[consulting] Unionizing Drupal

[Victor Kane]

It is a pleasure to debate with you Sami, and to discover and agreements and
also huge differences. Just a pity that you would play the "totalitarian"
card against anyone attacking your beloved capitalism. It is amazing how
when one asserts the need for workers control (instead of parasites'
control, that is control by those who work for a living over what they are
producing and what happens where they live) there is a reflex, which needs
to be broken to arrive at a fair discussion, that this is some kind
of tyranny, de Toqueville's "tyranny of the majority" perhaps.

My bottom line on this list is: Drupal must not be gutted by the
corporations, as so many open source projects have been in a pattern clear
enough to call a cycle, and Drupal workers (those making the code and
consultants testing and using it) must not be co-opted and enslaved.
Obviously one's cosmovision is going to impinge on how we see solutions. I
guess everyone has pretty much stated their opinions.

Victor Kane
http://awebfactory.com.ar

On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 9:05 AM, Sami Khan <sami at etopian.net> wrote:

> > I don't think wars, famine, disease, the ruination of the environment,
> loss
> > of freedom, loss of a neutral internet and the clarity that capitalism
> is
> > utterly incapable of solving any of the problems facing mankind right
> now
> > is a context in which you can flippantly throw around quotes like this.
>
> Victor I think you are a bit too dogmatic about the subject... we need
> more nuanced approach rather than pointing the finger and saying down with
> X ideology. Every time we have tried that in the past, we have ended up
> with the new boss, worse than the old boss. i.e. the Soviets and the Nazis.
>
> Wars: yes, wars for oil; but common anywhere where there is a power
> disparity and a willingness to use force.
> Famine: there is an Indian economist who has shown that democracies don't
> suffer famine related food shortages. Capitalism is more efficient at
> routing resources, even if it from the poor to the rich.
> Ruination of the environment: Industrialism and consumerism in general;
> failure to develop sustainable systems in equilibrium, not just capitalism.
> Loss of freedom: Complex political problem.
> Neutral internet: I blame capitalism.
>
> > It is Capitalism which is attempting to thrive in its death throes with
> other
> > peoples lives, children, money, everything, and needs to be replaced.
>
> A bit of ideological totalitarianism there too... we have ways of
> regulating capitalism as well. Complex political realities can't be
> simplified into ideological terms.
>
>
> > Yes, we need to be thinking about socialism, the simple idea that
> workers
> > (not a Stalinist bureaucracy) internationally control democratically the
> > plan of production on the basis of people's real needs, and the
> > distribution
> > of what is produced, with the aim of creating an excess capable of
> filling
> > everyone's needs.
>
> This is not possible. Consumer's needs can't be predicted or planned, the
> market is in flux... The system is too complex. Needs and wants change
> continuously and so the developers must be flexible to meet those needs.
> Introducing any systems which reduce flexibility and guarantee anything,
> put a burden on the organization trying to provide the work that causes it
> to collapse. All sorts of politics goes on in any human social structure.
>
> I will end there, there is room for discourse... but no room for
> totalitarian discourse and populism.
>
>
> > So as developers of open source software we need to think of how we can
> > emancipate our project and make sure it continues to fulfill the needs
> of
> > individuals, communities, organizations, small businesses, and we need
> to
> > think how to defend our income from the current attack on those working
> for
> > a living, as the crisis hits deep into the US for the first time since
> the
> > 1930s.
> >
> >
> >> Unions serve their purpose, which is primarily to protect workers of
> >> rote. Unions have never been a force in fostering outwardly-facing
> >> innovation. Most Drupal developers, and most freelancers in general,
> are
> >> innovators, not rote programmers.
> >>
> >
> > Workers create everything you see around you, and solve an innumerable
> > number of creative problems in the process of production in every
> factory,
> > in every shop, in every place goods are created and services are
> offered.
> > It
> > is the bosses who spread the racist (class hatred) lie that workers are
> > rote, in order to justify lowering salaries and wages and in order to
> > justify their own parasitical existence. And don't kid yourself, we as
> > developers, even if we slave away in our homes feeling that sense of
> > freedom
> > from the office, are workers too. We don't accumulate capital and we
> don't
> > extract surplus value from the work of others. We have nothing but our
> > hours
> > of socially useful work to bank on. And we are at the mercy of huge
> forces
> > at work.
> >
> >
> >>
> >> Odesk seeks to treat programming as a commodity, an hourly wage for an
> >> activity no longer differentiated by talent or innovation, so ensured
> by
> >> keeping framed diaries of activity that must fit into the
> single-tasking
> >> mold rather than a value-priced product. The Odesk model applied
> >> elsewhere would have us pay for a meal based solely on the time spent
> >> preparing it.
> >>
> >
> > We should be paying for a meal based on the effort put into it and
> nothing
> > else. And our work is a commodity otherwise it would not have a price.
> But
> > the commodotizing that oDesk does is not that, it is programmed to lower
> > wages and place all the advantages at the doorstep of the employer, and
> > none
> > at the door of the worker.
> >
> >
> >>
> >> I am an artist, not a manufacturing line worker or a plumber.
> >
> >
> > My plumber Joe is Picasso. Viva Joe the plumber (in the best sense of
> the
> > word). Have you ever looked over a broken bathroom, taken the
> requirements
> > of the end users, decided upon the architecture (which artifacts, which
> > kind
> > of piping, etc) and then implemented that, making changes as you go
> along
> > based on input? Christ yes we are plumbers. We are exactly plumbers. In
> a
> > context in which the biggest corporate plumbers (BP) are showing their
> > inherent ineptitude of their model.
> >
> > "You're still fucking peasants as far as I can see" -- John Lennon
> >
> >
> >> Like
> >> painters, sculptors, writers and architects, my rate is based on the
> >> final product, the innovation, quality and skill I bring to its
> >> creation, not how many lines of code I generate per hour, and that's
> >> what clients here prefer.
> >>
> >
> > Same as every worker, mate. Please don't feel insulted. I am proud of
> the
> > name I chose for my Drupal blog.
> >
> > Victor Kane
> > awebfactory.com.ar
> >
> >
> >
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