Free and Open Source Software

22050 readers

497 users here now

If it's free and open source and it's also software, it can be discussed here. Subcommunity of Technology.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

Gaywallet@beehaw.org

alyaza@beehaw.org

186

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

submitted 16 hours ago by DeckPacker@piefed.blahaj.zone to c/foss@beehaw.org

66 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 18 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

Cory Doctorow has a novel "Walkaway" which is basically "what if society but FOSS". It's really good!

To answer your question, while it has a lot in common with anarchism I don't think anyone benefits from trying to fit it into a predefined political box. It's something new.

[–] DeckPacker@piefed.blahaj.zone 6 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Wow, I didn't think, I would get such an interesting book recommendation out of this. Thank you so much!

[–] cecilkorik@piefed.ca 2 points 10 hours ago

Cory Doctorow is prolific and has written a ton of other great and highly interesting stuff as well. He's a very intelligent fellow.

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 5 points 14 hours ago

My pleasure! It kind of reminds me of Snow Crash in that it's really fun and adventurous but also made me think deep thoughts.

[–] eleijeep@piefed.social 2 points 12 hours ago

It's a great book, and very relevant.