About the six limitations (was: Re: <nettime> [Fwd: Re: [ox-en] Felix Stalder: Six Limitations to the Current Open Source Development Methodology])
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 22:15:13 +0200
Hi Felix and list!
Felix: First of all: Welcome :-) !
There are some interesting thoughts in your post :-) . I'll reply only
to a few of them.
Last month (54 days ago) Felix Stalder wrote:
Ahm - and sorry for the terrible delay :-( . I'm much too busy with
not-so-free work at the moment :-( .
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 19:46:55 [PHONE NUMBER REMOVED]
From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
Last week (9 days ago) geert lovink wrote:
Six Limitations to the Current Open Source Development Methodology
I'm not always sure in which way or to what areas the following points
are limitations.
These limitations refer to the kind of problem that can be addressed through
the current form of social organization developed in the Open Source
Movement. The way Open Source Projects are organized reflects the specifics
of problem -- developing software -- and thus they cannot serve as a model to
address problem with very different characteristics.
This does not mean that other problems, for example, the development of drugs,
cannot be organized in an open way, but this 'open way' will have to look
very different from the way Open Source Software projects are organized
because the problem of creating drugs is very different from the problem of
creating software. In other words, there is an intimate relationship between
the characteristics of the problem and the social organization of its
solution.
Hmm... If this is true then the way science operates in universities
for instance is completely inadequate to at least some areas. I mean
the social system of different areas in science does not differ that
much. (I'm not discussing the adequacy of science to its topic - just
the relative adequacy for different areas.)
Would you share that? If so do you have examples for this inadequacy?
If not where do you see the difference?
I'm not sure about the first example but for IBM workers and students
Free Software is then at least to some degree an alienated thing: They
don't program because of the program but because of the money they may
sell their services for (IBM) or the reputation they get for it
(students).
I think is too simplistic to say that all work is paid or has other
utilitarian motives is alienated.
Yes. In reality alienated and other motives are mixed. However, I
think the tendency is important and that is what I would like to point
at.
As a result this software is not Double Free Software as I called it
on the German list some time ago because the software is written for a
purpose outside the software and its concrete use value. I'm arguing
that this degrades the quality of the software because of the
alienation.
Any evidence for this? Would be interested in seeing it.
Sure: The success of Free Software. Compared with proprietary software
Free Software is not a success story because it has a cheap license
but because of it's superior quality. IMHO this is a direct result of
the unalienated way of production.
To my knowledge since we have capitalist markets Free Software is the
very first product produced in a more or less hobby manner which is
able to compete with the same product created in an industrialized way
in a full fledged capitalist commodity market. I would be interested
in other examples. Other hobby production typically survives at most
in niches.
To me this is a clear indication that this new mode of production
embodied in Free Software is able to deliver better products than the
capitalist mode of production. This is which I think is the crucial
point when looking at the development of the productive forces. And
Selbstentfaltung is at the heart of this.
Unfortunately AFAIK there is no study yet which tries to answer the
question which amount of Free Software is written under alienated
conditions and which amount is Double Free Software.
I guess one of the reasons why this hasn't happened is that it's simply
impossible to define what alienated means within any degree of empirical
relevance in this context. We are speaking of highly-skilled, self-motivated
professionals, and not about people in the assembly line. The contexts are
different and the differences matter.
Yes. However, the wildest things are researched all the time so one
could at least give it a try ;-) .
4) Modularized Production
So I'd say this limitation is build into the way capitalist society
functions. If, however, the quality of the products is higher when
they are built from modules - and I think we have reached this point
in time - then capitalism becomes a fetter to the development of the
means of production.
Again, I'm not arguing of modularization is a good or bad thing, but that
certain kinds of problems, for example, writing a novel, are very hard to
modularize. I think it's not a co-incidence that Stallman distinguishes
between funcation and non-functional works and basically excludes the latter
from GPL type copyleft.
I agree this needs more thought.
However, it may be a question of the scope you are using. I mean every
text I write is embedded in an enormous discussion. The Oekonux texts
in particular to a good part are a result of the discussion in this
project. So though I may be the one who structures some thoughts and
write them down I do neither feel the need nor the right to claim
exclusive authorship for such a text in any broader sense. Seeing it
this way a novel is just a module which is used by others just as a
piece of source code.
Again, I don't really care for the moment if we should have product liability
or not, but as current way of organizing open collaboration is totally
unsuited to deal any problem that has liability issues built in. And in many
cases, product liability is a good thing, it forces the producer to be much
more careful. But it also requires the producer to be a legal entity.
Nothing prevents a firm to take over liability for some piece of Free
Software for a customer. You need not be the author of something to
take responsibility. It suffices to check the product - which is
possible in Free Software in all thinkable ways.
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
_______________________
http://www.oekonux.org/