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Interview with Steve Klabnik

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Re: Interview with Steve Klabnik

#21

Post by calibraxis »

jwhitlark wrote: post #20

I find it interesting that he contrasts free software with open source as "ethical position vs. cost reduction", apparently without ever considering cost reduction as an ethical position. (Enabling people to do things for less cost seems (to me), to be at the heart of any non-zero-sum strategy for improving the world. Otherwise you're just re-shuffling the same cards that have already been dealt.) I also thought it w…

Ashe Dryden wrote the best explanation I've read: http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-an...

(Helped me realize why writing opensource never appealed to me: the respect of my peers is even worse motivator for me than money. I rarely enjoyed the company of other programmers, due to the toxic culture we replicate. Caused some minor problems when I "led" a team of them; needed to care for them despite disgust at their cowardly, sociopathic acts. My interest kept returning to their far more marginalized coworkers.)

Re: Interview with Steve Klabnik

#22

Post by georgemcbay »

jwhitlark wrote: post #20

I find it interesting that he contrasts free software with open source as "ethical position vs. cost reduction", apparently without ever considering cost reduction as an ethical position. (Enabling people to do things for less cost seems (to me), to be at the heart of any non-zero-sum strategy for improving the world. Otherwise you're just re-shuffling the same cards that have already been dealt.) I also thought it w…

To me the difference in his worldview (as it relates to cost reduction and ethics) versus yours is mostly about theory vs practice.

In theory, freeing people from labor as a necessity is a good thing where we all gain time to pursue our creative passions instead of putting in 40-80 hours as wage slaves; in practice (based on economic trends and prevailing contemporary political views that seem unlikely to shift in the near term), it appears to be hurling us towards something vaguely like the society that was presented in the movie "Elysium"

Re: Interview with Steve Klabnik

#23

Post by zenogais »

steveklabnik wrote: post #13
zenogais wrote: post #2

Just discovered Steve on Twitter yesterday so this is a coincidentally well timed article. What initially drew me to his Twitter account were the obvious references to Deleuze and Guatarri - specifically his reference to the concept of the body without organs (BwO) in his twitter handle. Glad to see a like-minded programmer coming to many of the same conclusions I've been reaching recently.

You caught me on a good day: I've been changing my twitter handle multiple times a day some days. It's a reference to ATP, p150: > You never reach the Body without Organs, you can't reach it, > you are forever attaining it, it is a limit. Glad to see some other Deleuzians around too. :)

Me too! Really enjoyed your article applying the concept of the assemblage and (de-/re-)territorialization to software development. Just finished a reading of "Difference & Repetition" myself and have been working on applying some of his concepts from that book and ATP to programming as well. I think software is a particularly rich area for application. Excited to see where you go next and refreshed to see someone thinking in a similar vein :)

Re: Interview with Steve Klabnik

#24

Post by pnathan »

I am not anti-capitalist, so I am sure Steve and I would disagree quite profoundly on many things.

However, one thing we both do agree on is the distinction between free and open source. I do not particularly care for open source, as it is a nice way to provide unpaid work for other people to exploit and make lots of of money off of without providing compensation of any form in return. That seems extremely unethical to me. However, I provide the bulk of my public software under GPL-derived licenses: if a company wants to use it, they need to publish the source so other may benefit. That is my price. Alternatively, if that is onerous, they can give me some cash.

I strongly believe that it's improper to take others work for gratis and not provide consideration in return - its also unethical to encourage an entire industry to contribute gratis work and build off of it for large piles of cash.

Re: Interview with Steve Klabnik

#25

Post by sandyarmstrong »

steveklabnik wrote: post #17
sandyarmstrong wrote: post #7

"The free-software ethos and the founders of the open-source movement are mega-racist libertarian people, and so it’s always really weird to me that a bunch of Leftists are so into open source; it explicitly manifests capitalist social relations." Mega-racist? What? Lost me a bit there. It's weird to me that he speaks about the free software movement as if it were dead...as if the only motivator to write open source…

It's true that the free software movement isn't dead, but the open source movement has taken the fore as being socially significant. Furthermore, in many programming communities, preferring the GPL over BSD is something that will get you a _lot_ of hate.

I don't think choosing a permissive license and considering yourself a member of the free software movement are mutually exclusive.

Re: Interview with Steve Klabnik

#26

Post by ilaksh »

> It’s not universally bad — it’s really cool that you can get all this software for free. But, value is being generated from your labor and it’s not being captured by you, and that’s unsustainable.

A useful alternative perspective on open source and I hope people will pay attention.

Unionization is something I certainly hope can someday happen for programmers.

I think this touches on some very serious unresolved issues we have in society.

Anti-capitalism is a reaction but not a solution. More egalitarian sharing-based attempts at organization have generally also resulted in centralization and lack of freedom and equality just as much as capitalism has.

I think that the problem is creating a system that is efficient and holistic but also allows for diversity and evolution.

Whether you are coming at it from a fundamentally competitive angle or a cooperative one, you easily end up with centralization and hierarchy. Creating efficient holistic systems generally results in this hierarchy.

What we want is a system that is somehow holistic but also made up of diverse components.

I think that the problem we need to solve, or if it is solved then we need to starting promoting the solutions.

If anyone read this and has an answer to that question please let me know.

Re: Interview with Steve Klabnik

#27

Post by zenogais »

pnathan wrote: post #24

I am not anti-capitalist, so I am sure Steve and I would disagree quite profoundly on many things. However, one thing we both do agree on is the distinction between free and open source. I do not particularly care for open source, as it is a nice way to provide unpaid work for other people to exploit and make lots of of money off of without providing compensation of any form in return. That seems extremely unethical…

If you've read some of the alternative literature on capitalism you might think that profit is by definition providing "unpaid work for other people to exploit and make lots of of money off of". It's a rather clever inversion of private property rights that exploits the medium of commodity exchange - to pay someone a fixed wage for their commodity called labour time and exploit their produce to turn a profit.

Open-source is only an ethical perversion if you believe the above is a just system of compensation. To me the profit motive is a hinderance to progress and innovation as it requires subjugating everything to the need to produce a surplus - often eliminating whole extremely useful areas for human advancement as they are impractical in this regard. Case and point: no one paid Einstein to produce his innovation, he merely took a menial job that gave him time and means to produce it. That being said capitalists have certainly made money off of it - eg, GPS. We should be careful not to conflate the exploitation of innovations with the cause of them.

Re: Interview with Steve Klabnik

#28

Post by zenogais »

ilaksh wrote: post #26

> It’s not universally bad — it’s really cool that you can get all this software for free. But, value is being generated from your labor and it’s not being captured by you, and that’s unsustainable. A useful alternative perspective on open source and I hope people will pay attention. Unionization is something I certainly hope can someday happen for programmers. I think this touches on some very serious unresolved iss…

Notice the contradictory language used in describing what you want:

"creating a system that is efficient and holistic but also allows for diversity and evolution."

Effectively: I want things to be one thing that is the same, but also to be many things that change constantly. The truth is that this kind of small-scale logic breaks down when we talk about large systems. They can usefully be viewed, to take a page from Marx, as mediators of internal contradictions like this. Desires that pull in opposed directions.

It's in fact these contradictions that Marx, I believe, very effectively demonstrates cause ever more rapid and widespread crises like the financial meltdown of 2008 and the .com bubble 8 years before that as well as numerous global crises in the interim. He leverages a lot of historical and empirical data to demonstrate this and I would say reality has consistently validated this prediction. Its this crisis tendency that leads to an anti-capitalist position - clearly the system cannot effectively avoid disaster (it's now struggling to even remain stable for a decade). Therefore, we should really search for alternatives, what those are is not a ready-made answer and there's a lot of push back in attempting to experiment in the way necessary to discover them.

Re: Interview with Steve Klabnik

#29

Post by ilaksh »

zenogais wrote: post #28
ilaksh wrote: post #26

> It’s not universally bad — it’s really cool that you can get all this software for free. But, value is being generated from your labor and it’s not being captured by you, and that’s unsustainable. A useful alternative perspective on open source and I hope people will pay attention. Unionization is something I certainly hope can someday happen for programmers. I think this touches on some very serious unresolved iss…

Notice the contradictory language used in describing what you want: "creating a system that is efficient and holistic but also allows for diversity and evolution." Effectively: I want things to be one thing that is the same, but also to be many things that change constantly. The truth is that this kind of small-scale logic breaks down when we talk about large systems. They can usefully be viewed, to take a page from…

Its not small-scale logic. I have read Marx. He doesn't have all of the answers.

All of these crisis are not caused by a contradiction in thinking, they are caused by not comprehending and solving the true problem, which I have stated.

The reason this problem hasn't been solved is because it is extremely difficult, to the degree that it is easy for people to simply dismiss it as being contradictory goals.

Marxist thinking has led many times to a cooperative approach which has led to holistic hierarchical systems that were not diverse and flexible enough to cope with an evolving and distributed reality.

Capitalistic thinking also eventually leads to the same type of holistic hierarchical systems with the same problems.

Re: Interview with Steve Klabnik

#30

Post by samth »

I wish Rust people (like Steve here) would stop saying that there's no new research in Rust. It's just totally 100% not true. Large parts of the Rust type system involve awesome new ideas. Additionally, as I said once to dherman, language design is _always_ research -- putting things together in a new way is basically all research is.
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