[consulting] Unionizing Drupal

[Victor Kane]

On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 2:45 PM, Eric Goldhagen <eric at openflows.com> wrote:

> At 10:34 AM -0700 8/8/10, Sam Cohen wrote:
> >
> >  In my opionion the open source model is the opposite of socialism.
> >Socialism is about collective ownership.  Open Source is about no
> >one owning it.  It seems to me Open Source is far more libertarian
> >than it is socialist.
>
>  From where I stand, it is quite the opposite.
>
> Libertarian philosophy is all about rights being rooted in ownership.
> Free Software is quite different. Free Software values labor and
> contributions over ownership. The GPL grants rights to those that use
> the tools -- that is alien to libertarian theory.
>
> Free Software builds tools that are, by license, required to stay
> under common ownership. It's much more socialist or even anarchist
> than libertarian.
>
> Even though I am not a Marxist, I have to say that in many ways, a
> Free Software community like drupal is a clear expression of the
> Marxist ideal: From each according to their abilities, to each
> according to their needs.
>
>
I agree with much of this; but there's more: what I love about the Open
Source model, more specifically the Cathedral approach as apposed to the
Bazaar approach, is that everything that is produced is practically
guaranteed to fulfill someone's actual needs. Users find bugs, make feature
requests, provide solutions... all based on what people actually need, not
upon what a bureaucracy (whether it's the bosses in a capitalist system or
the bureaucrats in a pseudo-socialist "socialism in one country" state, both
expropriate the workers political rights to decide on production,
distribution, product, etc.,).

As an ardent socialist, I feel that no-one owning the work product or
everyone owning it (workers should own the means of production, not just the
product!) is a moot point: the main question is that no-one expropriates it
for objectives that have nothing to do with its real use.

I am motivated to draw this up more formally, it's hard to express oneself
consistently in the question and answer mode only.

Again, fascinating discussion.

Victor Kane
http://awebfactory.com.ar


> --Eric
> --
> ---------------------------------------
> Openflows, Inc.
> a technology workers cooperative
> http://openflows.com
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