp contrast between the Free Software
movement and classical political movements of all sorts. And I think
this makes sense because the potential of Free Software is *not* as a
political movement. Its potential is in revolutionizing the ways
useful things are produced. This attacks the base of capitalism
because the way useful things are produced is the biggest stronghold
of capitalism. If that stronghold is undermined capitalism will fall.
If free software exists in an environment, then it makes sense to
see how it can be complementary with other strategies.
Yes, but I have strong doubts that classical political movements can
be of much help here. They have completely different goals.
I'm not saying political movements are unimportant. But - to pick up a
nice picture coined on the 1st conference - they only build dams. Dams
are important if the tide rises but IMHO it is even more useful to
build ships to find new continents. In that sense political movements
are like building dams while Free Software is like building ships -
and Oekonux being a watcher saying: "Hey folks, what you are doing is
actually building something really new - let's call it ships!" ;-) .
Of course, I agree that you disagree, but I think you should not
close off the debate altogether, and I repeat: I am not myself
involved in any of those 2 particular movements, but I do it is
of interest to try to integrate various worldchanging efforts and
see how they can reinforce one another,
I'm not closing off the debate - we had it again and again. I also
find it important to try to integrate things. See my attempts about
the "Next successful Free Product". However, there are things which
can not be integrated without breaking them. Finding such insights I
find very useful - though they probably won't please everybody.
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
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