Re: [ox-en] The Hipatia Manifesto
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2003 21:18:28 +0200
Hi again!
Ok, for the rest of it.
2 months (75 days) ago Stefan Merten wrote:
A new spectre is haunting the planet:
I wonder whether there can be one (leftist) manifest without featuring
a spectre ;-) .
Since technology helps and encourages them, as the barriers to
prevent their free spread fall with the Internet, it is
necessary to invent legal barriers to create property and value
where it is not possible to establish them naturally.
On the German list some weeks ago Sabine stressed that all scarcity is
not naturally. Particularly today, where the productivity is as high
as never before this is true even for material goods. I'm sure at
least in the industrialized countries everyone could have a good
living if not money would prevent that.
The battle for control of knowledge has just begun. In the area
of biotechnology, the big companies have managed to control its
development and in this field the future evolution of the forms
of capitalization and distribution of the benefits have already
been outlined. They have even managed to patent living beings.
An interesting point they are making here. I'd not compare
biotechnology and software as they do. My first thought is, that the
means of production for biotechnology are far more expensive (at least
100000EUR for a complete lab), far less wide spread than personal
computers and far less useful to the masses than personal computers.
More thoughts on this?
Expensive technologies are invented, libraries developed,
technological advances in microprocessors are delayed so that
they can carry on executing old code, and so re-use precompiled
software. The only thing which ensures reusability is the source
code, yet in the name of the creation of artificial value
innumerable resources are used up.
This is a good point which is seldom made. As far as I know the
(in)famous A20 gate in Intel processors is kept until today because in
ancient times M$ used a hardware anomaly of the 8086.
We might say that the struggle of the free software movements
represents the first example among the many sectors mobilized by
the call of 'Another world is possible', usually referred to as
the antiglobalization movement, which has succeeded in its task
of offering real alternatives.
This is where they are really Oekonuxy ;-) .
That is to say, we have good news: the struggle which will
define the social and economic basis of the information
technology of the world is being won by free programmers. The
software development model which E. Raymond (founder of the open
source movement) called the 'Bazaar', as opposed to the
'Cathedral', is working. We are bit by bit replacing a culture
of the importing of licences in garish cardboard boxes with a
different one of the contracting of services by small firms. A
culture of underemployed programmers in a single global centre
with a different one of small businessmen distributed across the
planet. Think and act globally in the creation of contents;
think and act locally in the use of the contents and programs.
Ahm - now I'm struck. Until here I saw no business men anywhere and
now they are popping up from nowhere.
All in all a nice text. For my taste it's a bit too much struggle,
battle, and the like rhetoric but that is not the point. Yes, they
seem to parallel Oekonux in many ways. Graham seems to be rather
active already. I guess it would make sense to cooperate closer? How?
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
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