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Re: [ox-en] Re: Business opportuities based on Free Software



josx <josx interorganic.com.ar> wrote:
How would be a genuine anti-capitalis free encyclopedia?

One that is NOT led by the 3 bosses of a capitalist private company,
Bomis Inc., which have the majority (3 of 5) in Wikipedia's board of
trustees and their own very special (advertising) agenda.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomis

And one whose boss doesn't see himself as a new sort of King Louis XIV,
with the management approach "that [the company] just means me,
since I'm the final decisionmaking authority."  ("L'état c'est moi!")
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-October/000652.html

======

Michael Bouwens wrote:
Please correct me if I'm wrong: When capital emerged, I do not think it
was in any way 'anti-feudal'. It was a section of the feudal class,
together with some new segments from the cities, that invented the new
mode of production. It is only when the political system was too much
of a blockage, that conflicts and 'bourgeois revolutions' occured. It
was only the worker's movement which had an explicitely political goal,
and perhaps for this reason, it failed, as it could not offer a
superior mode of production.

The bourgeois "revolution" was one set of predators replacing another set
of predators.  That didn't stop predation (feudalism), it just made the
modes of predation look better (more elegant and less obvious).

Producer revolutions (if any) failed so far, due to a lack of solidarity
among producers against predators.


 Toda'ys postcapitalist mode of production similarly does not appear as
an explicitely anti-capitalist project, and as Christophe points out,
it emerges many times out of sections of the business community, but
that does not change it's essential characteristics. The key important
conflict is perhaps not between the post-capitalist mode and the
capitalist mode, but within the postcapitalist mode itself. As for
example, the efforts to develop the IANG License as a clearer community
alternative to the General Public License, and other similar efforts.

As long as the FLOSS movement listens to predators (Lessig, Moglen etc.),
there is no hope for genuine change.


 I think that calling Jimmy Wales an arch-capitalist is an exagerration.
For example, I believe I saw a calculation that if Wikipedia accepted
Google Adsense, it would make over $300m, but they've always refused,
relying instead on donations of the community. An arch-capitalist would
have taken the money and ran. (Firefox makes $72m through google).

That would be too obvious (for the users to see).  It's more clever to
play the poor church mouse begging for donations, while thru the backdoor
(mis)using Wikipedia traffic to increase traffic to sites that host copies
of Wikipedia.  After all, web advertising is the core business of Bomis.


 The ideological stance of the actors doesn't really matter.

This is a naive attitude.  The ideological stance of people affects their
acts and true motives.  As with George Soros, no amount of hypocrisy can
ultimately conceal the true colors of capitalist greed, at least for those
who pay attention.


======

Magius wrote:
Imho, what Franz notes, is a very important thing. Why FLOSS was
successful? Because it used the principles..of AIKIDO ! It used the
enemies' energies to strenghten and propagate the FLOSS mode of
production itself. It happened through the GNU/GPL working mechanism.

Does FLOSS use the Aikido principle on capitalism, or the other way around?
That's the big question.

Let me give you an example: IBM doesnt use and produce FLOSS, because
is a "good" company (ethical value) but because FLOSS is useful
(utilitaristic value) to make profits (through services related to
FLOSS that it offers). But.. But if IBM wants to use a GNU/GPL
software, it is obliged to release its contribution under GNU/GPL !
GNU/GPL is the tool to "socialize" the value of the software produced
by IBM and to avoid its privatization.

IBM is a hardware company.  They use FLOSS to make customers dependent from
IBM's proprietary hardware and services.  How much room does that leave for
IBM-independent "Selbstentfaltung" of the developers involved, and for the
use that IBM-independent third parties can make of that FLOSS?  And how do
you control and enforce that IBM doesn't proprietarize some GPL code behind
closed doors?

Chris



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