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

[Jens Hardings <jens hardings cl>]

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Paul Fitz wrote:

| Elements of debate that have come up in the group:

| - The existence of 'intellectual property' and an exact defintion
| (thanks brendan)
| - The question of the validity of the extension from lockean property
|  rights to phemenological creations
| - Electronic tools of creation as means of production or disemination
| or both (or neither).
| - To look at what OS/FSW leaders think or what they do to illustrate
| examples.
| - Deifferentiating between OS and FSW communities
| - OS as a corporate plaything!
| - Theoretical and practical differences in what communism
| and anarchy represent.

An interesting characteristic of OS/FSW was mentioned: once started, a
project develops some force that tends to keep it together precisely
because of the possibility of forking. For the maintainers, this means
they sometimes have to accept things from the community they don't like
and for the community, they either accept the decisions of the majority,
fight to convince them otherwise or take pains to start and maintain a
respectable fork of the project. On both sides, it is natural to try to
avoid forking, so this would tend to create en equilibrium.

Perhaps because of the difference in what is commonly called
'intellectual property' and rivalrous property, there is no central
omnipotent control, avoiding many of the problems that occur in
governments (both capitalist and communist) or societies, namely
corruption and lack of transparency.

- --
Jens.
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