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Re: [ox-en] Re: Movement and Free Software and/vs. Open Source



Hi Stefan, Michel, all!

3 weeks (22 days) ago Stefan Seefeld wrote:
Stefan Merten wrote:
Well, IMHO that's perfectly the definition of a movement. All this
applies to well-known movements. Look at movements like the left
movement, the piece movement, attac or the like. Even the early
capitalist movement was full of contradictions but yet it was able to
overcome a model of society. Movements are heterogenous and even
contradictory by definition. Yet there is some common denominator you
can extract from this heterogeneity. I think this is important to do
because this is the key to understand these phenomenons.

Insofar I agree with you that there actually are a lot of differences.
Insofar it is probably always possible to find a counter example for
everything. Would you agree with me that it makes sense to check for
the common denominators? Personally I think the common denominators
can only be found when looking at things in a more statistical way.
[...]
That all depends on how you define 'Movement'. Without wanting to go
into (yet another) discussion about terminology,

Certainly it depends. But AFAICS there is shared understanding of this
concept out there and to me it makes sense to use this. May be the
term should be looked up in Wikipedia, Webster and similar sources. In
any way I find it useful to at least have an idea of the meaning of
the terms we are using so I think discussions about terminology are
not useless.

let me just say that
I find it not particularly meaningful to talk about 'Movement' here
because to me the term implies shared (conscious) goals, which, I think,
don't play a significant role here.

The point here is probably the term "conscious". I thought a bit about
this question. Certainly there is an identifiable conscious goal here:
To have Free Software - or Open Source Software for that matter. This
is probably something we easily can agree on. And this means
something: You need to establish those tricky applications of
copyright called Free Software licenses for instance. So far that was
easy in a way and the more recents court tests of GPL certainly are
good signs. But it could have come differently.

There are also conscious goals shared by at least a big majority which
seek to protect the legal ground for Free Software: To fight software
patents. So far I saw not one FLOSS advocate who was in favor of
software patents.

When I think of this - once again - I think of the movement which lead
to capitalism. In feudal times privileges were one important way to
regulate who may do something and who not. These clearly were not
useful for capitalism because they limited the freedom (of markets).
Consequently these privileges - who had regulated society for several
hundred years - were fought by capitalist movement.

FS has become a *means* for many, not a goal in itself.

I think there is a subconscious goal as well: To establish a new mode
of production - as it is analyzed by Oekonux. For this goal IMHO it
doesn't matter much whether the actors see the (various) products of
the movement as means for their own private goals or as a goal in
itself. That people can use it as means for their private goals to me
is even an indicator of the fundamental nature of this movement: They
simply benefit from the movement without any need for ideology :-) .

In *this* movement Free Software is only the earliest and most visible
example. So it is perhaps best to talk of a Free Software movement
with a couple of conscious goals outlined a few above. This Free
Software movement is then part of a bigger movement which has the
foundation of a new mode of production as a goal. IMHO Wikipedia and
Open Access are two other sub-movements in this bigger movement.

For avoidance of doubt: If there was a movement, I would certainly count
myself in.

I hope you won't mind that I count you in ;-) .

However, for many (and possibly most), this all is just a means,
not a goal in itself, so I'm not sure how useful it is to qualify it as
a Movement.

Currently we are checking in which sense it makes sense to speak of a
movement. That's fine :-) .

On the other hand, for the whole Keimform discussion (sorry, what's the
proper term in English for that ?),

I'm using germ form so far. It is probably as incomprehensible as the
German term ;-) .

3 weeks (21 days) ago Michael Bauwens wrote:
If I may pitch in.

You are welcome.

If we break out of the narrower
free software world vision,

I'm focusing on Free Software here but I don't think what we discuss
here is limited to Free Software. It also applies in various degrees
to other Free Projects. Free Software is only the most visible example
of a new mode of production.

we see an emergence of an
enormous amount of initiatives which have at least 3
common focuses: the open/free paradigm, the

Yes.

participatory paradigm,

Where this paradigm is already part of the democratic paradigm. It
would be interesting to analyze more thoroughly if and how the
participation of the democratic paradigm is transcended to
participation in the GPL society sense.

the commons paradigm. I would
woudn't call it a conscious movement, but they have a
significant amount of common assumpations, and they
are variously engaged in 1) constructive projects,
creating new processes; 2) transgressive projects
(filesharing), i.e. leaving behind the old; 3)
reformist projects (attempting to change the rules and
institutions from within the existing ones).

To label these as reformist projects is perhaps a nice way to look at
it :-) .

The only difference is that I do not think the current
movement will take the form of political parties
anymore, but of a network of networks, that at some
point may coalesce much more than is the case today.

Political parties in a modern sense came into being with capitalism.
Political parties are certainly a child of capitalism and as a way to
organize interests they make sense in democracy / capitalism. I'm sure
they won't survive in the long run.

It would be interesting to check what could replace political parties.
For this it would probably interesting to check what functions
political parties have currently.


						Mit Freien Grüßen

						Stefan

--
Please note this message is written on an offline laptop
and send out in the evening of the day it is written. It
does not take any information into account which may have
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