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[ox-en] [Fwd: Re: <nettime> Six Limitations to the Current Open Source Development Methodology]



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I sent this to nettime inresponse to Felix Stadler's piece. They ahvent 
posted it (yet) but seeing Geert  posted it here I thought I should add 
this little preliminary comment
Martin
.----------------------

Thanks to Felix as always for his clear thoughts. I haven't had time to 
read and respond carefully but I just wanted to throw into the mix two 
preliminary thoughts.

Like when I read Lessig (as I have said before), but thankfully to a 
lesser extent, when I read Benkler I feel something is missing. He goes 
so far and then backs off. He in the end for my mind makes a good 
argument as to why business or may I say, capital, should "capture" OS 
development. With this sort of thinking what we end up with is a cheap 
or even free pool of labour available to be used by business to develop 
commodities. This seems at times to me the great hope of many (I don't 
say all and maybe I should say some) who advocate for open source. Some 
paricipants will get a reputation and a "real job" maybe but others get 
to hope and provide labour for free. In the end his analysis seems to 
suggest that OS or P2P is more efficient than markets or the firm and 
thus we should adopt it as a business model.
 
On the other hand we are all (I hope all or most of us) aware of the 
other side of Open Source - as Stefan Merten says "the germ of a new 
form of society" rather than simply anew form of organising labour for 
capital.

So thats preliminary point one.

The second preliminary point is more of a experiment on my part! Read 
this and tell me what the "second case" spoken of reminds you of ....I 
gave it to a friend who talks to his linux box all day his response was 
heartening. I didn't tell him where it came from ... and I won't tell 
you! But I am sure some of you can guess! I haven't got any prizes to 
give out for the correct answer - only reputation ( as in that supposed 
motivator of OS participants). But i am itersted to see if it rings 
bells in this context.
Thanks
Martin

"The labour of the individual looked at in the act of production itself, 
is the money with which he directly buys the product, the object of his 
particular activity; but it is a /particular/ money, which buys 
precisely only this /specific/ product. In order to be /general money/ 
directly, it would have to be not a /particular,/ but /general/ labour 
from the outset; i.e. it would have to be /posited/ from the outset as a 
link in /general production./ But on this presupposition it would not be 
exchange which gave labour its general character; but rather its 
presupposed communal character would determine the distribution of 
products. The communal character of production would make the product 
into a communal, general product from the outset. The exchange which 
originally takes place in production -- which would not be an exchange 
of exchange values but of activities, determined by communal needs and 
communal purposes -- would from the outset include the participation of 
the individual in the communal world of products. On the basis of 
exchange values, labour is /posited/ as general only through/ exchange/. 
But on this foundation it would be /posited/ as such before exchange; 
i.e. the exchange of products would in no way be the /medium/ by which 
the participation of the individual in general production is mediated. 
Mediation must, of course, take place. In the first case, which proceeds 
from the independent production of individuals -- no matter how much 
these independent  productions determine and modify each other /post 
festum /through their interrelations -- mediation takes place through 
the exchange of commodities, through exchange value and through money; 
all these are expressions of one and the same relation. In the second 
case, the /presupposition is itself mediated;/ i.e. a communal 
production, communality, is presupposed as the basis of production. The 
labour of the individual is posited from the outset as social labour. 
Thus, whatever the particular material form of the product he creates or 
helps to create, what he has bought with his labour is not a specific 
and particular product, but rather a specific share of the communal 
production. He therefore has no particular product to exchange. His 
product is not an /exchange value./ The product does not first have to 
be transposed into a particular form in order to attain a general 
character for the individual. Instead of a division of labour, such as 
is necessarily created with the exchange of exchange values, there would 
take place an organization of labour whose consequence would be the 
participation of the individual in communal consumption. In the first 
case the social character of production is /posited/ only /post festum/ 
with the elevation of products to exchange values and the exchange of 
these exchange values. In the second case the /social character of 
production/ is presupposed, and participation in the world of products, 
in consumption, is not mediated by the exchange of mutually independent 
labours or products of labour. It is mediated, rather, by the social 
conditions of production within which the individual is active. Those 
who want to make the labour of the individual directly into /money/ 
(i.e. his product as well), into /realized exchange value,/ want 
therefore to determine that labour /directly/ as general labour, i.e. to 
negate precisely the conditions under which it must be made into money 
and exchange values, and under which it depends on private exchange. 
This demand can be satisfied only under conditions where it can no 
longer be raised. Labour on the basis of exchange values presupposes, 
precisely, that neither the labour of the individual nor his product are 
/directly/ /general;/ that the product attains this form only by passing 
through an /objective mediation/ by means of a form of /money/ distinct 
from itself."



Benjamin Geer wrote:

On Thursday 14 August 2003 14:07, Felix Stalder wrote:

 

The "Open Source Approach" to develop informational goods has been 
spectacularly successful [...]
The boundaries to the open production model as it has been established in 
the last decade are set by six conditions characterizing virtually all of 
the success stories of what Benkler called "commons-based peer production."
   


While I think your analysis is useful, in that it partly explains why it has 
been so easy for commons-based peer production to flourish in software 
development, I would be hesitant to define the "open source approach" solely 
or even primarily in terms of the characteristics you mention.  In terms of 
power structures, surely there are many different open source approaches, 
including the 'benevolent dictator' approach used by the Linux kernel 
developers, and the various kinds of consensus, voting and delegation used by 
Apache, KDE and Debian.

While these projects have different political models, they have some poltiical 
features in common:

Open participation: Anyone can participate if they agree to the groups's 
principles, and have the necessary skills.

Self-management: The people who do the work decide amongst themselves what 
work is to be done, and how to do it.

Transparency: detailed about what the group is doing, including its 
discussions and decisions, as well as the knowledge gained through its work, 
are publicly available on web sites (e.g. in the form of source code and 
documentation) and on mailing lists.

Public ownership of knowledge: because knowledge about the group's work is 
publicly available, and freedom to use this knowledge is protected by open 
source licences, it becomes part of the commons.  (Note that even if a group 
produced something material, which could not be shared as easily as software, 
the group could still share its knowledge in the same way.)  Open 
participation also promotes public ownership of knowledge, because less 
experienced people can learn from more experienced people through 
participation.

Respect for skill: If your expertise is recognized by others, and you 
contribute something useful, your opinions are granted more weight.  There is 
no way to gain influence without skill.

Diversity: Different approaches to carrying out tasks and solving problems can 
coexist (without hindering one another), and learn from each other (e.g. KDE 
and GNOME).

It seems to me that these principles could indeed be applied to projects that 
don't fall within the boundaries you specified.

The Open Organizations project (http://www.open-organizations.org) is an 
attempt to synthesize these principles, and some others, into a workable, 
general-purpose model.

Ben

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