Random thought of the day:
Communism sounds great on paper (Well, except maybe the whole "bloody revolution" thing...) Apparently though, it turned out not to work.
Open source, on the other hand, is much like communism, at least in general philosophy, but it actually does seem to work. And quite well, too.
I've heard that the currently prevalent archaeological belief is that the Egyptian pyramids were built by volunteers as a community project, not by slave labor as previously thought (and as apparently still thought by Hollywood). Kind of makes sense, actually, since intrinsic motivators are well known to be far more effective than extrinsic ones, and that would have been important since it was an enormous physical, logistical and...engineerical(?) undertaking. 'Course that does still leave open the possibility of mass brainwashing into submission by the Goa'uld or the Ori...
And those pyramids (minus the Stargate tangent) actually sound similar to another story I've heard about a community-built Soviet project (a bridge, IIRC?) that was apparently the exception to the rule and actually did manage to work out. (Yea, I'm a real global expert, aren't I?)
Maybe the problem (or "a" problem?) with communism was that it was too large-scale. Or maybe people just weren't ready for it. Perhaps the key is to use it in certain individual projects rather than as a fundamental base - much like OOP or functional programming. Or maybe I just don't actually know a fucking thing about what the term "communism" really means...Which is entirely possible...
3 comments for "Communism and Open Source"
Well, apart from the absense of corporations screwing people over, I don't see what communism and open source have in common.
Let's compare shall we:
Communism (in threory): "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." So you are forced to work, although luckily not more than your ability, and you don't necessarily get what you want.
Communism (in practice): "From each according to what the State decides he has to do, to each according to what the State decides he needs". And the state is rather slow-witted and inefficient because it claims the power to do our thinking and decision-making for us, but doesn't actually have the manpower to our thinking and decision-making for us.
Open source: "From each according to his desire, to each according to his desire." Open-source gives everything to everyone, and does not require anything of anyone. It's digital utopia, the natural result of a lack of scarcity.
Capitalism: "From each according to how much money he doesn't have, to each according to how much money he does have." Broke? get to work!! You have 100 million dollars? Here, have another million, and the senator is on the line, he wants to know what laws he can pass for you today...
Yea, I had a strong suspicion I didn't know what the hell I was talking about ;)
Some of the things I say I feel strongly about, and then this one I was just kinda rambling on...
I like your descriptions of the theories, especially capitalism :) Not to say that I'm entirely anti-capitalism or "a filthy commie" or anything, but like anything else, it does have its drawbacks - in particular the phenomenon you describe.
capitalist approch of softwares is outright wrong..
but Opensource is What Marx called "reactionary socialism" Nothing more..open source fan body exist because...there are proparity softwares, they need a villen to become a hero...