business/3rd world (was Re: [ox-en] The Hipatia Manifesto)
- From: Graham Seaman <graham seul.org>
- Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2003 17:37:57 -0400 (EDT)
On Sat, 23 Aug 2003, Stefan Merten wrote:
[the hipatia manifesto says: ...]
'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.
OK, my personal interpretation of where they popped up from, and why they
may be justifiable:
The clearest and best-known text covering the arguments in favour of
legislation in favour of the use of free software in the state (which many
hipatians are involved in) is the letter from the Peruvian senator to
Microsoft:
http://www.gnu.org.pe/resmseng.html
This text was the result of previous discussion on mailing lists in other
parts of Latin America (including some of the hipatia founders) and its
arguments are very widely accepted; in particular, the economic argument
that:
"In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries
like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value;
at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary
software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility
of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of
talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it.
With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a
framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to
offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the
market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up
alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher
quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service
organizations, and consumers."
I think this is a perfectly plausible argument; it hasn't really been
tested empirically yet (except perhaps on a small scale in Extremadura,
Spain), but certainly Microsoft have found it a hard one to argue against
(in Latin America they tend to claim it is false; in Singapore, they
claimed that pro-free-software laws would create too many jobs, requiring
imported labour) which suggests it isn't obviously false.
But it's an argument that doesn't, on the face of it, sit well with
oekonux ideas: 'free software as a creator of small businesses and
enabler of a (re)flourishing capitalism' isn't exactly what you'd expect
to hear from oekonux.
IMO the difference comes from the world itself: a completely oekonux
society isn't going to be immediately equally possible everywhere. A
flourishing small business sector in Peru or central Africa based on
free software and so hooked in to and able to take advantage of
developments in the richer world is a big step forward. Somewhere
like Brazil is inbetween.
Is this too reminiscent of old Maoist 1st/2nd/3rd world arguments?
Graham
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