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[US] Open Source Culture - One Writer's Bleak View
Submitted by Willy Smith on 30 August, 2003 - 13:52.
If you'd like to read something vaguely depressing this morning, have a look at Bruce Sterling's article. It's full of dark portents and ominous allusions. Although I found the article yesterday, I decided to let it sit for a while before I wrote anything about it. Gloom needs some time to be digested properly.
In my mind, after my admittedly short stint as editor of WorldWatch.LinuxGazette, Bruce has missed the main point of what Open Source and the Internet are all about: Community. This is what the Internet enables and Open Source fosters. Each of us as individuals needs to find out that people in other countries are not so different from ourselves, and that the solution to our problems is not to bomb them out of existence. Direct, one-on-one communication among peers on the 'Net, unfiltered by government propaganda and corporate media, can go a long way in this process. And although Open Source Software may seem like an oblique approach to this, we don't necessarily need to analyze it, but rather just accept that it happened there first and is spreading, most notably to the arts and especially music.
Now please don't start thinking that I'm some starry-eyed idealist who thinks that everything is going to be rosy and the Internet is going to save the world. I'm not, and I think that there will be a great deal of pain along the way. Indeed, this is one area where I absolutely agree with Bruce: the logical outcome right now appears to be chaos. M. Scott Peck identifies the four stages of community as pseudocommunity, chaos, emptiness, and true community. We're still in the very early stages of the revolution, and perhaps our best course is to accept that it is happening, disentangle our own lives from the things which keep us from acceptance and participation, and keep on going. We're not going to stop it from happening, so we'd best be as honest as we can with ourselves, and find positive ways to participate.
Bruce also seems to be writing a prescient requiem for capitalism and the profit motive. I think that's a little premature; the human needs for food, shelter, and other basic necessities are not going to be magically supplied anytime soon by transforming bits into matter over the Internet. Yet he is sensitive to the fact that there is something revolutionary going on. At least he isn't denying it.
Revolutions for the most part have two components: whenever something new comes about, there is usually an enthusiastic cleaning out of the old. Certainly some cleaning needs to be done, as "democratically elected rulers" become more and more obviously detached from what their electorate really wants, and some corporate interests continue to override health, reason, and sanity. But, fear of the future has proven to be a poor survival mechanism over the course of human history
Willy Smith, reporting from Costa Rica
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Ok, try four at responding to Bruce Sterling's feature of doom and
gloom. Each time I write something I then go back and re-read the
original article and feel like I am writing about something else.
Finally, I realized I am. I am writing about dealing with reality rather
than Mr. Sterling's vision.
Ten years ago people told me I was crazy to start Linux Journal.
Why would starting an advertiser-supported magazine about something that
is free make sense?
Well, I started LJ because Linux was happening and I wanted to help.
I saw a community that needed a communications vehicle. I wasn't sure it
made sense but I wanted to contribute to something that was just
evolving without any central government.
Over the past ten years we have seen Linux evolve and we have seen LJ
change to fit that evolution. The one thing that has always been there
since the beginning is vendor support. That is, vendors that want to
be part of the LInux community. That started out with the little guy in
his garage advertising in LJ but today it has evolved such that the big
players that understand there is a community are here as well.
Today, you could call Linux a mixed economy. That is, there are
lots of free software choices as well as lots of non-free software
choices. And there is always hardware you need to run the software on
and services to help you use the software.
While Mr. Sterling seems to think that free software will mean the collapse
of society it seems to me that he is saying the same thing as freedom
(in general) will be the collapse of society. I live in an area where
word-of-mouth is the most effective way to find a good vendor. As you
move away from such a basic community concept you make too many
decisions based on a one-way communication from the vendor to the
consumer.
As our own Doc Searls says, "marketing is a conversation". Think of this
as the vendor being community oriented. That is, they don't want to push
their product down your throat, they want to offer you what you want.
It is extremely unlikely that all software will become free (as in beer)
because of the free (as in speech) software revolution. What is more
likely is that big vendors will have to listen to the community if they
want to compete in the marketplace.
Re: [US] Open Source Culture - One Writer's Bleak View
This view is truly amusing. First, open source software is not stolen goods. It is based on copyright. Those who say it is stolen are the ones facing business extinction.
In the current debate on DRM and protecting IP, it is worthwhile to peruse a document that was written to protect people. Regulations. Quite a few of the edicts are in fact written to prevent those who go to any measure to protect their 'intellectual property' from harming others. What am I talking about? The national building and fire codes.
To this day fire departments do spot checks on theatres. Checking for fire extinguishers? No. Checking that the fire escapes haven't been locked by the theatre owners in an attempt to protect their 'intellectual property'. And we would trust these people with our rights and well being?
The most chaotic system is a free market. If free software is creating chaos in that sense, I think it could be called an unqualified success. Except if you happen to be one of the losers.
Derek