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[ox-en] Fwd: [ox] free software/open source debate on lbo-talk



Hi!

Since this is in English, I'll repost Geert's compilation here.


						Mit Freien Grüßen

						Stefan

------- Forwarded Message

Date:  Mon, 7 May 2001 10:28:00 [PHONE NUMBER REMOVED]
From:  "geert lovink" <geert xs4all.nl>
Subject:  [ox] free software/open source debate on lbo-talk
To:  <liste oekonux.de>
Message-Id:  <000701c0d6cf$d155a840$31456e89 Geert>

[I have compiled the thread on free software/open source which took place on
the lbo-talk mailinglist, moderated by Doug Henwood. It gives a good insight
how the (non-technical) left in the States is debating this topic. The
thread started with the NY Times article on Microsoft's upcoming campaign
against free software/open source. /geert]

Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 14:57:11 -0700
From: "Ian Murray" <seamus2001 home.com>
Subject: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/03/technology/03SOFT.html
May 3, 2001


Microsoft Is Set to Be Top Foe of Free Code

By JOHN MARKOFF

SAN FRANCISCO, May 2 - Microsoft is preparing a broad campaign countering
the movement to give away and share software code, arguing that it
potentially undermines the intellectual property of countries and companies.
At the same time, the company is acknowledging that it is feeling pressure
from the freely shared alternatives to its commercial software.

(..)

- ---

Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 21:34:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: Chuck Grimes <cgrimes tsoft.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

Isn't MS still under court order to split up, or have they managed to
weasel out of it?

For the record, here is an example of what the free software movement
does and how it works.

About a month ago Doug posted a note on LBO about a security exploit
using natd (network address translation daemon). I don't run natd so I
ignored it. About a week or so later I was looking through FreeBSD
news groups for something on the print spooler and found there was
already a patch for this natd exploit and that it was fixed on the
current `stable tree' (most recent update of already issued
sources). Lead time, one week. Cost, zero.

If I bothered to routinely rebuild the kernel, this patch would
already be installed, since I usually cvsup the sources for my version
about once a month.

Now consider this quote from the next paragraph of the article:

``In a speech defending Microsoft's business model, to be given on
Thursday at the Stern School of Business at New York University, Craig
Mundie, a senior vice president at Microsoft and one of its software
strategists, will argue that the company already follows the best
attributes of the open-source model by sharing the original
programmer's instructions, or source code, more widely than is
generally realized....''

Right. Microsoft routinely posts its sources on dozens of mirrors all
over the world. With their weekly updated patches and security fixes
you can just type `cvsup stable-supfile', wait for about twenty
minutes and get everything in your Win/NT source code completely
updated, checked, and logged. Then you can go find the source
directory for your previously configured Win/NT kernel, type `make
world' and get it all rebuilt and installed on the running system. You can
then drop into single user mode, remount the major directory trees and
then load the new kernel on a soft re-boot, without physically turning
off the power of the Win/NT station. Sure, we knew that. You can even
automate the CVS part of this process using the cron daemon once a
week. No kidding? And, of course if you just want to fix one problem
in one program, you can go to the correct source subdirectory, type
`Make install <program-name>'---since Microsoft already follows the
best attributes of the open-source model. But we already knew that,
since, Microsoft does that, and of course more widely than generally
realized...

Chuck Grimes

- ---

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 00:14:55 -0500
From: Kendall Clark <kendall monkeyfist.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

"chuck" == Chuck Grimes <cgrimes tsoft.com> writes:

  chuck> ... No kidding? And, of course if you just want to fix one
  chuck> problem in one program, you can go to the correct source
  chuck> subdirectory, type `Make install <program-name>'---since
  chuck> Microsoft already follows the best attributes of the
  chuck> open-source model. But we already knew that, since, Microsoft
  chuck> does that, and of course more widely than generally
  chuck> realized...

I cringe every time I see or hear a progressive -- who would never
dream of eating factory-farmed meat, miss a WTO protest, or back away
from supporting the liberation of women, people of color, and so on --
blithely using Microsoft products, which has seemed to me a major
no-no since well before Judge Jackson's ruling.

Microsoft is *easier* (for some values of easy, anyway) to use than
almost everything else (owing almost entirely to its ubiquity on new
machines), but, geez, being a vegan, antiglobalization, antiracist,
antisexist protester is *way* harder than learning to use Linux (or
one of the BSDs). Those of us who've done both can attest to
that. (And it's getting easier to use all the time; the latest Gnome
desktop for Linux is rapidly approaching
peopel--who-only-email-and-surf stage very rapidly.)

It's simply one of the nastiest companies around -- growing positively
Orwellian of late, from a heavy reliance on prison labor to the very
recent, totally evil 'turn in people who request a quote for new
computers delivered without an MS operating system' gambit -- and the
degree to which progressive activists are reliant on its shitty
software is bewildering and sad.

Best,
Kendall Clark

PS-for-Chuck -- There's a new Linux distribution that's using the
BSD-style port tree for system configuration and management; just
another feather in the cap of the BSD crowd, the core of which seems
to have a perpetual chip on its shoulder at what it takes to be the
undeserving (relative) popularity of Linux -- which it has always
considered, often in open, brittle hostility, to be as technically
inferior to, say, FreeBSD as Windows is to Linux.

- ---

Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 22:30:34 -0700
From: Michael Perelman <michael ecst.csuchico.edu>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

Kendall, for people like myself who lack technical skills and who need to
use programs that only work under windows, what can we do?

If I could have something that could work some of my programs under Linux,
I would love to do so.

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael ecst.csuchico.edu

- ---

Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 03:31:26 -0400
From: Kelley Walker <kelley interpactinc.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

At 10:30 PM 5/3/01 -0700, you wrote:
Kendall, for people like myself who lack technical skills and who need to
use programs that only work under windows, what can we do?

If I could have something that could work some of my programs under Linux,
I would love to do so.


you can partition a hard-drive to run both windows and linux. linux has a
small foot print -- chuck keeps talking about running his on an old
386?  as soon as i get the money together for hardware to set up a network
so my son can use the extra windows box i need as a back up for work, i'll
run linux on a 486.

http://www.netraverse.com/products/win4lin30/overview.php
there are other products, tho

you can also set up a second linux box and network it with your windows
box. you can use the linux box for the basic stuff-- word processing/text
editor, email, browsing, etc.)--and then use the windows box or a laptop
(tho that can be bad for RS injuries) for those progs you can't find
reliable substitutes for.

heck, the NYT is featuring www.linux-hacker.net lately.  the guy is hacking
net-appliances sold for 99$ so they can run linux.  ha!

at them moment,  i can't think of a prog that doesn't have an equivalent
non-MS product.  staroffice is a free download. i think max uses it,
right?  i downloaded it two years ago, posted to the list about it.  KDE
and Gnome both offer purty GUI's and full office suites, as well as
presentation software and graphics software.   dennis is using Redhat and
seems to be doing fine writing a dissertation!  you can use PCPine for mail.

the bigger problem is the steep learning curve.  no matter what anyone
says. afterall, part of the whole dick swinging scene here is the trick of
simultaneously maintaining that _anyone_ can do it AND dissing people who
don't get it and ask questions.

people who are geeks tend to forget their roots. but that's true of lefties
too. so.

self-reflexivatingly,

kelley

btw, speaking of s-r, Ian, your posts lately are hot-damn ace! what's
gotten into you lately!?

- ---

Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 01:08:23 -0700 (PDT)
From: Chuck Grimes <cgrimes tsoft.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

Jesus, Kendall,

I hope you realize that riff on `..Microsoft...sharing ... source code
more widely than generally realized...' was my idea of sick humor.

Chuck Grimes

- ---

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 09:05:15 -0500
From: Kendall Clark <kendall monkeyfist.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

"michael" == Michael Perelman <michael ecst.csuchico.edu> writes:

  michael> Kendall, for people like myself who lack technical skills
  michael> and who need to use programs that only work under windows,
  michael> what can we do?

Eh, you don't lack technical skills as much, Michael, as you probably
lack the time necessary to learning a new system. I happen to think
for many users the investment is worth it, given what you get back,
but obviously I'm not trying to make that decision for others.

My main point was to discuss the asymmetry between kinds of upset or
discomfort progressive activists seemed willing to undergo in order to
do the "right thing".

I started trying to use Linux in 1994 for moral reasons, and I became
a vegetarian last year for moral reasons; the latter was much more
difficult than the former. (Though I had my days of sheer frustration
with learning a new, very unfriendly, back then, but less so now,
operating system.) Maybe that's just a function of my being better at
certain (probably otherwise useless) conceptual problems than I am at
self-discipline and breaking a 30 year old carnivorous appetite.

I just thought with all the sociologists and economists and radicals
on LBO, someone might be able to offer some interesting explanations
about the asymmetry.

  michael> If I could have something that could work some of my
  michael> programs under Linux, I would love to do so.

Others mentioned some good ideas; I would say that if it's a matter of
running one or two MS programs, perhaps required in your workplace
(though universities are far more lax about this than corps -- at
least in my experience) then you could run one of several Linux
programs that effectively "emulate" MS Windows -- vmware is one such;
another is called win4lin.

Large, heterogenous environments like universities are, by the way,
interesting examples of why standards-based computing is a good thing,
and why, concomitantly, it's in MS's best, dominance-preserving
interests to subvert standards, as its admitted to doing on many
occasions.

So let's say CS Chico *requires* the use of MS Outlook for
email. Well, it would be nicer -- and I bet the computer science folks
will have struck this deal -- to just require the use of any email
program that knows how to speak "IMAP", the current best protocol for
picking up email from another machine. MS wants to subvert IMAP, of
course, since they don't control it.

The political and social and economic dynamics around computer
standards are fairly fascinating and, to my knowledge, understudied
(though I'd love to hear otherwise).

I published a piece earlier this year that tries to apply Herman and
Chomsky's propaganda model (with bits of John Searle and Marilyn Frye
thrown in for good measure) to a particuarly standards-obsessed part
of the computing world, called "XML and markup language technologies"
- - -- kind of the next-generation HTML, meant to power the Web for the
next 10 or 15 years.

What I discovered was interesting (at least to a technology-interested
leftist like me); while the "big lie" in the XML world is that, given
some properties of the technology, it would lead to more openness,
less monopoloy, more distributed institutional power, less vendor
control -- the reality was likely to be much different.

The reality is the same old, same old: the institutions that control
the standards (in this case, the "schemas" or vocabularies that define
the XML languages that will power the Web of the near to mid-future)
will have inordinate social power; and since the trends are to move
every bit of possibly computerizable human interaction onto the Web,
into an XML-based system of some sort (this is only a moderate
exaggeration, actually), the future was, at least to someone with
values like mine, very cloudy and very at-odds with prevailing dogmas.

Best,
Kendall Clark

- ---

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 09:13:15 -0500
From: Kendall Clark <kendall monkeyfist.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

"kelley" == Kelley Walker <kelley interpactinc.com> writes:

  kelley> heck, the NYT is featuring www.linux-hacker.net lately.  the
  kelley> guy is hacking net-appliances sold for 99$ so they can run
  kelley> linux.  ha!

As someone else said, most people don't really need full-blown PCs,
they need computing devices. The irony is that Linux (or one of the
BSDs) makes a far better operating system for computing devices than
it makes for ordinary PCs, but the OS, just like the kind of brand of
memory or CPU, is the last thing that any computing device user wants
or needs to know (and the last thing that computing device developers
and manufacturers should use in distinguishing their product from its
competitors).

It's true, most *people* don't give a shit and perhaps properly so.

This is why I mentioned progressive *activists*, the kinds of people
who can become quite obsessive in their pursuit of a lifestyle and
value system attuned to the demands of social justice.

  kelley> the bigger problem is the steep learning curve.  no matter
  kelley> what anyone says. afterall, part of the whole dick swinging
  kelley> scene here is the trick of simultaneously maintaining that
  kelley> _anyone_ can do it AND dissing people who don't get it and
  kelley> ask questions.

Hmm, this, actually, was my *real* reason for asking the question: it
had been *too* long since Kelley had described me as a d***-swinging
geek, and I was hoping to tempt her into doing so again!  :>

  kelley> people who are geeks tend to forget their roots. but that's
  kelley> true of lefties too. so.

I try to forget my early days using Linux because they were so goddamn
frustrating... I once spent days trying to get my PC to recognize and
access my CDROM. I didn't understand the commands necessary and they
were rather cryptic. I didn't have anyone to ask here in Dallas; so,
from the sheer frustration, I went back to Windows and started the
Dallas Linux users group (now one of the biggest in the country), just
so I could pretend to be using Linux, all the while asking little
questions, off-handedly, of the hardcore telecom Unix geeks who came
out to the earliest meetings. Not an approach I suggest to others, but
it worked for me.

Now when my wife pops a CD into her machine, which runs the newest,
bestest Gnome desktop, the CD gets recognized automagically, just like
that *other* OS. Progress is a beautiful thing!

Best,
Kendall Clark

- ------------------------------

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 09:22:18 -0500
From: Kendall Clark <kendall monkeyfist.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

"matt" == Matt Cramer <cramer unix01.voicenet.com> writes:

  matt> There is a lot of that.  At Defcon last year we saw the
  matt> appearance of the charming shirts and stickers that say "Fuck
  matt> Redhat".  I was extremely annoyed, since it is complete
  matt> bullshit to diss someone who is making the effort to avoid M$
  matt> in any manner.  Since people that don't have piercings,
  matt> tatoos, and spiked blue hair were starting to use Redhat,
  matt> suddenly it wasn't "cool" anymore.  Fucking dumb-ass script
  matt> kiddies.  Sure, there are reasons to use Slack instead of
  matt> Redhat (especially with the fscked C libraries in Redhat 7.0),
  matt> but most of the twits wearing those shirts are never going to
  matt> need that kid of flexibility.

The first big rifts against RH that I can remember were around the
time of its IPO, which caused a lot of upset for people (very naive
geeks) who had, to that point, believed all the "revolution" bullshit,
and thought the idyllic, we're-going-to-crush-Wall-St stuff was really
true.

I tried my best to fan the flames of their discontent, not so much to
get them agitated against RH as to get them agitated against
*capitalism* and to rouse them from their dogmatic, libertarian
slumbers.

So I gave quotes to Andrew Leonard at Salon about my "Red Hat Wealth
Monitor", a Web app that I wrote to publish on the hour the net worth
of some of Red Hat's bigwigs, compared to the net worth of the average
geek who got a bit of stock from RH (which was obviously only a tiny
fraction of the people who'd helped build the system RH was
capitalizing on).

I gave an interview on Canadian public television (which was
remarkably intelligent, far better than American TV) in which I tried
to explain that even if Red Hat wanted to continue to do what was best
for "the community" (assuming of course that it *could* continue to do
so because it had all along *been* doing so, which I didn't believe
but thought a strategic concession) its owners and managers had a
fiduciary trust to its *investors* and that *wasn't* "the community"
but Wall Street.

I failed miserably to get anyone truly pissed off at the *system*,
hindered in part by my piss-poor organizing abilities, the prevailing
mushy right-libertarianism of "the community," and wankers like Eric
Raymond who were mouthing the (absurdly dumb) line that 'the open
source revolution will change Wall Street more than it changes
us'. Hah.

Best,
Kendall Clark

- ------------------------------

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 09:27:06 -0500
From: Kendall Clark <kendall monkeyfist.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

"chuck" == Chuck Grimes <cgrimes tsoft.com> writes:

  chuck> Jesus, Kendall,

  chuck> I hope you realize that riff on `..Microsoft...sharing
  chuck> ... source code more widely than generally realized...' was
  chuck> my idea of sick humor.

Yeah, and it was well written, like most of your stuff (though not as
good as your post about making, if I recall right, fettucine with
potatos and green beans, washed down with a crisp New Zealand
chardonnay -- a personal favorite CG post of mine). It's been trying,
and is going to accelerate trying, to extend-and-embrace the free
software idea, which means it'll try to make people think its source
code is somehow available in some significant way. That's crap, of
course, and it's good for people, like good leftie FreeBSD and Linux
users, who know the difference, to point out the shame in MS's
propaganda.

I was just glomming onto your post because it was marginally related
to what I wanted to say, and I didn't want to start a new thread (and,
in all honesty, because there's a core of people on LBO that, hmm,
seem to get read more often than the rest of us, and, well, shoot me
for glomming on to *that* too!).

Best,
Kendall Clar

- ---

Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 07:38:59 -0700
From: Michael Perelman <michael ecst.csuchico.edu>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

Kelley, I use voice recognition, a pen-scanner, a program that indexes text,
and
most of all I use a DOS outliner.

Kelley Walker wrote:

i can't think of a prog that doesn't have an equivalent
non-MS product.  --

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael ecst.csuchico.edu

- ------------------------------

Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 07:41:17 -0700
From: Michael Perelman <michael ecst.csuchico.edu>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

I just sent a list of a few of my applications.  I also use an Intel
wireless network.  If I could take a week and do everything on linus, i
would.

Kendall Clark wrote:

Eh, you don't lack technical skills as much, Michael, as you probably
lack the time necessary to learning a new system. I happen to think
for many users the investment is worth it, given what you get back,
but obviously I'm not trying to make that decision for others.

- - --

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael ecst.csuchico.edu

- ------------------------------

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 10:53:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: Marco Anglesio <mpa the-wire.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

On Fri, 4 May 2001, Matt Cramer wrote:
I used to be a Free/Open Software Zealot.  "There is no reason why
everyone can not run Free software".  Bah, bullshit.  People have complex
lives; some don't have the time, skills, or energy to use this kind of
software.  Who am I to judge someone that doesn't feel like doing all the

That's not necessarily a feature or virtue of open source vs. windows;
it's a feature of the network effects that make windows a much more
rational (business-wise, at least) platform to develop on. There is a
barrier, however, between customers that want unix and those that can
tolerate windows and I'll comment on that below.

M$ is always going to be around for the average consumer who doesn't want
to spend the time or effort to run a more complex operating system.  The

I do wonder about that - I wonder how much MSFT cash is coming out of the
consumer market, and how much is out of selling development tools,
professional tools like MS Project (which is damn useful, IMHO), databases
and server software, education and consulting. What I do see is that most
prominent and successful MS software is on the desktop. Perhaps someone on
LBO-Talk knows how this breaks down.

FUD M$ is sowing is not because they suddenly think all AOL users are
going to dump Windoze and go to linux, but because they now realise linux
is replacing M$ in the enterprise data center.  Hardware cost are the

Linux (qua linux) and NT are essentially going for the same niche - the
lightweight server niche. MSFT never really developed confidence among the
big iron crowd, which is much more sensitive to risk than the light iron
or the consumer desktop crowd. Most technical people are dragged into
using MS platforms because of the same network effects that make it a good
target platform for application development.

However, a Linux application is generally portable upwards - you can do
your initial development and unit testing and fairly easily port upwards
to an enterprise-level server running a unix or unix-like OS (HPUX,
Solaris, Digital Unix or whatever they call it now). That's doubly true if
you're developing an application on top of middleware rather than coding
an application from scratch.

What I've noticed, in my capacity as a consultant, is an increasingly
sharp line between clients who want to/need to use NT/2k and those who
want a unix system. That is the user's sensitivity to application
downtime. People who are building a system that can't tolerate a lot of
downtime (e-commerce, b2b, any kind of transactional system, really) are
the ones who request unix, or have unix-based components in their system
(application running on NT, but RDBMS running on a unix platform).

Internal projects, ones that are created for learning purposes or for
possible eventual sale to client, are also increasingly unix-based. That
application software for linux is occasionally much much cheaper than that
for NT (take DB2 pricing for an IBM VAR - I think it's 15x more expensive
to buy DB2 for an NT box of equivalent size) It's a bit of a transition
for most of the staff. But the writing is on the wall; a consultancy
wanting to bring down the big game has to get used to using the big guns.

dc-stuff (which is a "social" list).  Geeks also tend to get annoyed at
questions that display laziness, rather than just ignorance.  If a person

*snarf* I couldn't have said that better myself.

Marco

,--------------------------------------------------------------------------.
       Marco Anglesio        |  I fancied you'd return the way you said, <
      mpa the-wire.com       |   But I grow old and I forget your name.  <
http://www.the-wire.com/~mpa |   (I think I made you up inside my head.) <
                             |               --Sylvia Plath              <
`--------------------------------------------------------------------------'

- ---

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 10:12:07 -0500
From: Kendall Clark <kendall monkeyfist.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

"michael" == Michael Perelman <michael ecst.csuchico.edu> writes:

  michael> Kelley, I use voice recognition, a pen-scanner, a program
  michael> that indexes text, and most of all I use a DOS outliner.

There's voice recog stuff on Linux (though it's unlikely to be as
integrated with as many core applications as it probably is on
Windows), there is a voice recognition package for Emacs (which is the
editor that includes email and many other core tools), I think Dragon
has Linux code, and I think IBM has released VR stuff for Linux.

Depending on the model and the interface, there's probably a driver
for the pen-scanner; if it's USB, chances are pretty good. The new 2.4
Linux kernel has improved support for USB devices.

Programs that index text are *free and plentiful*; I can think of 2
very good ones, one excellent one, and one very interesting one (that
integrates into Emacs and continually searches your "textbase" in the
background, finding matches to whatever is displayed in the current
buffer; so if I were running it right now, it might be finding other
places in my textbase where plain text indexers had been discussed).

There are a few standalone outliners (most of which seem immature);
but I just use the very excellent outliner mode of Emacs.

So, most of that stuff is covered, in some way or another.

The trick is that it will take longer than a week to install and learn
all this and the rest of it. It's harder for some kinds of Windows
power users to switch over to Linux than it is "newbies", ironically.

If you're serious, Michael, I'd try to find or cultivate a friendship
with someone in the CS dep't at Chico, then find a CS student you
could pay a small sum (say, $100), or otherwise give some academic
service to, in exchange for her or his help setting up a Linux box for
you.

Best,
Kendall Clark

- ------------------------------

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 11:17:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: Marco Anglesio <mpa the-wire.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

On Fri, 4 May 2001, Kelley Walker wrote:
at them moment,  i can't think of a prog that doesn't have an equivalent
non-MS product.

MS Project. Admittedly there are project management alternatives, but I
can't think of one that runs on linux if you don't feel like keeping your
timelines on a plain-old spreadsheet.

I have heard rumblings of web-based pm software. Has anyone heard the same
rumblings, or even better used such a beast?

What else. Hmm. Quicken, definitely; while it's not produced by MS it is
windows/mac only. (And yes, I have tried GNUCash - it's just not as good.
It may be as good in a few years, but it isn't quite yet.)

QuickTax, also by Intuit. It'll take ages for a tax package to be produced
for linux because of the initial investment required. Yes, I have heard of
web-based tax packages. No, I will not use them; I value my privacy
somewhat.

Lotus Notes. The R5 client doesn't run under WINE, although the R4 client
does all but replication. It's an IBM product and the Notes server does
have a Linux port, but the client doesn't.

The list is actually pretty long. That said, I don't *have* to use all of
these things - I could balance my chequebook and do my taxes by hand. I
could schedule tasks using a spreadsheet. I don't have to use Notes for
mail - although, yes, I do, when it comes to work mail. There are
alternatives for some of these things, but they often miss valuable and
sometimes essential features.

Like Jamie Zawinski said about the ostensibly bloated Netscape:
"Convenient though it would be if it were true, Mozilla [Netscape 1.0] is
not big because it's full of useless crap. Mozilla is big because your
needs are big. Your needs are big because the Internet is big. There are
lots of small, lean web browsers out there that, incidentally, do almost
nothing useful. But being a shining jewel of perfection was not a goal
when we wrote Mozilla."

Marco

,--------------------------------------------------------------------------.
         Marco Anglesio           |    Alcohol, hashish, prussic acid,   <
        mpa the-wire.com          |    strychnine are weak dilutions.    <
  http://www.the-wire.com/~mpa    |       The surest poison is time.     <
                                  |         --Ralph Waldo Emerson        <
`--------------------------------------------------------------------------'

- ------------------------------

Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 10:17:27 -0500
From: Carrol Cox <cbcox ilstu.edu>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

Kendall Clark wrote:

I cringe every time I see or hear a progressive -- who would never
dream of eating factory-farmed meat, miss a WTO protest, or back away
from supporting the liberation of women, people of color, and so on --
blithely using Microsoft products, which has seemed to me a major
no-no since well before Judge Jackson's ruling.

I have not the slightest idea where the meat I eat comes from, nor do I
intend to spend a minute finding out. _Except in those cases where a
mass movement organizes a formal boycott of a given product_ I will base
my consumption choices on nothing else but personal convenience.  If and
when software comes along that is cheaper, easier to use, more
convenient, etc. than Microsoft I'll buy it -- but I'll be damned if I
will have my consumption practices regulated by individualist moral
choices.

Back a couple decades the Central American solidarity movement tried
(with limited success) to mount consumer boycotts against firms that
imported coffee from El Salvador. I switched from Folgers Coffee at that
time and found two or three brands I liked better and have never gone
back. But at the present time I would not refuse on "moral" or political
grounds to buy Folgers. (I have not the slightest idea what kind of
bastards are the corporations whose coffee I do buy, nor do I care.)

Such individualist moralizing as in this post from Kendall is
politically reactionary.

- ---

Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 11:21:56 -0400
From: Christopher Rhoades =?iso-8859-1?Q?D=FFkema?= <crdbronx erols.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

Do you use Nota Bene? I do, and I've had it since 1986. Great word
processor, and I use the DOS version, though I also have the newer, and, to
me, less pleasing, windows version. I have close to 500,000 words indexed in
the text retrieval part of it.

Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema

- ------------------------------

Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 11:23:37 -0400
From: Kelley Walker <kelley interpactinc.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

On Fri, 4 May 2001, Matt Cramer wrote:
dc-stuff (which is a "social" list).  Geeks also tend to get annoyed at
questions that display laziness, rather than just ignorance.  If a
person

right matt. your views about marxism and the left (e.g., not knowing what a
Liberal is v. a liberal) is about laziness, given the web and good old
fashioned libraries, on my view.

i learned that in college. you went to college and did more than major in
physics. you're quite capable of getting it rather than spewing off
nonsense about what you think "leftists" supposedly believe.

ditto attacks on the so-called luser who doesn't know how to use "help".

kelley

- ------------------------------

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 16:36:46 +0100 (BST)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Daniel=20Davies?= <d_squared_2002 yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement


In heaven's name, why?  Black people, women and animals in
factories suffer genuine hardship.  Microsoft is guilty of
potentially raising the price somewhat of a luxury good, and
certainly of depriving some people of IPO potential.  Whatever
Microsoft hav done right or wrong on the technology front, and
whatever the merits of the antitrust case against them, on a
global scale, they are completely insignificant doers of harm.
And when compared to Eric Raymond and gang, they're not even
particularly annoying.

d^2

=====
... in countries which do not enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness is more
difficult, and a great public propaganda will be required to inaugurate
t.  -- Bertrand Russell

- ---

Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 09:07:41 -0700 (PDT)
From: Chuck Grimes <cgrimes tsoft.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

Kendall C to Mike Perelman:

``So, most of that stuff is covered, in some way or another.

The trick is that it will take longer than a week to install and learn
all this and the rest of it. It's harder for some kinds of Windows
power users to switch over to Linux than it is "newbies",
ironically...''

- - ------------

What I found happened after switching over entirely is that I evolved
differnt ways of working that were more easily integrated into the
unix world.

The best example I can think of is that I used to do a lot of graphic
design and learned to do layout in Quark. After changing the OS, I had
to forget graphic design and I was stuck for a long time without any
layout tools. Then I discovered TeX---jesus yet another monster
learning curve. But, I was used to facing the impossible by this time,
and just bellied up to the bar and started in. Took a few weeks, and
then I could use TeX in a limited enough way to get by for my
needs. Then leaning TeX, reminded me or made me aware of just how much
bullshit work there is in computer graphic design, and how little
art. TeX turned out to depend a lot more on a kind of art sensibility
than Quark---however much easier, faster, and nicer to use Quark
was---at the core it was artless--it was a hard core production tool.

The point is that instead of expecting to transfer all the ways that
you used to do things on an MS system, you discover you have changed
in a fundamental way. So, after the transistion, you do things
differently with different tools. But the good part is that in
addition you learn all sorts of things that you never expected to
know, and discover entirely new worlds with other problems.

It really is a (or was for me) a very radicalizing experience.

Chuck Grimes

Gotta go to work...dam

- ---

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 11:08:11 -0500
From: Kendall Clark <kendall monkeyfist.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

"carrol" == Carrol Cox <cbcox ilstu.edu> writes:

  carrol> I have not the slightest idea where the meat I eat comes
  carrol> from, nor do I intend to spend a minute finding out. _Except
  carrol> in those cases where a mass movement organizes a formal
  carrol> boycott of a given product_ I will base my consumption
  carrol> choices on nothing else but personal convenience.

I don't eat meat produced by corporations from the incalculable
physical suffering of billions of animals. That's my personal moral
choice, which I've reached in consultation with many others in my
local community. I reached moral conclusions about using MS products
for similar reasons and in similar ways.

  If and

  carrol> when software comes along that is cheaper, easier to use,
  carrol> more convenient, etc. than Microsoft I'll buy it -- but I'll
  carrol> be damned if I will have my consumption practices regulated
  carrol> by individualist moral choices.

Ouch. Well, I haven't the slightest interest in *regulating* anyone's
"consumption practices" by my "individualist moral choices", nor do I
have the power necessary to do so, given the intention or inclination.

You should read what I said more carefully. I was specifically talking
not about all workers or about society, but about progressive people
who are already predisposed to self-regulating their consumptive
practices based on their own moral reasoning.

If you're free to ignore what I actually say, why not just call me an
evil Nazi pig and be done with it? That's a lot more efficient.

  carrol> But at the present time I would not refuse on "moral"
  carrol> or political grounds to buy Folgers. (I have not the
  carrol> slightest idea what kind of bastards are the corporations
  carrol> whose coffee I do buy, nor do I care.)

Well, I care about the origin and provenance of what I buy. I know
others who care, but there's sometime an asymmetry in our actions,
which I find interesting from a theoretical point of view. So what's
your problem?

  carrol> Such individualist moralizing as in this post from Kendall
  carrol> is politically reactionary.

How so? Surely not just because you say it? Are all one's choices
supposed to be made only after a mass movement has agreed to them? Or
just choices about your consumption practices?

This is quite fascinating; I wonder if you acknowledge any moral
obligation on you *as an individual*?

Best,
Kendall Clark

- ---

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 11:16:26 -0500
From: Kendall Clark <kendall monkeyfist.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

"carrol" == Carrol Cox <cbcox ilstu.edu> writes:

  carrol> As of a week ago I would have made the same point Michael
  carrol> makes -- that I would run linux if it ran all the programs I
  carrol> use with equal or greater simplicity (by which I mean
  carrol> catering to my laziness) of Win98 programs I run. After
  carrol> reading Kendall's attacks on the workers of the world I
  carrol> would now continue to use Microsoft as a gesture of
  carrol> solidarity with all the people who don't have time for
  carrol> Kendall's moral one-upmanship.

Which would put you in solidarity with all those Washington state
prisoners that do almost all of Microsoft's non-"knowledge-worker"
labor like packaging their software products, right?

It's further hard to see how I was attacking (irrespective of my
intent or what I actually *said*) the "workers of the world" -- so
grandiose a charge! -- when the overwhelming majority of them not only
do not *own* a computer but have never seen one.

Best,
Kendall Clark

- ---

Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 12:24:36 -0400
From: Kelley Walker <kelley interpactinc.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

At 11:49 AM 5/4/01 -0400, Marco Anglesio wrote:

A list member is (presumably) part of the community; Joe User, on the
other hand, isn't. Often, these Joe Users aren't receptive to just being
pointed to the relevant information; they need to be walked through it.
Occasionally, and this is what gets up the nose of many technically savvy
people, they *demand* to be walked through it.

i think geekazoids ought to take responsibility for participating in the
creation of a culture in which people feel they can't possibly do it
themselves.  shall i tell you about my high school computer course some
more. were those boys/men who treated me as a dumb bimbo blonde at all at
fault for treating me as if i didn't belong there?  how about the guy who
pressed keys and did everything for me when i was trying to figure out how
to run regressions of the mainframe?

it's the same line i spout re everything else. i constantly have to walk
the line between academic culture and my family/friends who know little
about it. translating, constantly. i used to commute to school daily and
feel as if i crossed some imaginary line between two worlds.  i also tend
not to hang around lefties on a daily basis, so don't always take for
granted the notion that "why shoot, everybody just has to know the path to
enlightenment.  i don't know, but experiences like that make you acutely
aware of the beginnings.

geek culture used to--i think that's changing--valorize a kind of
separatism , a kind of nietzschean transvaluation of values that turns out
to be individualist to its core in many ways, despite the patina of
communitarianism.  and, aside from that, a read of alan wolfe, much
disparaged, will give you some insight into why communitarianism and
individualism go hand in hand.

frankly, i find the tendency to individualize the whole thing as if
individuals who don't "get it" are morally bankrupt pretty damn ridiculous
for lefties who are supposed to have some sort of ability to provide
_structural_ explanations for social phenomena.

feh.

kelley

- ---

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 12:25:14 -0400
From: Gordon Fitch <gcf panix.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

Kendall Clark:

I started trying to use Linux in 1994 for moral reasons, and I became
a vegetarian last year for moral reasons; the latter was much more
difficult than the former. (Though I had my days of sheer frustration
with learning a new, very unfriendly, back then, but less so now,
operating system.) Maybe that's just a function of my being better at
certain (probably otherwise useless) conceptual problems than I am at
self-discipline and breaking a 30 year old carnivorous appetite.

I just thought with all the sociologists and economists and radicals
on LBO, someone might be able to offer some interesting explanations
about the asymmetry.

Just as a matter of comparison, it took me a fraction of a
second to become a vegetarian -- I never looked back -- but
it took about three days to get Debian Linux going on a PC I
have at home.  So there's more than one asymmetry here.

- ------------------------------

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 11:26:01 -0500
From: Kendall Clark <kendall monkeyfist.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

"d" == d squared 2002 <iso-8859-1> writes:

  d> In heaven's name, why?  Black people, women and animals in
  d> factories suffer genuine hardship.

So, too, I suggest, do the WA state prisoners -- most of whom, if WA
is like TX, are people of color -- who are paid a miserly wage (maybe
$1.00 an hour?) to package all of MS's software products. I certainly
consider them to be exploited persons, and I can't in good conscience
give my $$ to a corporation that's actively exploiting them, when I
have other choices I can make. But apparently the willingness to act
based on my own moral reasoning, in conversation with members of my
local community, makes me, per Carrol Cox's strange universe,
*politically reactionary*. Oh well.

I guess it's okay to bash the Chinese companies for using slave labor
but not okay to bash MS for doing the same thing?

  d> on a
  d> global scale, they are completely insignificant doers of harm.

Even if that's the case, and it probably is, I don't feel constrained,
*when I have perfectly useful alternatives*, which is what this thread
was supposed to be about, to only respond morally to the *worst* doers
of harm. Using alternatives to MS software *and* being an antiracist
or anti-imperialist aren't mutually exclusive, after all.

  d> And when compared to Eric Raymond and gang, they're not even
  d> particularly annoying.

Eric Raymond is perhaps the most *annoying* human being on the planet,
but that's rather irrelevant to the moral argument about choosing less
harmful alternatives when they're available.

Best,
Kendall Clark

- ------------------------------

Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 12:31:49 -0400
From: Kelley Walker <kelley interpactinc.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

At 11:49 AM 5/4/01 -0400, Marco Anglesio wrote:

I don't get all the debates that go on on LBO-Talk. Some I don't have the
background for; some are simply above me. Some I might think I know, but
don't, and I probably make some eyes roll occasionally. That said, I don't
expect to be taught a course in leftist politics or economics, gratis,
merely because I'm ignorant of them, and I certainly wouldn't if I popped
out of nowhere and demanded it.

Marco

look, the administrative assistant, the clerical worker, etc. is supposed
to do a host of things, none of which should include learning on his own
how to figure out why something works.  i.e., if her typewriter broke or
the ditto machine broke thirty years ago, someone fixed it for her.

the habit of sysadmins calling people lusers is not about people wanting to
have their hands helds. it's something a lot bigger than that and emerged
at a time when people probably needed a lot more handholding than they do
now.

finally, people sure do ask questions all the time that could be answered
by a google.  i have! michael perelman's question was, itself, a question
that could be answered by google.  the only reason we don't bitch and why
we bother to answer is because we get to trot out our knowledge in a venue
that doesn't often give us the opp to shine in that way.

- ------------------------------

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 11:45:11 -0500
From: Kendall Clark <kendall monkeyfist.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

"chuck" == Chuck Grimes <cgrimes tsoft.com> writes:

  chuck> What I found happened after switching over entirely is that I
  chuck> evolved differnt ways of working that were more easily
  chuck> integrated into the unix world.

Yep. GUIs and command lines offer fundamentally different ways of
interacting with the computer. But I don't valorize the latter by
identifying it with power users and the former with non-power
users. Different people use tools in different ways.

But you're exactly right, Chuck. At first I thought I wanted to use
the Unix approach because of the kind of work I did; but, as grad
student in philosophy of religion, that turned out not to be the
case. What I found was that using different tools made possible
different kinds of work, some of which I grew to like very much.

  chuck> weeks, and then I could use TeX in a limited enough way to
  chuck> get by for my needs.

Hmm, I'm scared of TeX! I use LaTeX for my dissertation and word
processing needs, and it's more than powerful enough for me.

  chuck> The point is that instead of expecting to transfer all the
  chuck> ways that you used to do things on an MS system, you discover
  chuck> you have changed in a fundamental way. So, after the
  chuck> transistion, you do things differently with different
  chuck> tools. But the good part is that in addition you learn all
  chuck> sorts of things that you never expected to know, and discover
  chuck> entirely new worlds with other problems.

  chuck> It really is a (or was for me) a very radicalizing
  chuck> experience.

Yes. I found -- in my naive liberal bougeois way, no doubt, some will
suggest -- it to be a very *freeing* and empowering transition. I
advocate others at least trying to use it in hopes they have the same
kind of experience. All of this got started because I'm curious why
relatively few progressive activists (of a type) are willing to
try. Some of Kelley's regular themes here on this subject are almost
certainly at play, including the very male cult of competent users and
developers of Linux, the BSDs, etc. -- which I probably, despite my
best intentions (ooh, more liberal bougeois naivete!), reinforce and
perpetuate.

Best,
Kendall Clark

- ------------------------------

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 09:46:01 -0700
From: Michael Perelman <michael ecst.csuchico.edu>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

I use a program that has since become very expensive -- Zyindex.  It works
wonderfully.

- ---

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 11:56:28 -0500
From: Kendall Clark <kendall monkeyfist.com>
Subject: Living with Linux

"kelley" == Kelley Walker <kelley interpactinc.com> writes:


  kelley> and damn it kendall, i had typed out a flame in which i
  kelley> could lay at your feet--by making you the repository of all
  kelley> geekazoids who've treated me as a dumb blonde, esp the boys
  kelley> in the computer class i took in high school. it was the
  kelley> first time they'd offered a course on computers and they all
  kelley> had dads who were engineers and had told them about
  kelley> computers or had actually used one... and me, my dad was
  kelley> chief paper boy (circulation manager)... i didn't know a
  kelley> thing, just heard about them.

[My last today since I'm way over my limit. I'll just have to grin and
bear being called the reactionary scourge of the worker's of the world
until tomorrow.]

Kelley,

I'm happy to be the personification, for you, of all the misogynist
pigs who've assumed you can't do computers because you're a "girl" --
but for you *only*, and only if you promise to keep in mind that I
didn't take a computer course in high school or college because, as a
wannabe novelist, I was afraid that knowing how to use a computer
would ruin my "creativity". :>

The economic terrors of having a PhD in *religious studies* (of all
the stupid choices) forced me to reconsider that particular bit of
ignorance. Now I spend my days doing technical writing, occasional
programming, and working on my first novel -- oh, and attacking the
workers of the world (in email!) whenever I get the chance...

Best,
Kendall Clark

- ---

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 14:05:15 -0400 (EDT)
From: Matt Cramer <cramer unix01.voicenet.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

On Fri, 4 May 2001, Kelley Walker wrote:

right matt. your views about marxism and the left (e.g., not knowing what
a
Liberal is v. a liberal) is about laziness, given the web and good old
fashioned libraries, on my view.

Kel kel kel.  The running joke is getting old.  You know I know the
difference.  I played along with the joke for a while, but now it grows
tiresome.

But I'll play it one more time.  A citation, please, for an example of the
way I have insisted on getting my hand held on this topic from a listserv.

i learned that in college. you went to college and did more than major in
physics. you're quite capable of getting it rather than spewing off
nonsense about what you think "leftists" supposedly believe.

References?  Citations?

I didn't think so.

ditto attacks on the so-called luser who doesn't know how to use "help".

Glad I can help you vent your anger towards other people and the things
they've apparently said.

If you'd like to throw darts at my ass in symbolism of others who have
upset you you know when I'll be in Vegas.  And I'll probably be drunk
enough to let you do it.


Matt

- - --
Matt Cramer <cramer voicenet.com>
http://www.voicenet.com/~cramer/
You could be cursed with the three terrible karmas.
You could be beautiful, rich, and famous.
     -Tyler Durden

- ------------------------------

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 13:23:04 -0500
From: Kendall Clark <kendall monkeyfist.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

[Doug, last one, I promise!]

On Fri, May 04, 2001 at 12:10:41PM -0500, Carrol Cox wrote:

This is oxymoronic. A progressive person has much better things to do
with his/her time than spend it "regulating their consumptive
practices." I'll stop here, because your positions seem too absurd to
bother refuting.

Let me see if I get this straight, as all my political reactionary
stuff seems to have made me stupid. (And mere assertions that
an argument is oxymoronic, without a showing that it is, always
makes me wonder what *I'm* missing.)

In the same message in which you declare, unilaterally, that
progressive people don't have enough time (?) to, say, avoid eating
at McDonald's, you say that *my* positions "seem too absurd to
bother refuting" but also that --

Moralism of your sort can only become a widespread social practice if
the state adopts it and enforces it with widespread use of firing
squads.

- - -- *my* position requires the coercive powers of the State to implement?

What about all those thousands of Food Not Bombs-lovin' vegans who
were in Quebec last week, trying to give capitalism a black eye? They
all seem to have plenty of time to do both.

Oh, but I guess your point is that any time they spend trying to avoid
eating food produced by corporations for profit from the easily
avoidable physical suffering of billions of animals is better spent
doing more *real* progressive work?

My guess is that you'd need the State to impose your own views
about how progressives should spend their time a lot more quickly
than I'd need it to impose my "moralism". There are, after all,
societies in which many people, for moral or religious reasons,
refrain, say,  from eating meat -- and without the State pointing
guns at them.

Despite our "you suck, no you do!" posturing, I would still like an
answer to my sincerely-asked question: Do you recognize any
fundamentally individual moral obligations at all? It sounds like
you don't, but I can't really imagine such a position.

Best,
Kendall Clark

- ------------------------------

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 11:26:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: Kevin Robert Dean <qualiall_2 yahoo.com>
Subject: Granola eating Reactionaries, was Re: MSOFT versus Open Source
movement

- - ----
Carrol Cox wrote:


Kendall Clark wrote:



 You should read what I said more carefully. I was
specifically talking
 not about all workers or about society, but about
progressive people
 who are already predisposed to self-regulating their
consumptive
 practices based on their own moral reasoning.



This is oxymoronic. A progressive person has much
better things to do
with his/her time than spend it "regulating their
consumptive
practices." I'll stop here, because your positions
seem too absurd to
bother refuting.

Moralism of your sort can only become a widespread
social practice if
the state adopts it and enforces it with widespread
use of firing
squads.


My god, Carrol, you can disagree with Kendall without
bringing out the heavy artillery, can't you?

Maybe not.

Doug
- - ---


Wow! I never knew that dietary choice was holding back
the workers movement.  Damn you Kendall!

According to Carrol's logic, moralizing about workers
rights and union organizing are 'reactionary' and
"reformist" because folk's find that these activities
are time consuming.





__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices
http://auctions.yahoo.com/

- ------------------------------

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 11:29:12 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jordan Hayes <jordan Infothecary.ORG>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

don't have enough time (?) to, say, avoid eating at McDonald's ...

First of all, there's no meat in the "burgers" at McDonalds.

- ------------------------------

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 14:33:24 -0400
From: Archer.Todd ic.gc.ca
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

Kendall wrote:

You should read what I said more carefully. I was specifically talking
not about all workers or about society, but about progressive people
who are already predisposed to self-regulating their consumptive
practices based on their own moral reasoning.

Kendall, I think, given what Carrol has written before, that Carrol's
problem with your "moralizing" is that progressive actions on an individual
level are relatively meaningless given the power a mass movement would have
when acting on similar issues.  Forgive me if I'm taking seriously a private
joke between the two of you, but it certainly sounded as if the two of you
were doing your damndest to talk past each other.

Kendall also wrote:

It's further hard to see how I was attacking (irrespective of my
intent or what I actually *said*) the "workers of the world"

Again, I think what Carrol might have been attacking you for was your
harping a bit too much on individual action.  The general tone of your words
matched somewhat those of the bourgeois who insisted that the working class
could better itself if only it's members would go to church regularly, cut
down on drinking, and bathed more often.

And no, to the community at large, I am not Carrol's apologist.  I simply
find it difficult to believe that we could live up to what Doug would like
to see "worked through" on this list if we misread one another's arguments
and went to sulk afterwards.

Todd

- ---

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 14:40:49 -0400
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood panix.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

I remember a quote from Durenmatt's play The Physicists, which I read
in high school German class long ago, which runs something like:
"Every attempt by an individual to solve that which concerns all must
fail."

Doug

- ---

Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 13:48:05 -0500
From: Carrol Cox <cbcox ilstu.edu>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

Doug Henwood wrote:


My god, Carrol, you can disagree with Kendall without bringing out
the heavy artillery, can't you?

Maybe not.


Actually not. I'm working on a long pen-l post, grounded in Marx &
Ollman, responding to what I think is Lou Proyect's desertion of marxism
for moralism. I can think of few things as politically destructive as
moralism. That old anarchist Bookchin has I believe been engaged in
quite a squabble for some years now with such moralistic currents in
anarchism. (I forget the term he uses, something like "life-style
anarchism" though that isn't it.)

In addition Kendall's kind of moralism is also utterly puritanical in
its (implicit) condemnation of laziness. I can think of only two realms
where laziness is not a political virtue: political activity proper and
household tasks (where matters of male supremacy become important).

Carrol

- ---

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 15:03:55 -0400
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood panix.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

Gordon Fitch wrote:

Doug Henwood:
 I remember a quote from Durenmatt's play The Physicists, which I read
 in high school German class long ago, which runs something like:
 "Every attempt by an individual to solve that which concerns all must
 fail."

Hence, every attempt to solve that which concerns all must
fail, since it would have to start with one individual or
another -- unless you postulate some kind of group mind,
which seems rather in the right-wing bag.

No, that's not what it means at all. I pressed it into service to say
that there's no way that individual consumption practices can
extricate oneself from an exploitative society. You can use free
software, but you've got to run it on machines made by evil large
corporations. You can shun meat and spare animals, but what about the
migrant workers who pick the cucumbers?

One of my favorite little factoids: organic produce requires more
stoop labor than the ordinary kind. So is it more "moral" to eat
organic food?

Doug

- ---

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 14:33:08 -0500
From: Kendall Clark <kendall monkeyfist.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

On Fri, May 04, 2001 at 03:03:55PM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote:
No, that's not what it means at all. I pressed it into service to say
that there's no way that individual consumption practices can
extricate oneself from an exploitative society.

Of course, and that can only be a reason to avoid doing easily
avoidable harm if the *only* reason ever to do anything is to extricate
oneself from an exploitative society. But whoever said that?

(Or, just to be very pedantic, which is almost certainly another
of my horrible, university-acquired bourgeois vices, if any and
all regulating of one's consumptive practices necessarily amounts
to some thwarting of one's highest reason for action, say, bringing
about, with others, fundamental social change.)

I haven't suggested that one regulates one's consumptive practices
as a way to bring about a revolution, to change an exploitative
society into an egalitarian one -- mainly because I don't think
it's true.

There are other desiderata of human action than revolution; one
of them is *avoiding doing harm*, particularly easily avoidable
harm.

I only regulate my consumptive practices because I can
thereby easily avoid doing some easily avoidable harm, and not because
I think that somehow doing so will bring about the revo!

Likewise, even if one's highest aim is to bring about the revo, how
can that be an excuse for not easily avoiding easily avoidable harm
when doing so doesn't thwart one's highest aim?

Despite Carroll's name calling -- which now descends to the absurdity
of saying I criticize laziness, I who have done nothing today but
play with my new cat, read for pleasure, and answer email -- I think
we've read past each other because of this confusion between acting
so as to bring about fundamental social change and acting so as to
avoid easily avoidable harm, that is, acting to further one's highest
aims of action and acting to further other aims.

I think I have an obligation to do both, especially when I can do both
without thwarting either. Bookchin is right to criticize the former
in terms of "lifestyle anarchism," a position with which I very much
agree. But that in no way relieves me of the obligation, in my view,
to avoid doing easily avoidable harm.

Let's take an easier example. How can we attain the liberation of
women in American society? Only by a mass movement, which I think I'm
obligated to work toward. But I also, as an individual, am obligated
to avoid doing harm, including, say, sexual violence, which is one of
the social forces that constitutes women's oppression. So while the
larger social aim cannot be achieved but through collective action
and solidarity, I'm still obligated to avoid doing harm to individual
women as an individual man, even if doing so won't bring about the
overall goal I seek. (And the only connection between these two aims
of my action is that I'm obligated to do both of them. I am *not*
arguing that the only way to bring about collective action is to
first *purify* oneself. That's one point, but it isn't mine, and
I don't hold it.)

Even while I work toward the liberation of women as a social goal, and
I act to avoid harming women as an individual man, I still share in
the privileges of patriarchy, sometimes unawares, sometimes even
against my will.  But not being able to avoid doing *all* harm doesn't
relieve me of the obligation to avoid doing all the harm that I can
avoid, particularly harm that is easily avoidable.

Best,
Kendall Clark

- ---

Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 15:52:32 -0500
From: Carrol Cox <cbcox ilstu.edu>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

We need to go back to an earler thread Gordon introduced, when he
queried:

"What can we prove, scientifically speaking, about the degree to which
humans are necessarily social animals, and the degree to which they are
individuals, as dictated by their _material_ characteristics?"

None of the answers satisfied Gordon, primarily because the very
questoin denies the possibility of an answer. We have to start from the
premise of actual individuals as we find them, that is already always
caught up in a complex of social relations, apart from which they have
no existence as humans.

And from this viewpoint, it is simply incoherent to say that every
action "would have to start with one individual or another?" All actions
(all "individual" thoughts) emerge from an ensemble of social relations
and within such an ensemble. For the most vigorous attempt (glorious but
a failure) to conceive of action or thought as emerging from an
"individual," see in Book VIII of _Paradise Lost_ Adam's account (as he
speaks to the seraph, Raphael) of his own creation.

Nothing, ever, begins with an individual. Thought independent and prior
to language exists (and is the basis for thought in language), but
social thought can only come into being in language, and language occurs
only within social relations (Milton to the contrary).

Carrol

- ---

Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 17:26:31 -0400
From: Chuck0 <chuck tao.ca>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

Matt Cramer wrote:

I used to be a Free/Open Software Zealot.  "There is no reason why
everyone can not run Free software".  Bah, bullshit.  People have complex
lives; some don't have the time, skills, or energy to use this kind of
software.  Who am I to judge someone that doesn't feel like doing all the
reading and installing necessary to use linux instead of Windoze when he
just wants get email and browse the web?  What, after 12 hours at the
factory a guy doesn't feel like tinkering with his linux machine for a few
hours each night?  He'd rather relax and play with his kids, or have a
beer at the local pub?  Omigod who wulda guessed it!?!

I'm still a Free Software advocate on political principles, but your
observation
here is so true. I've mentioned this to programmer friends, that an easy to
install and use Linux distro would gain alot of users who don't want to be
bothered to learn all of the arcane Linux shit. Of course, there is an
argument
to made about knowing how your tools work. But most people use cars to get
around, they aren't tinkerers. I'm a web guy who is the same way. I want my
computer and programs to work so I can use them to do cool, creative things.

<< Chuck0 >>

Infoshop.org    -> http://www.infoshop.org/
Alternative Press Review -> http://www.altpr.org/
Practical Anarchy Online -> http://www.practicalanarchy.org/
Homepage -> http://flag.blackened.net/chuck0/home/

- ---

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 17:25:54 -0400
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood panix.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

Chuck0 wrote:

What's even cooler is that the Anarchist FAQ comes with some BSD
distributions.
My website runs on a server powered by BSD. It's very robust and is
almost never
down.

So how do the developers support themselves? Do they have day jobs?

Doug

- ---

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 17:27:51 -0400
From: Gordon Fitch <gcf panix.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

Doug Henwood:
I remember a quote from Durenmatt's play The Physicists, which I read
in high school German class long ago, which runs something like:
"Every attempt by an individual to solve that which concerns all must
fail."

Gordon Fitch wrote:
Hence, every attempt to solve that which concerns all must
fail, since it would have to start with one individual or
another -- unless you postulate some kind of group mind,
which seems rather in the right-wing bag.

Doug Henwood:
No, that's not what it means at all.

But that's what it says -- to me, anyway.  The desired meaning
seems to be someone's grandmother's "You can't fix the world
all by yourself."  I must add, as I imagine my commie grandmother
would if she were here, "but you can start."  So an attempt
by an individual to solve that which concerns all could succeed,
after all.

                                    I pressed it into service to say
that there's no way that individual consumption practices can
extricate oneself from an exploitative society. You can use free
software, but you've got to run it on machines made by evil large
corporations. You can shun meat and spare animals, but what about the
migrant workers who pick the cucumbers?

One of my favorite little factoids: organic produce requires more
stoop labor than the ordinary kind. So is it more "moral" to eat
organic food?

I don't know -- I eat organic food out of selfish resentment
towards IFF and other enterprises of chemical fraudulence.
My vegetarianism is similarly self-centered, as is my playing
with Linux.  For most people, the logic of eating organic food
(or using Linux, or taking the bus to work, and so on) is
liberal, capitalist, reformist logic -- what we use will grow
and be enhanced because energy will flow into it / rich people
will make money off it and some things will thereafter be
nicer.  There may be side benefits for small property owners
or workers into the bargain, but _as_such_, not as being
liberated from capitalism and class war.  Nevertheless, the
logic doesn't run in reverse -- we can't create anarchy and
communism by gobbling McOffalburgers and driving Cadillacs as
far as I know.

However, I think there's some utility in taking steps which
one thinks are probably completely ineffective in the world
because of their spiritual benefits.  I've heard that the
first rule of revolution is "Don't let the bastards get you
down."  And if factory meat, IFF, or Microsoft get me down,
it cheers me up to take a walk.

If someone thinks there's more to it than cheer, though, I
say let them run it on out.  Who knows?  Food Not Bombs
serves only _vegan_ food, so I give them vegan oatmeal
cookies.  Maybe they're onto something.

- ------------------------------

Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 17:40:35 -0400
From: Chuck0 <chuck tao.ca>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

Kendall Clark wrote:

-- *my* position requires the coercive powers of the State to implement?

What about all those thousands of Food Not Bombs-lovin' vegans who
were in Quebec last week, trying to give capitalism a black eye? They
all seem to have plenty of time to do both.

Oh, but I guess your point is that any time they spend trying to avoid
eating food produced by corporations for profit from the easily
avoidable physical suffering of billions of animals is better spent
doing more *real* progressive work?

My guess is that you'd need the State to impose your own views
about how progressives should spend their time a lot more quickly
than I'd need it to impose my "moralism". There are, after all,
societies in which many people, for moral or religious reasons,
refrain, say,  from eating meat -- and without the State pointing
guns at them.

Despite our "you suck, no you do!" posturing, I would still like an
answer to my sincerely-asked question: Do you recognize any
fundamentally individual moral obligations at all? It sounds like
you don't, but I can't really imagine such a position.

Amen, Kendall. I've been an activist for a long time and I've moved in
different
circles. I could never figure out why very few of the activists who belonged
to
traditional Left organizations (i.e. ISO, RCP, or similar) were vegetarians
or
vegans. Granted that a dietary practice won't start a revolution (see my
article
in the next issue of Practical Anarchy on this), but you would think that
these
socially conscious folks would be sensitized to the reasons for becoming,
for
example, a vegetarian. After several years of thinking about this, it dawned
on
me that this was related to the problem of sexism and homophobia in
traditional
Left groups. Why? It boils down to an attitude that these things aren't
important to the program of building the revolution, so they can be
postponed
until after the revolution happens. Feminism is secondary to organizing
workers
into revolutionary parties. Stopping environmental destruction is also
peripheral to the revolution. Never mind the fact that there may not be a
planet
worth living on after the revolution happens.

It doesn't take much effort to change ones personal habits. One can still
organize workers or oppose capitalism, and be a vegan.

<< Chuck0 >>

- ---

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 16:56:30 -0500 (CDT)
From: "j.f. noonan" <jfn1 msc.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

On Fri, 4 May 2001, Doug Henwood wrote:

So how do the developers support themselves? Do they have
day jobs?

Yes.  Sometimes those day jobs are working on free software,
either for internal consumption or for clients.  Say the company
I work for need a Frobnitz added to the gcc compiler in order to
do some task or other.  I get paid by my company to add the
Frobnitz for our internal business reasons and then contribute
the changes back to the maintainers who can then incorporate
them into a future gcc distro.  My company has gotten what it
needs, I've gotten paid, and the gcc user community has a new
feature.  This is how most of this stuff gets done.

Other folks consult and do customization of free software for a
living.  Stallman likes to think about a business model of
programming more like practicing medicine than building stereos
(but without the licensing guild).  In medicine, nobody owns the
expertise that is a physician's stock-in-trade and nobody really
has a monopoly on the knowledge.  Were it not for licensing,
anyone with the desire to educate themself could practice
medicine (at least on their own body).  Physicians make
money not from proprietary knowledge, but from expertise in
freely available knowledge.

Stallman says programmers should get paid for consulting or
whatever, not from licensing IP.  The analogy with Medicine is
not perfect, so don't bother picking it apart.  Also, don't
confuse drug or medical instrument companies with physicians.
The drug companies are more like computer manufactures, not
software producers, if you want to stretch the metaphor a bit
further.


- - --

Joseph Noonan
Houston, TX
jfn1 msc.com

- ---

Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 18:08:05 -0400
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood panix.com>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

So it's not much of a model for a better society on any large scale
then, is it? Not that I think it's a bad way of dealing with the
present, but it's basically free riding on other people's resources,
no?

Doug

- ---

Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 20:55:36 -0400
From: "W. Kiernan" <WKiernan concentric.net>
Subject: Re: MSOFT versus Open Source movement

Carrol Cox wrote:

A progressive person has much better things to do with his/her time...

Yeah but Christ the latest MS stuff (I speak of the Win95/98/ME series,
not NT/2000, which is actually pretty decent to use) absolutely,
recklessly sucks, sucks sucks sucks, sucks worse and worse with each new
iteration, and MS themselves openly admits that their next generation,
XP, by their deliberate intent is gonna suck worse than any previous
operating system ever sucked ever!

If you insist, for your weird ass-backwards ideological reasons, on
using Microsoft's world's-worst products (the consumer equivalent of
Thalidomide, which, at least, was only available by prescription) please
please PLEASE do yourself a big-ass favor and ditch that absurdly,
psychedelically awful 95/98/ME crap for Windows 2000.

The NT series is, for historical reasons, different and far superior -
NT was originally developed by an independent team of guys, in Microsoft
yet not _of_ Microsoft,, led by VMS genius Dave Cutler, whom MS stole
out of Digital, and it shares absolutely _none_ of that dog's breakfast
16-bit code base which is the underpinnings and the curse of MS's
post-DOS line-up.  Rather than soil themselves by investigating the
source code of the real MS-DOS, the Cutler team even bought their DOS
box off a third-party vendor who sold a 32-bit DOS emulator for
Macintoshes!  Which means that a DOS window inside NT is far
functionally superior to a real computer running real MS-DOS!

Why should you put up with new stuff which is lousier than the old stuff
it supplanted?  Technological progress isn't supposed to work that way -
it's supposed to be like biological evolution, except with an advanced
garbage collector - but the plain facts can't be denied.  Carrol, NT
5.0, I mean Windows 2000, will only cost you at most $300, and it's
worth every cent of it twice over to FDISK 95/98/ME right the Hell off
your hard drive.  I myself prefer NT 4.0 but they don't sell it any more
so you can't get that.  If you were an anarchist I'd offer to
postal-mail you a bootleg - solidarity, right on! but you're above all
that, I know.  Ideology be damned, 95/98/ME is just plain crap, and I
like you too much, you smart crabby bastard, to want you to have to put
up with it.

Yours WDK - WKiernan concentric.net




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