Re: [OS:N:] RE: N:] Open Source as a form of Anarcho-Communism?

[Jens Hardings <jens hardings cl>]

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M. Fioretti wrote:

| If you want to write about these issues, you must have extremely
| clear the difference between Free SW and Open Source SW. From what
| you write, I have the feeling that you are thinking to the first, but
|  naming the second. Free SW came up at the dawn of the net, and was
| "formalized" in the early eighties by Stallman. OSS popped up in the
| late 90s to make *corporations* happy. They are both good and needed,
| but different.

IMHO, there is no such big difference between Free Software and Open
Source Software. It is more of a presentation issue. Freedom can scare
many corporations, while open has been a trendy term for decades. Also
there is the interpretation problem in the english language about free
as in free beer v/s free as in freedom. The general guidelines in both
concepts are more or less the same, giving a different focus and with
one side being more extreme than the other.

Unless of course you mean the GPL v/s the other OSS-approved licenses.
The debate then is the unresolvable issue of determining which one
delivers more freedom: the license that restricts the right to restrict
(which is what copylefting is all about), or the one that gives the
right to restrict along with all the rest? In the eyes of the whole
community, probably the former delivers more freedom, since it assures
that freedom will not be taken away in the future. However, in the eyes
of the one who receives the code and accepts the license, the freedom is
greater with the latter.

| False. Please read the RULE project home page, and its FAQ (URL in my
|  signature). Apart from that, I repeat, OSS was defined for
| corporations, who could not care less about less affluent people. The
|  comments already made about "there is no such thing as intellectual
| property" also apply.

I agree that OSS was defined for corporations, but that does not make it
inherently different from Free Software automatically.

As for intellectual property, the term is not as good as we would want,
but there exists legislation that defines certain exclusivity rights on
creative works and these rights among others are commonly referred to as
"intellectual property". It can be argued whether this is acceptable or
if we should reform it, but "intellectual property" exists and that fact
is undeniable. It is an invention, just like private property is. But
that does not make it go away.

And by the way, the GPL makes the author maintain the copyright (which
is an intellectual property right) on the licensed code, it depends on
that fact in order to restrict the licensee so she cannot hijack the code.

There is an interesting article about the subject of anarchism and Free
Software that might be helpful:
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_8/moglen/index.html

- --
Jens.
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