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Re: [ox-en] Translation complete: GNU/Linux - Milestone on the Way to the GPL Society



GNU/Linux having exchange value

I have a question, are companies like Red hat etc..
selling the exchange value of free software, or
rather, are they selling the bundled services that
they build around it. It seems to me that when free
software, with its obligation to be accessible to all,
and available through many places on the net, that it
is very difficult to maintain its exchange value in
supply and demand terms. So what these companies are
selling is their own added value in temrs of services
,i.e. peace of mind for business owners

As for Single and Double free software, I think it
makes more sense to talk about free software as the
result of a process, which (result) has to adhere to
different conditions, but it is not a mode of
production. The mode of production is peer production.
It seems clear that when software producers get paid,
and perhaps have to start to listen to corporate
management, they start losing their liberty as
producers, they become dependent of the income, and it
no longer is peer production, though the end result
may still be free software.

Michel

--- Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de> wrote:

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Hi Tom and all!

9 months (293 days) ago Tom Chance wrote:

Though it's a long time ago since your post I think
replies make still
sense.

On Sunday 12 Dec 2004 20:03, Stefan Merten wrote:
As most Oekonux texts this one also can be
commented on as an
OpenTheory project under



http://www.opentheory.org/gplsociety/text.phtml?lang=en

A general remark: Please note that this paper is
rather old and based
on the knowledge of this time. In some areas it is a
bit outdated
therefore.

I couldn't see where to make general comments on
that page, so here are some 
thoughts I had whilst reading it.

1) GNU/Linux has exchange value, and that is
significant. You dismiss the fact 
that companies have based profit models on Free
Software as being temporary, 
something that will disintegrate when all software
is released under the GPL 
(what about other licenses?). Of course for
hackers, the exchange value is 
irrelevant - or rather, invisible - to the account
of their mode of 
production. They are working outside of the
capitalist paradigm, unalienated.

But is it not significant that a product and a
mode of production that is 
unalienated, that isn't created fetishistic
commodities, can also have an 
exchange value? GNU/Linux is embedded in a
capitalist paradigm and is, at the 
same time, challenging it and making it
irrelevant.

Well, if you take the formulation from the blotter
"Free software is
as worthless as the air to breathe" then things
probably get clearer.
Literally everyone bases its operation on "air to
breathe". Workers
simply breathe it and where you use compressed air
in industry the air
to be compressed is taken from the air to breathe.
In no instance the
simple, plain air to breathe has an exchange value.
But in each
instance exchange value is generated based on it's
existence.

I think there is a fundamental difference here and
this should not be
confused.

It strikes me that 
because of this, GNU/Linux poses part of an answer
to Andre Gorz's challenge 
to find spaces within capitalist society in which
life unfolds freely, and 
that can become increasingly broad with time.

Meanwhile André Gorz find this also striking ;-) .

2) Why have you not accounted for paid work on
GNU/Linux?

At the time the paper was written this was not such
a big issue than
it is now. While I'm at it I'd like to emphasize
that much of the
basic work necessary for the success of Free
Software has been done in
the Double Free mode. Only when Free Software became
to be successful
Simple Free modes began to grow in number.

Many hackers are 
paid full or part time wages for their work on
Free Software projects, and 
wouldn't be able to dedicate anywhere near the
amount of time that they do 
otherwise. This fact raises two questions: a) are
they still
unalienated?

Meanwhile we introduced the terms Single Free
Software and Double Free
Software. Double Free Software is created in an
unalienated way while
Single Free Software is the result of wage labor and
the freedom only
applies to the user.

As far as Oekonux theory is concerned one of the
cornerstones is that
Free Software is successful because it focuses on
the use value of the
product and not on the exchange value. Clearly at
least asymptotically
this is not possible if you have the exchange value
on your mind. This
focus on use value is the inalienable feature of
(Double) Free
Software that makes up for its success. If this
would not be the case
then there is no real explanation for Free Software
being successful
at all. However, reality shows that Free Software is
successful even
*against* a fully developed market.

And 
b) will this cease to be relevant as the
proprietary software industry 
withers away, leaving the only gpl society? You
also have to account for the 
subtleties of the hackers' positions, including
those who would otherwise 
work for free but are able to do more work when
paid; those who would do 
exactly the same work anyway but happen to be
paid; and those who have no 
committment to Free Software and just happen to be
paid for working on Free 
Software.

I think questions like this are hard to answer
because they are
talking of the intermediate time between two eras.
Such intermediate
times are, however, extremely hard to predict. If
you use pictures
from chaos theory here these are the times when
there is the real
chaos between two attractors.

3) Section 3.3 presumes a certain ideological
committment on behalf of the 
hackers. In particular, you discount paid work,
the desire for market share 
as evidences by dedicated promotional teams in
many projects (e.g. KDE, Gnome 
and OpenOffice.org), and you make an astonishing
and vague remark about 
users / consumers that seems to have no evidence.
As an idealised explication 
it works, but as an analysis of the mode of
production that GNU/Linux 
represents it's wildly inaccurate and simplistic.
I think it would be worth 
treating this section more with the latter of the
two approaches, conceding 
the differences between the ideal and the reality,
opening this area up to 
further research.

Can you expand on that?

Otherwise, I enjoyed the paper. I found it both
informative and illuminating, 
and useful for an undergraduate dissertation I am
writing on the Hacker Ethic 
and alienation (n.b. in Germany you call what I am
writing an undergraduate 
thesis.)

:-)


						Mit Freien Grüßen

						Stefan
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