Free and Open Source Software

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Do you consider the free software movement to be an anarchist/communist project? (infosec.pub)

submitted 18 hours ago by DeckPacker@piefed.blahaj.zone to c/foss@beehaw.org

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This thought came to me in the shower today. Open source checks most of the boxes. It is a collaborative, worker owned (develloper-owned) project, that tries to flatten hierarchy. Especially if you look at something like Debian ), which really tries to have a bottom-up structure.
Of course, there are exceptions, considering there are a lot of corporate open-source projects, that are not democratically maintained and clearly only serve the interest of the company, who created it (like chromium for example).
So I am mainly talking about community-oriented FOSS projects here.
And if you were to agree with my statement, would you say that developing FOSS software is advancing the goals of the anarchist / communist project, because it is laying the groundwork infrastructure needed for a new kind of economy and society?
Thought this could be an interesting discussion!

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[–] DeckPacker@piefed.blahaj.zone 11 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

While I agree, that Marxism-Leninism or Russian-Style "communism" have nothing to do with free software, I would also not call them real communism. Marx litteraly defined communism as a classless, stateless society. There is no such thing as a communist state. I also would argue, that free software is fundamentally anti-capitalist, because it rejects the basis of capitalism, which is private ownership of the means of production (which in this case would be software). So, in my opinion you cannot simultaneously believe that capitalism is the best way to organize software development while believing that free software is the best way to organize software development.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

because it rejects the basis of capitalism, which is private ownership of the means of production (which in this case would be software)

No, it doesn't. Companies developing software for internal use, including as part of a "means of production" (e.g. robot firmware at a factory), and keeping it secret from the public is completely compatible with free software. It's only when software is distributed to other people/entities that the free software movement insists that the recipient should also have freedom (including to run a business with it or any modified version of it).

[–] DeckPacker@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Are you shure about that? Because that would mean, that every piece of software, that hasn't been released to the public would automatically be free software, which would make the label pretty meaninglessness.

[–] knokelmaat@beehaw.org 1 points 3 hours ago

No, every piece of software, that hasn’t been released to the public, does not need a license. So there is no need to talk about free software, because that is a decision you make (sometimes made for you if you modify a GPL piece of software) when you release to the public.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 17 hours ago

Yes. There are several sections on gnu.org that talk about this, these are the ones I was able to quickly find.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html

The freedom to make and distribute exact copies when you wish. (It is not an obligation; doing this is your choice. If the program is free, that doesn't mean someone has an obligation to offer you a copy, or that you have an obligation to offer him a copy. Distributing a program to users without freedom mistreats them; however, choosing not to distribute the program—using it privately—does not mistreat anyone.)

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.en.html

Free software is a matter of freedom, not access. In general we do not believe it is wrong to develop a program and not release it. There are occasions when a program is so important that one might argue that withholding it from the public is doing wrong to humanity. However, such cases are rare. Most programs are not that important, and declining to release them is not particularly wrong. Thus, there is no conflict between the development of private or custom software and the principles of the free software movement.

Nearly all employment for programmers is in development of custom software; therefore most programming jobs are, or could be, done in a way compatible with the free software movement.