Re: [ox-en] Welcome
- From: steve tekell <tekell swbell.net>
- Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 04:11:26 -0600
----- Original Message -----
Hi all!
A very warm welcome to all of you.
thanks, it's especially nice to see some anti-Capitalist activity in the
wealthier capitalists states like Germany and U.S.
I'd really appreciate if on the one hand the interesting results we
had on the German list could be spread out to non-German speakers and
yes, it be nice there was a page in English that covered some of the major
discussion points that has occured in the German list. Especially around
ideas like Marxism and modern anti-Capitilism.
BTW I find the phrasing in the introduction to the list a bit awkward or a
little off the mark.
"principles of Gnu/Linux may serve as a foundation of a new society."
That is, how can it be sufficient for a "foundation"? Do you mean something
more like "a gateway to" or "key element of transformation and revolution"
or "part of a foundation" or "points to a foundation"?
It seems like when you are dealing with food, shelter, and the essentials
certain "principles" of Free software development wouldn't necessarily match
up or be sufficient to something which can't be duplicated without cost.
Maybe it's useless nitpicking, but it just sounds weird to me.
What are all these "principles" exactly?
Are they not simply a particular manifestation of something which came
before? Such as anarchist morality - Free Association, Mutial Aid, etc.
What I think is interesting about GNU/FSF/GPL is how it manages to work
within Capitalism. Generally, most ideas to transform society out of
capitalism depend on total revolution. I don't have a lot of faith in all
the companies trying to make a profit off Linux, capitalist success runs
contrary to some of the principles here. But it doesn't matter, you can't
stop it. They may depend on Linux, but Linux doesn't depend on them. There
isn't really success/failure for Linux just degrees of popularity. The GPL,
although I have had mixed feelings about it, lately it seems like a remarkly
smart defensive move (until we outnumber them) to ensure Mutial Aid. How
else can we apply these principles which ensure and encourage Mutial Aid,
Free Association and Direct Action (in this case DIY)? It's manages to work
against the alienation and exploitation of capitalism without requiring an
entire social revolution. We can be hopeful, that it will bring about such
transformation over time.
What I am curious to watch what will happen as OpenOffice and other
OSS/GPL desktop tools become of sufficient quality, while at the same time
the economic downturns encourage cost cutting. If it catches on in any
significant degree, as a replacement for Windows, MS Office, and other
commercial software in order to save money, then there is this potential for
it to spiral out into something bigger, if critical mass were reached it
would radically alter the economy. All universities, gov't agencies, and
other tax based institutions could be the critical mass, dunno. But at some
point there's much less money going into Capitalists Corperate software
companies. Who then have to cut costs, especially with MS licensing getting
worse and worse, and so on and so on. If radically enough, we end up with
some of the birth pains of revolution. On the other hand, with Corperations
owning/controlling most all the farm land and food, I am not sure how this
leads to a solution there. And really, something which doesn't liberate
land (and food) doesn't go very far. Maybe all the laid-off programmers
will just end up in prison with all the other no longer needed workers in
the U.S. Hopefully we wont' have to have half the population in prison
before we realize how little we could all work if we cooperated outside of
capitalism.
_______________________
http://www.oekonux.org/