On the other hand, I’d wager that any given person who uses Linux daily at work is far more likely to own a stake in their company than the average worker.
My Linux laptop is also literally my means of production, which I own. Karl Marx never predicted this.
He also didn’t predict a class of people born with no labor to sell because so much of it has been automated away. How are they supposed to use their labor as a bargaining chip if they can’t find labor to do to begin with?
Marx wasn’t a technological determinist though. He believed that a workers revolution would bring the end of capitalism. He even thought it would happen druing his lifetime.
Marx did talk about individuals owning the means of production. For example farmers or craftsmen owning their tools before capitalism. Marx talked about the means of production being shared under communism and not owned by one specific person or capitalist. If anything Marx predicted FOSS lol.
Except this is really reductionist and ignores there is very little “open hardware” out there, and few people producing it. So while you might have access to the “means of production” through software, you absolutely do not in hardware.
Great that software tools are in the hands of the worker, but the means to fabricate the machines that code runs are definitively not owned by workers. (To say nothing of issues with getting drivers for a DIY motherboard working with Linux long-term.)
Also, not everyone is born to code, so it’s a bit elitist.
You can use FOSS without knowing how to code though. I wasn’t completely serious I know Marx didn’t predict FOSS but I do think it’s an example of how the means of production being shared could look like. It would be great if that also included open hardware as well.
Edit: I realize it means the workers doesn’t actually own the means of production but it’s a step in that direction and I don’t think it contradicts what Marx said is my point.
Man, I’m so glad that the Border Patrol is using my tech to violently abuse refugees! It’s extra awesome that they sent back some modifications! I love it when I get help from *checks notes… fucking Nazis.
This is a joke, right? Cool beans that the people who decided to use the code for nefarious purposes helped make it cleaner. /s
Seriously, that’s really pathetic for an “upside.”
While we might not agree with immigration policy and power abuse, it’s hard to put moral limitations on who gets to use our software. While the example you gave is far from trivial.
The second we say someone can’t use our software for whatever reason, that’s the second the software is no longer truly free. It’s same with Open data.
If you set in writing that your software can be used by anyone, then you also take away the power of those in high places to interpret the licence in a discriminatory way.
Negativland helped create a Creative Commons license whose purpose was literally that. You didn’t have to give attribution to the original artist, but you were disallowed from using the work for profit/in advertisements/et cetera. The issue is backwards copyright law that says the only way copyright should be distributed is through ownership and capital. We need a copyright law that respects the original creators intent, if they don’t want it used commercially/in government. Not all of us are Tom Waits (who famously refused to license his work for commercial purposes) and happen to have the money to fight misuse of our creations in court.
Yes, I agree. And Creative Commons are a great example of peoples’ control over their work. My argument is that it wont be ‘the original artist’ who gets to interpret the licensing terms.
If I may take your example of border patrol abusing immigrants with your software. And I’m sorry for the trivial example beforehand.
Let’s say you put in licensing terms: “This software may not be used to endanger peoples lives and/or livelyhoods”. And software is used by both Border Patrol and the immigrants to protect/cross the border.
Both parties come before a judge, accusing the other party of misusing your software. Border patrol says the immigrants are endangering american people with crime etc. ,and the immigrants accuse the border patrol of violent beatings.
In whose favor would a judge decide?
P.S.: thanks for the link. I’m a huge Tom Waits fan, and had no idea about the voice-theft.
Both parties come before a judge, accusing the other party of misusing your software. Border patrol says the immigrants are endangering american people with crime etc. ,and the immigrants accuse the border patrol of violent beatings.
I agree with this except the refugees categorically aren’t using software if they’re at our borders with empty hands. The only argument that would matter in the court was whether or not the CBP was breaking the software license. The refugees aren’t in a position to use the technology, and as such, arguments about whether or not they’re violent are immaterial to the legal question of whether the Border Patrol broke the license and illegally used the software.
While I agree that in the end, it’s a decision by the courts, you’re still detailing the answers to how it would be handled based on how copyright currently functions and I’d wager with a re-organized and re-written copyright law, you’d have a lot fewer instances of being able to argue that.
I mean, we have court cases that never make it anywhere all the time based simply on the idea “standing.” Hell, our legal system doesn’t even respect the idea of it even though they reject it half the time. Conservatives wholesale made up someone refusing to make web pages for a “gay couple” who turned out to be a straight guy who never wrote such an email and the Supreme Court swallowed it and said “fuck standing, we’re giving him standing because we’re corrupt fucking assholes.”
So what I’m talking about includes legal system reform as well, which would preclude a lot of ability to waste developers time by illicitly using their work and then taking them to court over it.
Even in Stallman’s visions open source was not hostile to making money at all, as long as the tenets are followed. Also, you might wanna read economics.
Unity lost any good will they built by changing their pricing to per install and making go into effect retroactively. Indie developers especially are up in arms.
Unity changed the license, so developers have to pay a fee for every install of games made with Unity. Notice that it’s “install”. Not “sale”. Not “download”.
They claim they won’t count installs from demos, cracks, charity bundles, re-installs, etc, but absolutely no one trusts them at this point. Several devs have said they’re switching engine, despite the large cost of that.
In the sense that it applies to games already released, but not to previous installs. Allegedly. One of the main problems with all of this is that detecting only “valid” installs is a very hard problem, if not impossible. Unity’s attitude seems to be that devs just have to trust their numbers.
Additionally, some devs are reporting that they’ve been offered a pass on all this bs, if they switch to Unity’s own ad platform.
What magical step do you think is going to get us to abolish money and have a classless moneyless society? You need a vanguard communist party to use the state apparatus to destroy the bourgeoisie in a transitory socialist phase before achieving communism (said classless moneyless society).
Sorry for the late response but what always puzzles me how do you enforce freedom I mean these are more or less contradicting things. The only way I can imagen people getting liberated is by first liberating themselves and then cooperate with like minded individuals to create a grass roots organization that’s destroys and replace the old system. And not just replacing it’s leadership. I mean we tried it, but it ended up being spoiled like the former leaders/system1. ( if more or less worse is debatable) it even crushed like minded individuals in the process. What I want to say people can only be free if they want to be free and if you give them a chance to develop them freely and that the means mark the ends. I myself don’t know the complete plan and picture how a revolution will happen and how it will look at the end, but I have some ideas in my Head which I will work (for example promoting an gift and library economy as well as helping some orgs) to help my comrades and support the revolution. I just ask you to not make the same mistakes that our ancestors did, comrade.
The point is it tankie is an amorphous McCarthyist insult. No one knows exactly what you’re saying because most of the people who use it aren’t on exactly the same page. I’ve been called a tankie for supporting Cuba’s new family code and the intensely democratic process behind it and for saying the taean work system is a good system.
We really don’t know. Unless your definition is someone who supported the Soviet Union sending in tanks to put down the coup in Hungary, then its pretty devoid of meaning
It’s always just leftists who aren’t western brand “leftists”, i.e. completely averse to action and change.
Libs will demonize all forms of action and analysis of oppression and then wonder why things just keep getting worse despite them doing a lot of useless, performative things. In the lack of a correct theory, it always comes down to “it’s those damn Asians!!!”
Marxist-Leninist - followers of the ideology of the Stalinist counter-revolution. These people are still around but are barely relevant anymore since the fall of the USSR.
Terminally online leftoid who thinks they’re a Marxist-Leninist, is really just a soc-dem who hates America and likes soviet aesthetics. Believes a ton of mutually contradictory shit because they don’t take communism seriously and get all their info from memes and other terminally online leftoids.
The pure (libertarian) socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
I say as I am evicted from my sewer apartment because the money I get from my McDonalds paycheck has lost 95 percent of its value in a year (I’m so glad that i live in the land of the free and not some tankie shithole like China)
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