> The political hopes that free software would help build a more free and anti-capitalist future are largely forgotten
Speak for yourself.
Luckily for the pwned, not everyone is a corps sellout...
Why do people bother with open source?
51–56 of 56 posts
Re: Why do people bother with open source?
#52[flagged]
Re: Why do people bother with open source?
#53Before open source was a thing, I used to sell my code as shareware. The compiled library was free to use, but had some limitations. The source code version cost money and was not limited. I originally wrote the code to scratch my own itch, but it turned out to be useful to others.
I made a bit of money from it, but ultimately the support ate up all my time, and it was not worth it in the end.
These days I just open source my code. I still love writing it and I get great pleasure to see others getting value from it. I earn enough in my day job that I don't want to turn the things I do for fun into another job.
Re: Why do people bother with open source?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not arguing on whether free software is or not anti-capitalist, but want to point out that the act of monetizing goods and services isn't incompatible with anti-capitalism.
I'd say it depends upon how you define "capitalism" because most advocates of "capitalism" define it as an economy of free and voluntary exchanges while most of its detractors define it as an economy of giant corporations that oppress their workers and buy politicians to protect themselves from competition. The staunchest advocates of "capitalism" and its staunchest critics ironically tend to share the same hatred of…
Capitalism is a production system where ressources allocation is decided by capital owners. It doesn't really oppose socialism (after all, if we're all capital owners we can all decide what to produce collectively!) , it's more opposed to dirigism (it has another name but I cannot remember). Successful example of dirigism are stuff like Apollo, Airbus or the Messmer Plan, often requires high centralization, which makes it highly undesirable to people (like me).
Anyway, mixed economy all the way imho. Capitalism for small stuff, dirigism in natural monopolies.
Re: Why do people bother with open source?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tangent time. I genuinely don't understand what people generally mean when they use the phrase "anti-capitalist". I doubt most are Tankies or full-on Utopian Anarchists. I suspect a fair few mean "I want a mixed economy that's (a lot) fairer than the one we've got now" (which is probably my position). But outside of these three positions - what do people mean?
In this case, it seems to refer to the concentration of capital in the hands of a few. Proprietary software is much less accessible outside of its allowed uses and especially outside of the hands of the people who have its source code. This allows its owners to keep most of the benefits for themselves. There's definitely a Marxist flavor to this meaning, though I don't think you have to be a tankie to use it that way…
And most post-Marxist arguments or visions have a Marxist flavor. Which is quite expected, he was very hindsightful, and correct criticism of Marx require reading and understanding his point of view.
Re: Why do people bother with open source?
#56But why is it not mentioned that open-source software is usually things that the developers themselves use in their life for productivity or otherwise. For example, useful browser add-ons like TST or Sidebery. God knows how many cool things (scripts, programs) people use in their personal lives (that they don't get paid for) that they could "open-source" and share with the world and synergistically build to even greater heights. I guess it takes some work to make it modular enough for the public...