The idea of free software is extremely socialist/communist. People working together to create something that anyone can use for free, with profit being a non-existent or at least minor motivator.
It’s a real shame that generally lefties don’t really care about or ‘get’ software freedom. You should be pushing for free software on all levels. In your personal life and in government. It’s crazy how much power a company like Apple, Microsoft or Google has over everyone.
As a linux leftie, I fully agree. It’s hard to convince people though. Also, I don’t necessarily think it’s the best intro to leftism for layfolk. It’s a great into to leftism for tech nerds and a great intro to tech for left nerds, but the punk who just uses the library computer doesn’t care. Unions are often the easiest intro to leftism for people and not many union folks are interested in learning free software.
I was out drinking the other day and an IBCW friend introduced me to a union brother of his and they’re smart guys who believe in the power of labor, hell they even excitedly showed me that there’s a professionals union in the AFL-CIO, but if I tried to explain a terminal to them they’d look at me like I grew several heads at once.
Free software is great praxis, but it often suffers by the fact that it isn’t what people are used to. That there are intro free softwares like GIMP, libreoffice, and basically anything where FOSS is the default. We can do this, but I think it’s definitely going to not be the easiest sell.
I was leftie before I was techie. If you don’t know anything around tech and computers you wouldn’t know what to do. Even as a fairly tech-adjacent professional it took me quite a while.
Then again, I only became a real leftie again after kicking all the corpos out of my computer.
Tech used to be (and still is) obscured by heavy gatekeeping. We who understand a little more like to joke about those who don’t, and I guess we’ll have to stop that if we really want to unite the left. Don’t ridicule, explain. The person might never have had a chance to learn the concept.
Yeah, if a stereotypical construction union rep feels judged by the FOSS world why would they try.
My local bike coop apparently used to run mint on their computer, but when the person who set it up left town it was too much for the bike nerds who weren’t mad engineers (this person also built an electrolysis tub, that had to be gotten rid of when they left Idk if they were actually an engineer by profession, but my dumb engineer ass keeps hearing they did shit I want to do). They’d go back if it was the same, but windows just works for them and linux needed someone to make it work.
It’s pretty hard to fight hegemony when your salary is just built on donations. A lot of important tech is also paid for via government grants then the private sector gets to use it and erect the walled gardens when it should be in the commons.
You’re missing the entire point of the free software movement. Free as in freedom does NOT intrinsically mean free as in absence of cost. Linux exists because of companies like Cygnus who successfully marketed the Bazaar, as opposed to the Cathedral, to investors.
Stallman and Torvalds themselves have gone on record multiple times stating the utter lack of political motivation in being able to modify the software on your machine.
Yes, open source software often requires funding and corporate support because we live in a primarily capitalist society. That doesn’t make it capitalist itself.
And I think the freedom foss offers is socialist - it necessitates cooperation, it’s open for all to see and contribute to, and the idea of ownership is very loose. It doesn’t matter what the political motivation is.
Well, there is also a more right leaning take. You take care of your self and scratch your own itch, and you should not be a liability to the society, but make your self useful and contribute back. And I think this is kind of the reason FLOSS works well, it can be aligned with many philosophies.
That phrase that you said has absolutely nothing to do with the Linux/Libre philosophy.
You take care of your self and scratch your own itch
While I understand that you meant to make an analogy with people creating the projects they want to use, the vast majority of people don’t create their projects, and instead contribute to others, and they contribute with existing issues not necessarily things that they want or need. Alternatively you can see that a lot of issues are fixed by people who are not affected by it, it’s very common for issues to ask people to test specific changes to see if they solved the issue they were facing.
and you should not be a liability to the society
The vast majority of people just use the software that the community maintains, and when they need a feature they open a PR and let the community implement it. So the vast majority of people are a liability to the community, even if you contribute to one project actively you use several others that you’ve never contributed to.
but make your self useful and contribute back.
This has nothing to do with right-wing philosophy, in fact most right wing people are against any form of contribution,
And I think this is kind of the reason FLOSS works well, it can be aligned with many philosophies.
You might not like it, but FLOSS is extremely aligned with left wing ideology, where people contribute to the community because they want to and the community provides back without asking anything in return.
So, what you say is that any free society is by definition communism, since society is built on people contributing by free will? Not sure I follow.
I hope this is a lightbulb moment for you
Yes it is, but not in the way you hope. I live in a socialist country, but I’m still stunned about the level of the communist delusions people seems to have here.
Social democracy isn’t really socialist…
Anyways it’s just good to know that FOSS is built upon anarchist principles (of course, this doesn’t mean every FOSS project is anarchist) and is a great example of free association in practice. It helps demystify anarchism and communism.
Also what “delusions” are you talking about? Marxist-leninist ones?
The desillusions people seems to have here is the same kind you have for religious people and moral, where the religious people claim that religion is what provides moral, and hence non-religious people cannot know right from wrong. It seems that in the same way, people in this discussion have defined that communism is the mechanism for being generous and being willing to contribute to society. Hence, all non-communist societies cannot exists, since nobody will build it. Basically, it is a very brainwashed take on communism, not based on anything existing but on some fantasy, especially since all practical attempts at communism seems to requires to strip people of all their freedoms.
Idk, technically voluntary association is a key tenet of volunteerism/anarcho-capitalism, so if we’re just using volunteering as the basis we might as well say it’s volunteerism. I think anarcho-communism and anarcho-capitalism are a bit more nuanced than “sharing.”
Anarcho-Capitalism isn’t a thing, it’s just Libertarian Capitalists LARPing with Leftist aesthetics. The very rejection of individual ownership rejects Capitalism, it’s like saying Worker Co-operatives are an example of Capitalism because markets tend to not care what makes them up.
Just because FOSS would be “allowed” in Capitalism doesn’t mean it’s an example of Capitalist principles.
Yes and they’d argue that anarchism isn’t exclusively leftist (well, I’D argue that depends on one’s definition of left/right, because depending on who you ask it’s either good/bad, collectivism/individualism, or lib/auth, and by the latter definition they would then be leftist capitalists, which is funny to think about.) They support individual ownership without rulers, however they still promote sharing of things you own with your community if you can/want.
Right, and just because sharing is “allowed” in communism doesn’t mean sharing is communism. It being allowed in both not being necessarily representative of either is my whole point.
Regardless of what AnCaps argue, the fundamental fact is that Anarchy is a rejection of hierarchy, whereas Private Property itself requires both the Owner/Worker hierarchy, and a monopoly on violence that cannot be reasonably contested to uphold Private Property protections. As such, it can only be considered Libertarian, as it both maintains hierarchy and maintains some semblance of at minimum a nightwatchman state.
As for Left/Right, the standard definition is Collective/Individual ownership of the Means of Production, not necessarily collectivism/individualism or lib/auth. Individual ownership by definition is supporting rulers, the larger Capitalists are effectively no different from a Feudal state.
Sharing being allowed does not mean FOSS aligns with AnCap principles, that’s like saying bagel consumption is AnCap.
FOSS isn’t simply “sharing” either, it’s quite literally a rejection of Individual ownership and creating IP for the collective to use, fork, maintain, and distribute as they see fit. It isn’t a coincidence that FOSS enthusiasts overwhelmingly lean left, just like Lemmy tends to.
Regardless of what AnCaps argue, the fundamental fact is that Anarchy is a rejection of hierarchy, whereas Private Property itself requires both the Owner/Worker hierarchy, and a monopoly on violence that cannot be reasonably contested to uphold Private Property protections. As such, it can only be considered Libertarian, as it both maintains hierarchy and maintains some semblance of at minimum a nightwatchman state.
Regardless is right, because my comments were never about espousing the benefits of anarcho-capitalism, I was using them to make the point that simply because things share a similarity with a political ideology it does not in fact make them “that ideology.” Arguing about ancapistan in this instance is a “strawman.”
Sharing being allowed does not mean FOSS aligns with AnCap principles, that’s like saying bagel consumption is AnCap.
No this is my point, you get your own.
use, fork, maintain, and distribute as they see fit.
“Sharing.”
No.
Your argument is that because FOSS would be permissible in AnCap society, FOSS being fundamentally constructed upon AnCom principles of rejecting Capitalism and centralization in favor of decentralized and collectively owned and distributed property makes it not in line with Anarcho-Communism.
When the article is giving an example of how Anarcho-Communism would work, Linux is a fantastic example. Nobody is saying Linux is Anarcho-Communism, or that Linux cannot exist within broader contexts, but that in an Anarcho-Communist society, the structure of Linux and FOSS would be the common structure.
You’re being contrarion for the sake of it.
No.
Yes.
Your argument is that because
FOSS would be permissible in AnCap society…Because voluntary association and sharing is also a core tenet of volunteerism/anarchocapitalism, as they also are of anarcho-communism…
FOSS being
fundamentally constructed upon AnCom principles of rejecting Capitalism and centralization in favor of decentralized and collectively owned and distributed propertyFOSS being similar to AnCom because both share principles of sharing
makes it not in line with Anarcho-Communism.
makes it not necessarily Anarcho-Communist.
You’re making false equivalencies for the sake of it.
“This rejection of profit and ownership made by a self-admitted leftist is actually completely in line with for-profit individual ownership just because AnCaps don’t murder people for doing charity”
You’re just trying to be contrarion for the sake of it, lmao. Again, the article was showcasing examples of gift economies and how Anarcho-Communism would function, and Linux fits that definition. It wasn’t arguing that Linux is Anarcho-Communism itself. It is not an example of how Anarcho-Capitalism would function, as Anarcho-Capitalism is Capitalism, and FOSS is decidedly anticapitalist, even if said Capitalists wouldn’t murder Linus for rejecting Capitalism.
You’re again being needlessly contrarion, Anarcho-Capitalists don’t advocate for setting up networks of mutual aid and FOSS software, they don’t care about gift economies either. Using Linux as an example for AnCapistan would get you laughed out of the room, if calling yourself an AnCap didn’t already result in that.
I’m done, this is pointless.
