Can open source be viewed as the beginning of a true Marxis revolution?
“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” - Karl Marx
I create software because I can, and I share it with no expectation other than that others do the same.
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.” - Karl Marx
I also create said software because I do not want to pay for it, or be bound by the restrictions of software I cannot control or change.
No. It cannot.
Care to elaborate? If you do not find the question worthy of more than ‘no’ then why bother to respond at all?
And, BTW, there is nothing wrong with Marxism.
No. The main difference is that Marxism (and Capitalism) are primarily ways to find the best distribution for limited resources. A factory can only make so many sprokets, and so Marxism divides those sprokets by the dictates of some central planning authority and capitalism divides them up by peoples desire and ability to pay.
But software isn’t a scarce resource, once you’ve written code, the marginal cost of reproducing it is zero. Copywrite systems attempt to give it a ‘false scarcity’ by giving one person a limited monopoly on reproducing it, but it isn’t intrinsically scarce. Traditional copywrite obviously has benefits and problems, but its pretty easy to come up with other schemes for distributing software (or books, or movies or other forms of intellectual property), there’s nothing about software that requires it to be copywriten. On the other hand, for other products, they need to be limited, there’s no way to get around the fact that a farm can only grow so much food or a factory can make so many widgets.
Marxism necessitates the confiscation and redistribution of property by the state through the use of violence or the threat of violence. Open source software development differs from this in several fundamental ways:
[sub]1. Emacs is better.[/sub]
Most open-source software projects are copyrighted, and they defend their copyrights vigorously.
To be honest, some questions really don’t require anything more than a quick brush-off. This is one of them.
I gave you a factually accurate answer that is appropriate to the level of familiarity implied in your question. If it doesn’t suit you, that’s not my fault.
Yea, I know, I was over-simplifying. But the GPL doesn’t create a false scarcity, so it doesn’t function like the types of copywrites I was talking about.
And vi is better.
Hmmm. I disagree. I was not attacking open-source. And I hold to the idea that open-source is the vanguard of some sort of important movement, whether it fits with some Marxist ideals or not.
Discussing what that movement is and what it means, politically, historically, and in terms of a future society and potential economic models, is hardly something I would consider worth brushing off, but, as always YMMV.
A) That’s nothing at all like what you actually asked. The only question in your post was about Marxism.
B) You put the thread in GQ, thereby asking for a factual response. Which you got.
Copyright.
I see. I am fairly new here. I joined ages ago, but that was when it was pay to post (I think) and I moved on. I have only recently returned. I do plan to subscribe soon, since I like what I see so far, but must wait a paycheck or two.
If this belongs someplace else then I apologize, and hopefully a helpful mod will move it to it’s proper home.
I found (find) the question interesting, and was just surprised by the seemingly hostile answer(s). Though, I fully recognize that tone is very hard to read into a typed message.
To the Gulag with you.
Of course, in a capitalist society the distribution of property is also enforced through state use of violence or the threat of violence … .
Sure. All government is based upon a monopoly of violence. The difference is that capitalism provides at least some amount of freedom in your economic activities.
I’m an open source developer, and I work with many others.
Anecdotally, most of the OS devs I know are enthusiastic capitalists. Quite a few have strong libertarian-capitalist opinions (including me).
Generally speaking I’ve found that the people who promote open source as a Marxist/socialist/anti-capitalist thing are not developers (or, at least, not actively writing much code).
Of course that’s just my experience and it’s biased.
Well, I was a developer for 20+ years, but never got into the open source movement. Not because I have anything against it, I think I just got old and writing free code for hours on end is (perhaps) a young persons game 
I think it’s an amazing movement with all kinds of social repercussions and I guess that is what I wanted to discuss, and it seems I simply chose the wrong approach to the topic - apparently hitting on some existing sore points I hadn’t realized existed.
While I doubt this “question” is worthy of being moved to “Great Debates,” that’s where I moved it.
samclem MOderator
Wow. Thanks, I guess. I think I will just drop it though. One can only be insinuated to be an idiot so many times in one day before getting offended.