Open-Source Socialism?

Political Philosophy
1

When I first announced ObjectivismOnline, I got an email from a college CS major who warned me against using Open Source software because (a.) the leader of the movement is a dirty marxist, and (b.) free software in general is anti-profit, and this anti-capitalism. After doing some (very little) research, I indeed found out that Richard Stallman, the founder of GNU is a pretty sick character, who rants against self-interest and capitalism. (Not to be confused with Richard Salsman, who writes great articles.)Understandably then, I had to give a lot of thought to using free software, which is mostly released under the anti-IP GNU GPL license. There are other free software licenses such as the Creative Commons license, which features a dollar sign with an line through it as a logo, and the simple BSD license. (BSD=“Berkeley Software Distribution”) Not all free software is hostile to profits however. ImageMagik, a popular graphics library, starts out with John Galt’s pledge, and simply asks for postcards in exchange for using it.

So is using and making free software consistent with supporting intellectual property and profits? I think so. The advantages of open source software have already been covered at length, but I think the widespread usage of open source projects like linux, apache, php, and MySQL in commercial enterprises speaks for itself. For companies, open source projects are especially useful for creating standard platforms that they don’t have to develop on their own, and that their customers don’t feel chained to. From a personal standpoint, working on free software offers opportunities to develop new skills, work with a team on important projects, and show off your abilities. None of this is to say that there’s something wrong with closed software development. Both have their own niche, and I think that one should decide what kind of software to use based on their individual merit, rather than on ideological grounds.

What do you think?

2

Open Source is a fundamentally capitalist endeavor. First off, most open source software is written by people who are being paid to write it (or extend it) because their company wants to leverage the features written by others, rather than build the whole thing from the ground up.

This is why IBM is so involved in Open Source and Java… they gain a lot of leverage this way.

Secondly, Open Source is market driven-- products that people like attract support, and extention, and products they don’t like don’t.

At the same time, Open Source is individualistic-- anyone has the power to go out and release what they want and in many cases (With good licenses) profit from their improvements.

If they release something that is no better than whats free, they won’t get much money for it. but if they improve on it, they get to stand on the shoulders of the free product and make money from their improvements… thus it encourages single developer businesses, individualist development-- rather than committee or team development.

Stallman is a Marxist, but he’s also a bit of a laughingstock. He’s the Michael Moore of the open source movement.

The reason he’s bitter is he was promising an operating system called GNU from 1985 onwards, and they still haven’t shipped it. Despite getting a “Genius Grant” and haveing the support of MIT and foundations… At the same time, Linus-- some random kid from the Stallman perspective-- came out with his own product, beat GNU to market, and did it in a much more open and tolerant way-- insuring its market acceptance and killing off GNU as a potential operating system before it was released.

So, Stallman is bitter. ITs a classic example of a government funded project failing, and an upstart with less resources kicking ass…

I’m a professional software developer, and my opinions are consistant with the general feelings of most developers. I work with open source regularly, and am always careful of the license. I’ve passed on GPL stuff, used BSD stuff (and given credit when I did), and I’m looking into joining one of the large projects and becomming a contributor now that they’ve reached the point where my expertise becomes useful.

Don

3

I think Open Source is a good way to get a job. If you start an Open Source project where any developer can contribute modifications or new features you as the leader will have to decide which are good, bad or need improvment and then add them to the project. This will show that you can judge other peoples work and decide what to use in your project. Of course you will also be the main developer for the project and will create TODO lists and plan out where the project is going. If you publish the TODO lists other developers can do the things on the list.

A good Open Source project will show the leader’s leadership skills and the developer’s development skills. It is a way to gain experience that will profit the individuals in the future. I don’t see how it can be a way for them to gain profit unless they use the software to start a business or a business pays them to make it (in which case it would be a loss for that business unless the business uses it for profit).

Using Open Source projects for your own profit is a good thing. It is good for the developers of that project because it shows that the project was successful (then they can get good jobs and make other companies money) and it’s good for you because you are making profit.

I can’t think of anything evil about Open Source. As long as it benifits you as the developer of Open Source or you as the user of Open Source it can only be a good thing.

Note DonGalt: I don’t know what JAVA has to do with Open Source. It’s a well documented proprietary language owned by sun. Free to use (under license) but not Open Source. Could you explain?

4

I wasn’t saying Java was Open Sourced, but put it in there because its multi-platform.

Java is, though, open sourced, in the sense that you can get the source without paying for it.

Its development is controlled by a process controlled by Sun, and it may not meet the Open Source organizations certification of “open source” but it is open source in the sense that its source is availible. (EG: its “open source” rather than “Open Source”)

5

This may be one of the latest thread continuations ever. I found the thread while searching for something else.

I don’t see a problem with using free GPL software. By receiving it, you don’t take value away from the creator. He has offered it for free, and there isn’t an incremental cost to him when you duplicate or make use of it.

As a programmer, I periodically contribute to free software projects and the motivation is hardly selfless. I frequently find programs that do 95% of what I want. If I can add that last 5% in a few hours, this is more cost-effective for me than buying commercial software. When done, I give away the changes. This way, they will be added to future releases and I won’t have to recreate my changes when I next install or update the software. Giving away the changes saves me work in the future; that others benefit is a side-effect.

To clear up one popular misconception:

The GPL free software license doesn’t prohibit third parties from charging for products integrating free software. There are numerous commercial devices and software products using GPL licensed free software – the TiVo and Mac OS X are two such examples. The TiVo runs Linux, and Philips is only required to make the source code to the kernel available for download by TiVo buyers. Mac OS X comes with a GPL shell and a GPL compiler, and likewise – Apple’s only obligation is that it must offer the source code for those programs to all Mac OS X buyers.

The only business activity the GPL prohibits is reselling (or otherwise distributing) the program with changes, but without making the changes available in source form. The source changes must be available to all users eligible to receive the software under the original license.

6

I use one piece of open source software, R (www.r-project.org), a statistics program. I have been on the websites and help lists for over a year and have yet to see any anti-capitalistic comments from any of its developers, at least no more so than one would see in any public discussion. R is based on the same language used by a competing commercial product, S-Plus. R has some features that are better than S-Plus, but has a much more difficult interface, because R is built by and mostly designed for academics, while S-Plus needs to make its features more user friendly to non-statistician. Since I’m not a statistician, I’d use S-Plus if my company would pay for it, but I’m very grateful to the R developers that their interest in making something for themselves provided the nice side-effect of a useful tool for me. Incidentally, the developers have earned something from me for their efforts- I’ve bought a couple of books to help me improve my ability to use the software.

I’d say the people who are developing R have as their goal making the best, most theoretically sound, statistics software available, because they are statisticians and that’s what they want to use for their efforts, and they see the GPL as the best way to draw lots of contributions for improvements to the software.