Message 03661 [Homepage] [Navigation]
Thread: oxenT03527 Message: 81/96 L5 [In index]
[First in Thread] [Last in Thread] [Date Next] [Date Prev]
[Next in Thread] [Prev in Thread] [Next Thread] [Prev Thread]

Re: [ox-en] Re: Simply and Doubly Free Software



Thanks for this Stefan, very illuminating. I took the
liberty, since you agreed in the past, to republish
them in our p2p blog at
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=701

Michel


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

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Hi Michel, StefanS, all!

Last week (9 days ago) Stefan Seefeld wrote:
Michael Bauwens wrote:
 - what makes you sure that pure modes of doubly
free
software are of superior quality that hybrid
models
with support from an ecology of corporations,
which
may include paid developers, as for Linux.

That's a very interesting question. I think the
common answer
would be that Free developers write better
software due to
superior motives.

Well, I'd not say they are superior in a moral sense
- to me moral has
nothing to do with all this - and that's one of the
fundamental
strengths. They are superior because they are not
alienated. If you
are working in a non-alienated way the only goal you
have is your own
Selbstentfaltung. And among other things this
Selbstentfaltung is
accomplished by

1. excelling in the application of your abilities

   This point is important to explain why so many
experts are involved
   in Free Software for instance: They like to hack
because it's an
   expression of their skills. This, however, is a
very fundamental
   human incentive.

2. using useful products and creating them where
necessary

   Selbstentfaltung is accomplished best with
products which are
   perfectly tailored to your individual needs.
There is probably
   nothing in the world where you can do this better
than in Free
   Software on all levels.

If you work in an alienated environment your
incentives are
fundamentally different. You go there to earn money.
That is your and
the whole companies top motive. Excelling in the
application of your
abilities for this is useful only insofar as you
find somebody who is
willing to pay for their application. This on the
other hand is
greatly determined by marketing divisions and bosses
who have anything
in mind but (absolute) product quality.

In fact for alienated modes of production the
absolute quality of the
product doesn't matter. Relative product quality
suffices: If it
better than the competing products it's fine. In the
contrary: Even if
you have improvements of your product at hand you'd
be stupid to
employ them before the market dictates it.

The book of Eric von Hippel gives another
explanation which emphasizes
the second point above. He calls this user
innovation. One of his
points is that users have a lot of tacit knowledge
about their needs.
This knowledge is sometimes even inseparable from
them. I'll get back
to this in my recension of the book.

However, I'd like to see some real discussion
about this point
that doesn't take for granted / as an assumption
something it
actually wants to prove. :-)

Was Linux better before they got involved?

Certainly not. But it's also hard to turn back and
wonder how it would have evolved without the
participation
of commercial entities.

That opens the question to define what better means
here. Given the
fast evolution of computers the Linux ten years ago
can not be
compared with the Linux of today. Insofar it is a
difficult question
in general and needs further qualification. This
also is a hint to the
nature of use value: It is not possible to measure
use value of
different things on a common scale. That is why use
value can not be
transformed into terms of money.

I'd agree with Stefan insofar as commercial entities
following their
own commercial interests ported Linux to their
hardware increasing the
number of platforms Linux can be run on. This is
certainly an
improvement.

If you refer especially to Linux - i.e. the
operating system kernel -
my impression is that today the situation is rather
similar to that of
GCC: There are a couple of commercial entities
involved and a big
number of Doubly Free Developers. For Linux the
governance structure
is certainly in the Doubly Free Realm - AFAICS
regardless by whom
Linus Torvalds is paid actually.

If I want to characterize the commercial system
around Linux then I'd
say there is a Free core and the commercial entities
such as the
distributors "fork" from this Free core and create
their own kernels
including modifications. In a way that is the "value
adding" activity
done by them.

When I look at the governance model of Linux where
product quality is
concerned I'd say there is a clear improvement
compared to capitalist
mode of production. The direction Linux takes is
extremely transparent
to those who are interested enough and AFAICS Linus
still makes
decisions on a pure technical basis. That is: The
quality of the
product is still at the very focus.

If you look at Windows on the other hand you can see
how long
improvement of technical quality can take for a
purely commercial
product - it it happens at all. To me this is a
clear and expectable
result of the two modes of production employed here.

Anyway: Instead of comparing Linux with Linux it
certainly makes more
sense to compare Linux with its proprietary
"competitors". From a
technical perspective Linux and the underlying
concepts of Unix are
clearly superior to those of Windows - may be
Windows NT and its again
and again postponed offspring being a partial
exception. As far as the
commercial Unices are concerned they all vanish away
step by step and
are replaced by Linux. So those people replacing
proprietary Unices
with Linux must see an improvement in quality or
they'd stay with
their proprietary Unices.

Last week (8 days ago) Michael Bauwens wrote:
That pure doubly free
software is by definition better, is something
that
needs to be empirically proven.

Well, I'd say that Free Software gained/gains market
share out of
nothing is already a proof. Don't you think?

What would you accept as a proof?

My intuition is that it is better at some things,
and
private production better at other things, so that
in
some cases, combinations might be fruitful.

Well, "private" is not the right point here - Free
Software 
=== message truncated ===


The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer alternatives.

Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p 

Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview at  http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html; video interview, at http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/09/29/network_collaboration_peer_to_peer.htm

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 
_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de



Thread: oxenT03527 Message: 81/96 L5 [In index]
Message 03661 [Homepage] [Navigation]