http://www.oekonux.org/list-en/ posts (2 batches, meaning a break in the chronology somewheres; keith hart did 4 posts sofar; a special on his work lives ???? ah yes, via the bottom of prfr3.htm <hope that's not to cryptic>) --    -- From: ernie yacub Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 10:36:57 -0800 One of the core ideas of open money is that anybody that uses money can use more, especially if it means they can get on with what they love rather than working for some globocorp. LETS and other open money systems provide the means for all to have their own money. Programmers, and others, can then be paid for their "hobby" in money that circulates within their communities and pays for some of the basic necessities of life. Kermit nails the issue with this.... ------xxx----- >So the interesting economic question about open source development isn't why >some people do it for free. Instead, I propose that we consider instead >what kind of contractual instruments, other than those that impose legal >monopolies, are capable of creating sustainable economies. ------xxx----- As Keith Hart wrote in his book, Money in an Unequal World, "money is the problem and the solution." Conventional money, simply because of the way it works, creates unsustainable economies - corporations get bigger, people poorer, the earth suffers. Because it is scarce, people will do anything to get it. ------xxx----- >Recasting the >discussion in these terms can also make it clearer why the "open money" >issue is related to the "open source" and "free software" discussions. >After all, both currency and software license agreements are contractual >instruments, and the issue before us is whether such instruments can enable >a sustainable economy without resorting to the restrictive monopolies of >central banking and copyright, respectively. ------xxx----- Community money is very different by design. It is created in sufficient supply, by us, when needed. It's only utility is as an exchange medium - it works when it moves. What is also of great interest is how open source and open money will work synergistically to create the kind of world we desire. Both arise from anarchist principles of mutual aid, which work best when we acknowledge the gift. I have used free and share ware without paying for it, not because i didn't want to but because i am always short of money - that acknowledgement goes to the bottom of the list. When programmers start accepting community money, i will be able to pay them. Indeed, it will be a great pleasure to finally be able to acknowledge all the gifts that i receive with more than a thanks. When i do pay you in a community money that you can use to buy groceries and computer gear, i am creating new money. It is my commitment to my community that i am good for that money - my money is my word. ------xxx----- >Naturally, there are many possible problems with such a system. What >happens, for instance, if people establish accounts on a LETS system, "buy" >expensive items, and then leave without ever having sold anything >themselves? Essentially, they've stolen from the community. ------xxx----- The first answer to this is seller beware - caveat venditor - do you know the person you are selling the expensive stuff to, either directly or by reputation? The other answer is a question - as a seller, what have you lost? The money you have been paid is still good - like getting normal cash instead of a cheque. The system continues to function despite people leaving and dying with negative balances. ------xxx----- > If too many >people do this, the system will collapse. ------xxx----- What kind of community is this? Certainly not one that i would want to do business in anyway. ------xxx----- > Or what if everybody on the >system is selling aromatherapy and no one is selling legal services? ------xxx----- This is the current state of most cc systems around the world. When community money can buy groceries and pay the rent, then it will become a significant part of the economy. We believe that is inevitable. ------xxx----- > If >there is a unbalanced distribution of products or services on offer, the >system won't work. ------xxx----- Actually, it does work - persistent but not much used. For the few who do use them, they are very useful. One of the women in the Comox Valley LETSystem which has been operating for almost 20 years said she decided not to move from the valley because she couldn't find another community that she liked that had a LETS. Thanks for opening up this discussion. We see great potential in the convergence of open money and open source. ernie yacub www.openmoney.org -------------------- > The key intellectual and practical breakthrough consists in > thinking of community currencies as plural rather than singular. ------xxx----- With this statement by Keith Hart, further elucidated by those of his colleagues, I reached enlightenment. We're certainly fortunate to have had the world's leading experts on LETS join our discussion. I now have some new worries, however. But first I want to make sure the problem's not on my end. As I understand it, LETS designs are completely agnostic with respect to issues of trust. In fact, that's precisely the claimed breakthrough. By design, LETS systems make absolutely no assumptions about the economy, topology or culture of the communities that use them. By eliminating the concept of interest, LETS leaves it up to the communities themselves to devise their own norms and mechanisms for dealing with the risk of default. In fact, a community may choose not to address the risk at all. If it is sufficiently small and saintly (or simply harmless) it may be perfectly safe to allow any member to "create money" anonymously to her heart's content. The key point is that any self-constituted community may enjoy the market-making benefits of a currency without having to buy into a bundled social norm that it may find inappropriate, unnecessary or even oppressive. This LETS design feature leads directly to the concept of plurality of currencies. Because such systems don't assume any social norms in their design, they may be used efficiently by any kind of community, from commercial banks to autonomous worker collectives. Instead of the monolithic, one-size-fits-all design of national currencies, the LETS design enables a flexible constellation of interacting payment systems that operate for different purposes and on different levels of scale. This improved modularity of design allows the advantages of currency to penetrate those hard-to-reach places in the economy, such as non-profits, the self-employed and the NGO's, that are currently ill-served by the existing "central bank" design. (By the way, this modular design for flexibility reminds me a lot of best practices in computer science, such as "separation of concerns" in object-oriented analysis, normalization in database schemas and orthogonality in microprocessor instruction sets.) It was this plurality that was argued against Felix Stalder's main concern, which was that the transfer of trust "from the token to the person" (to invert Felix's elegant phrase) would inevitably harm personal privacy. In support of this, he pointed to the elaborate and invasive actuarial-forensic methods of the existing credit card regimes. The LETS experts answered by appealing not only to the above-mentioned agnosticism of their design with respect to enforcing social norms, but also to the plurality of payment systems they envision. In other words, the multitude of systems means that there will always be a currency available that suits one's privacy needs. Some will allow anonymous transactions, some won't. The customer is free to choose. But at this point, I caught a whiff of Milton Friedman and started to worry. I'll get right to the point. Isn't what we're really talking about here the eventual privatization of the monetary system? Consider, as an analogy, the present (yet fading) system of national currencies. Every sovereign state has the right to "create its own money," and usually does. But in practice, the dodgier the country, the dodgier its currency. If we give the same right to individuals or ad-hoc communities, what's to prevent the current international situation from becoming universal? So much for the old democratic principle that "one man's dollar is as good as another's." The poor and marginal may indeed have more currency at their disposal once LETS systems become widespread, but their currency is likely to be less acceptable than a rich person's and may, in fact, be completely unable to buy certain goods in any amount. Today's wealthy, advanced OECD countries may become like the Soviet Union once was, with a miserable ruble economy for the masses and a luxurious "hard currency" economy (complete with separate shops) for the well-connected. I realize, of course, that this isn't what the inventors of the LETS design intend. But as they've just taught us, the technology is agnostic with respect to social norms. ("Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?") And, with my hat off to them, I believe its adoption is inevitable. I don't at all dispute the fact that LETS could greatly benefit currently marginalized communities, but it also offers potential benefits to global corporations, both in terms of profits and social control, that are simply staggering. Just as Internet-enabled "granular" advertising bequeathed us today's privacy nightmare of CRM and "one-to-one marketing", the potential for a DNS-enabled "granular" and privatized monetary system opens up brave new worlds of opportunity for price discrimination. (This is economist-speak for the hugely profitable practice of charging based on elasticity of demand, i.e., effectively higher prices for those who have less market power.) I think it's safe to say that once today's business leaders have grasped the concept, if they haven't already, they'll co-opt LETS as soon as it's legally and politically possible. Long before the "multitude" catches on. Unless, of course, the "multitude" rediscovers effective political activism, and soon. Getting back to the Open Source movement, Lawrence Lessig is completely relevant here. Everybody in the movement seems to have latched on to his slogan "Code Is Law", but that's probably his worst and most misleading turn of phrase. His main and best message has been completely ignored: that there is nothing inherently progressive about the Internet. It certainly has much liberating potential, but it can also enable a commercially-driven nightmare of "exquisitely oppressive control." It all depends on the political choices we make and the effectiveness of our actions. The LETS technology is one of the most potentially liberating Internet-based technologies I've ever seen, but it's also perhaps the single most dangerous. Unfortunately, the commercial banks are currently the best-positioned to understand and profit from it. We need to educate ourselves fast. Kermit Snelson -------------------- Hi Ernie and all! I'm reading thread by thread so I may raise points already answered in other mails. Anyway. ------xxx----- 3 days ago ernie yacub wrote: > One of the core ideas of open money is that anybody that uses money can use > more, especially if it means they can get on with what they love rather > than working for some globocorp. LETS and other open money systems provide > the means for all to have their own money. ------xxx----- The non-scarcity of community currencies seems to be a key point. Hmm... ------xxx----- > Programmers, and others, can > then be paid for their "hobby" in money that circulates within their > communities and pays for some of the basic necessities of life. ------xxx----- ...and you immediately introduce a scarcity here: It must be money which circulates somewhere. So a currency I'm introducing out of nothing is of no use to me as to anyone else. You're pointing this out yourself: [copied from below] > When programmers start accepting community ^^^^^^^^^ > money, i will be able to pay them. ------xxx----- If community money won't be scarce you won't have a problem with someone accepting the money you introduced from nothing some minutes ago. So community money is a scarce resource because not everything counts as valid money (i.e. is accepted by a relevant number of persons for exchange) but only certain forms of money. I can't introduce a currency from nothing but have to rely on some social ongoings I have little influence on - ok, it's more influence than on conventional money but that's not my point here. ------xxx----- > As Keith Hart wrote in his book, Money in an Unequal World, "money is the > problem and the solution." Conventional money, simply because of the way > it works, creates unsustainable economies - corporations get bigger, people > poorer, the earth suffers. Because it is scarce, people will do anything > to get it. ------xxx----- As I pointed out I think it's a result of the more fundamental principle of societies based on exchange. ------xxx----- > Community money is very different by design. It is created in sufficient > supply, by us, when needed. It's only utility is as an exchange medium - > it works when it moves. This is true for conventional money as well: Only moving money is capital and only then it works. If hoarding money would be "useful" in societies based on exchange stock markets would not exist. In fact stock markets are one of the most advanced means to move money and to use it as capital. ------xxx----- > What is also of great interest is how open source and open money will work > synergistically to create the kind of world we desire. Both arise from > anarchist principles of mutual aid, ------xxx----- No, Free Software does not arise from mutual aid. This is an aspect but not the key factor. However, lately as I think we finally found the link between Free Software / GPL society and anarchism: - From [http://www.oekonux.org/list-en/archive/msg00214.html]: As far as I can tell, self-enfolding is just the positive expression of the concept of anarchy. Whereas to use the word "anarchy" emphasizes and what's not there, using "self-enfolding" emphasizes what is there. ------xxx----- > which work best when we acknowledge the > gift. ------xxx----- Which boils down to exchange... ------xxx----- Lacking a social glue people must be moral to not do what is obviously the right thing looking at their interest as atomized individuals: Maximize their own benefit on the expense of others. This doesn't work in capitalism and I'm convinced this won't work in any society. It needs to be in the direct interest of someone not to live on expense of others - and that is what we see in Free Software. ------xxx----- > Thanks for opening up this discussion. We see great potential in the > convergence of open money and open source. Thought I doubt it is possible to converge open money and Free Software I find that discussion pretty interesting. I learnt something about Free Software and I'm better understanding what open money is about and from that understanding I can learn more about the issues I'm mainly concerned with. And no, this is not an exchange. I'm not selling my thoughts to you and don't buy yours - not mentioning about the lurkers here. There is a flow of thoughts - sure. However, that this flow is in a useful state is my own interest because I'm taking direct advantage of this flow. This is all very similar to the way Free Software is developed - but not to the way exchange works. Mit Freien Grüßen Stefan --------------- Kermit Snelson has it right on all analytical counts and he is entitled to his opinion about the likely consequences. The version of LETS we propose has detached itself from some of the scaled-down features of a pseudo-national currency by going infinitely multiple; and the social norms that once gave LETS a feel-good factor (also oppressive to some) have been left out of the design in favour of promoting a system that sustains confidence, but does not require trust. LETS in this guise should increase democracy, but it may not reduce inequality by itself. As he says, the rich and corporations may be able to take advantage of the method more easily than the poor. This applies with force to methods relying on advanced machines. We know that the reduced power of nation-states has open up space for corporate capitalism and that this constitutes a global political crisis. The LETS model is a potential tool in the hands of progressives everywhere, but if the powerful are faster to organize than their opponents, it will not help the latter much. Kermit cites Lessig as saying that the social consequences of the internet are potentially neutral, which is true. But the internet remains one of the most powerful means at our disposal for making a better world and that is what resistence to enclosure of the internet commons is about. Engels wrote an essay, Socialism -- utopian and scientific, in which he argued that a socialism which understood the forces at work in the contemporary world was more likely to succeed that one that appealed to an impule to 'Stop the world, I want to get off. But he warned that society was being organized rapidly at the top, using these same forces, and this might outstrip the socialist movement from below. His fears were justified, as it turned out. But was that a good reason for abandoning the socialist cause then or now? Engels made it clear that socialism meant economic democracy for him and that suits me too. If we are talking about the privatisation of money (which we are), the relevant liberal economist is Hayek, not Friedman. The Chicago school favoured absolute control of the money supply by the central bank in order to let a quantity theory of money govern the markets. Hayek was inspired by the pioneering efforts of Scottish banks in the 18th century to advocate a system with no control by states whatsoever. Talk of abolishing the state through LETS is going bring the Fed (or the Bank of Japan or The European Central Bank) down on our heads quick. In practice LETS is likely to get going at first as a 'mice in the basement' strategy that does not threaten the establishment. But, when corporations and ultimately the banks take it up, it will obviously be in a poltiically diluted form, but also one that stands a chance of reaching more people, to do what they want with it. We therefore minimise talk of th eincompatibility of national and community currencies, stressing their comlementarity. We also support alliance across the social spectrum, such as the Japan Open Money Project. Even so, there is more than just a sense of little furry mammals among the dinosaurs. Again, we know that we face a political crisis concerning the forms of assocaition that would allow us to resist domination by big capital and achieve our public ends effectively. There is no reason why the existing nation-states should not take their place among these. But it is likely that we will also need to associate more and less inclusively than that. LETS is compatible with that vision. I repeat the message of an earlier post. Open money could be a means of making certain forms of political association more objective and it is a method of political education. It is not a one-horse recipe for everything and it should not be judged on the basis of a zero sum exchange with the status quo. >By the way, this modular design for flexibility reminds me a lot of best practices in computer science, such as "separation of concerns" in object-oriented analysis, normalization in database schemas and orthogonality in microprocessor instruction sets.< This exchange is a two-way street. Michael Linton was trained as an engineer, whereas Ernie Yacub and I are, as he confessed, extremely low-tech. Yet we all recognise the importance of learning from 'best practice' in computer science. If Kermit noticed some apparent correspondence between LETS design and free software/open source/computing best practice that was intentional. We would certainly like to hear from others who could help us to develop the comparison. Keith Hart --------------- Keith Hart's most recent post pretty much says it all. I fully agree with every paragraph except the fourth, in which he speaks of LETS as a Hayek-inspired "little furry mammal" strategy against the dinosaur establishment. I like to argue at the level of ideas, not personalities. Therefore, I'll leave it to the Googlers on this list to decide for themselves how well the late University of Chicago professor Friedrich von Hayek's work has served Engels's ideals of socialism and economic democracy. Instead, I'll just ask a question. When you think of opening up a commons to democratic control, is "privatization" the first word that springs to mind? Consider the recent history of commons such as railroads, airlines, power grids, postal services, telephone exchanges. Who do you think has been behind the move to privatize them? And who would benefit most from privatizing what is perhaps the most vital (human-made) commons of all: cash? The exercise I suggested in the last paragraph may provide some hints. Kermit Snelson ------------------ >And who would benefit most from >privatizing what is perhaps the most vital (human-made) commons of all: >cash? The exercise I suggested in the last paragraph may provide some >hints. ------xxx----- Actually, there already are private money networks called commercial barter systems doing billions in trade every year and growing. They are closed circuits of exchange with a brokerage in the middle taking up to 15% in cash on every transaction. LETS/cc provides the same exchange facility without the exorbitant costs and unnecessary interventions and opens them up to all. ernie yacub ------------------ Hi Kermit and all! Yesterday Kermit Snelson wrote: > Instead, I'll just ask a question. When you think of opening up a commons > to democratic control, is "privatization" the first word that springs to > mind? ------xxx----- The opposite is true of course. If something is privatized it means that is removed from the common. And that's exactly the meaning the Latin root of the word (`privare' IIRC) means: To rob something from the common. ------xxx----- > Consider the recent history of commons such as railroads, airlines, > power grids, postal services, telephone exchanges. ------xxx----- That's an interesting point but we have to tell the whole story then. Most of this big infrastructure has been started by private corporations. At some point in time the early capitalist states took over these big infrastructures and ran them on a state-controlled basis. This happened in all starting capitalist countries with very few exceptions. IMHO the reason for this move is (at least) three-fold. * On the one hand these big infrastructures were believed to be necessary to foster capitalist / economic growth - which is surely true. Because of that it should not be that private persons control these fundamental infrastructures and thus no private person be able to hold the economy as hostage. Only the state thought as being neutral to all was able to provide such big infrastructure in a neutral way. * On the other hand organization of this big infrastructure was a difficult challenge and only the state being able to organize similar big organizations was believed to be able to cope with that challenge. * On the third hand these big infrastructures had simply to exist - no matter whether they are profitable or not. In fact a lot of examples exist where these infrastructures are not only state-controlled but state-aided as well. ------xxx----- > Who do you think has > been behind the move to privatize them? ------xxx----- Today there are powers which want to revert what happened 150-200 years ago. Given that we still live in a capitalist society the points above are still valid. So what happened? This list is about Free Software and it's potential for society, so in addition let's look at software. After all today software can be seen as a big infrastructure vital for the existence of capitalist economies (just as for a GPL society I might add). * The first point is still true - and perhaps much more than in the 19th century. Well-functioning big infrastructures are vital for the survival of modern societies. However, today there are less worries, that private persons may take society / economy as a hostage. I guess that's a result of the fact, that these private persons already control the states to a degree where such concerns are simply not in *their* interest. Well, the worries from the past are indeed exactly the natural interest of private persons. In software we have even a private (nearly) monopoly which still rules the scene. We all see the result of this private monopoly held over a important big infrastructure. M$ *has* taken society as a hostage and even the US state is not able to do anything against it - as the failing lawsuits from the last years show. Sure most politicians won't admit that they are hostages but what would you expect... On the other hand there is Free Software which is clearly not controlled by private persons. Instead everyone is able to do their own thing besides the main-stream and even influence the main-stream on a rather direct basis. There are a number of clear differences to proprietary software. In fact Free Software is a common good - and a value-less one resulting in being cheap. It is neither state-controlled nor controlled by private persons in the way proprietary software is controlled by private persons. As a result there is no need to worry that private persons may take anyone as hostages. This is reflected by a lot of decisions of states (e.g. China, France and a good amount of other European states) to prefer Free Software over M$. These states do not want to build an infrastructure which depends on the will of a single person which is all but clearly on their side. * The second point above indeed changed dramatically over time. If it would be as impossible for private initiative to run that big infrastructure as it was, we simply won't discuss that topic. I think the technical development has made this possible simplifying a number of processes relevant for organization of big infrastructure. This means, that states as we know them are not as important for such needs and instead the provision of big infrastructure could be taken back into society. Again Free Software is a nice example for that development. Free Software uses the most advanced technical means available to organize the production of a big infrastructure with pretty much virtuosity. Indeed it does *much* better in this regard than every corporate initiative possibly can. And it does much better than states. Both is a result of the fact, that Free Software relies on self-unfolding rather than the structural coercion exercised by money from private corporations as well as money from states. * The third point above is still the case - big infrastructure has to exist no matter whether it is profitable or not. However, the importance of this point does not seem to be recognized by politicians selling out common goods. Again this may be seen as a result of modern states are already being held as hostages of private corporations. Indeed a private corporation is there to maximize profit. I once read a saying from a private British water provider who said: "We are there to make profit - not to provide water." That is exactly the point: Big infrastructure in the hands of private corporations is no longer there to serve the common good but to maximize profit of the corporation. As a result those who can't pay the price simply can't use the big infrastructure any more. This is of course no problem for the corporations themselves. They can always pay. But it's a big problem for the citizens who are cut off from important infrastructure. I guess we all know countless examples of that. Of course we can see that in software. The citizens of Iceland for instance already experienced what it means when M$ decided that profit drawn from the support of Icelandic is too low: Their language is simply no longer supported. On the other hand because there is no profit in Free Software there is no reason to worry that profit may be insufficient for someone to decide to stop support. Plain and simple. And even if you coerced someone structurally by paying hir to write a certain piece of Free Software you alone decide what you want to do with this piece afterwards. You may use it without any concern about profit. This point is stressed by nearly every advocate of Free Software for business and indeed this is one of the reasons, why there are initiatives in some Third World countries and particularly China to use Free Software rather than "free" M$ copies. Free Software can easily be adopted to suit the needs - regardless of profit considerations. Well, given all that I'd say, that Free Software qualifies very well as a new model regarding the question of how to organize big infrastructure beyond both, private corporations and states. Hmm... That actually became far more interesting than I expected at the beginning :-) . ------xxx----- > And who would benefit most from > privatizing what is perhaps the most vital (human-made) commons of all: > cash? ------xxx----- Well, money is different from the big infrastructure mentioned above. At least historically it's closely coupled to the existence of a state and there are reasons for this. I pointed that out a bit in another post. Indeed IIRC there are three aspects a state must maintain to be called sovereign: * A government * An own currency * An army In fact these criterions are somehow softened in the last two decades. There are a number of countries which don't have a functioning government any more. Often this is linked with the absence of a regular army. These are among the primary targets of US / NATO bombs (Somalia, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia to some degree). Meanwhile there is Argentina which gave up sovereignty by giving up their currency. And in the EU a number of states gave up their sovereignty for a common currency some years ago. This doesn't matter any more? Hmm... Well, looking at the three points above all of them are valid for money as well as for other big infrastructure. I'll give it a try and look at LETS / cc in the framework of the three aspects outlined above - - from my current understanding. * LETS / cc are born exactly by the opposite concern: Everybody should be able to control the big infrastructure instead of a single neutral institution. These "everybody"s are however the same private persons as we have with conventional money. As Keith stresses particularly in open money there is no social band gluing together these atomized individuals. So the worry above in some way is valid and in some way it is not. Instead of trusting in a neutral institution LETS / cc provide some kind of equality of weapons ("Waffengleichheit"): I accept your currency if you accept mine. In fact - as I pointed out a bit - this equality of weapons / power is the basis for contracts making sense at all. However, equality of weapons is not a good thing in itself. It's only the best thing if you have weapons already. IMHO it would be far better to have a society where it's counterproductive to even point at someone else. This is what we see in Free Software. * As with Free Software the second point above vanished with the technological means available today. In fact most of the posts from the open money people praise modern technology to make non-state-controlled currencies possible at all. * It seems, that the third point above in LETS / cc is invalid because by definition nobody can make profit with these currencies - because by definition there is no interest. Well, as said in another mail I'm very sceptical whether you can define this or whether interest is a inalienable result of exchange based economy. Mit Freien Grüßen Stefan -------------- this seems to be a different thread (called money), let's see where it goes: From: Stefan Merten Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 20:36:17 +0100 Hi Benja! 3 weeks (25 days) ago B Fallenstein wrote: > Stefan Meretz wrote: >> In my view, the core is not profit, is not money as a thing, but the >> selforganizing value, which rules the cybernetic machine called >> capitalism. Think of labor, commodity, value, money, and capital of >> different sorts of physical states of the same thing. I know, this is >> quite different to usual understanding. I try to explain a little bit in >> detail in http://www.oekonux.org/ list-en/archive/msg00192.html. No one >> respond on that, maybe, because everything is clear - or nothing:-( > ------xxx----- > I found it very helpful (I've meant to say this earlier, but forgot to > do so-- sorry, too much stress). I do think it expresses my view on the > capitalist system very well. I think it's especially important to note > that capitalists *cannot* simply stop oppressing others, because the > system does not allow them to, which also is an experience all of us can > make on a daily basis: we know that through the things we buy, we > support e.g. oppression of farmers and factory workers in third world > countries, yet we *cannot* just stop doing so if we do not want to "drop > out" completely. > > I do think, though, that it makes some sense to say "money is the > problem," because money *embodies* the machine (to me, at least). The > exchange medium is an integral part of the capitalist system as we know > it; if there were no money (or equivalent, which would boil down to be > the same thing-- like money on the bank is still money, as is paper > money, though both are abstractions over previous forms of money > already)-- if there were no money, there would be no capitalist society, > because direct trade works only on a much smaller scale. I have found > that starting a discussion about the subject with the claims that "money > is the problem" and "thus money should be abolished" is quite an > effective way for getting the discussion in the right direction (meaning > that people usually ask the "right" questions that help me explain what > I mean ;-) ). ------xxx----- It's not the money in itself - it's the exchange which is the problem. Labor for an exchange introduces the alienation and more and more ai come to the conclusion, that the alienation is the biggest problem - at least if it drives the society. So it's nothing gained if you abolish money but keep exchanging - like for instance the LETS are trying to do. I tend to say, that any system of exchange would sooner or later end in a society like ours. In a sense we already have the best working society based on exchange. Mit Freien Grüßen Stefan -------------------- Ah to a welcome page for opentheory.org ------ back to the earlier thread ---- Hmm... Being a computer scientist, from my point of view, I'd see it just the other way round than Kermit. All these currencies have one thing in common: To simplify exchange. So I'd ask myself why the hell we need more than one of it? And would create a single class (i.e. a type in a programming language) representing money. Mit Freien Grüßen Stefan ------------ follows a ref to the material I precipitated in: /nettime-money-thread.htm ------ The article that started it off ( http://firstmonday.org/issues/ issue6_12/lancashire/index.html ) is quite an interesting one in its own right. I think it covers many of the same areas which the oekonux group are interested in, though from a different point of view (not one which is hostile to free software - the conclusions are that free software is a 'good thing' and that it might be useful to help it indirectly by increasing educational funding). Could it be an interesting exercise for oekonux people to write a reply? One reason for doing this is that it directly  criticizes some oekonux related ideas; another, that it is the first paper I have seen which looks good enough to become the standard academic 'refutation' of any 'germ-form' arguments (I'm not saying it really refutes them!). I'll have a go at a start: The paper is a little sloppy (though there have been much worse); both as Florian Cramer showed on Nettime in relation to details of free software projects, and in regard to their own data (unless my geography is badly wrong they seem to have confused Sweden with Finland!). The 'fading altruism' of the title, which is what was talked about most on Nettime, is a bit of a red herring - firstly because they're not really talking about 'altruism', secondly because their historical parts on software development are about the worst part in the paper. But the key point is their claim to have provided an empirically testable hypothesis: that free software occurs where programmers are not very highly paid, and as wages increase in the richer countries the number of writers of free software will decrease. As a consequence of this (and not strictly part of their core hypothesis) they assume they have disproved ideas that the free software culture is something that comes out of, or could succeed the most developed capitalism. I think this is the core sentence: 'As increased demand for programmers within a nation drives up the going wage rate, it should increase the opportunity cost of coding free software over [working on] commercial applications, and thereby decrease the amount of free software production'. They complain about Marx being an economic determinist but this is so extreme it's more financial than economic determinism! Wage rates decide everything.. Well, 1. This is trading Raymonds 'cultural' view for a completely determinist one. Neither is likely to be the whole truth (and there are other aspects to economics and to culture which neither covers...). But the alternative to Raymond's 'gift culture' ideas (I really don't like that analogy - the gift cultures were ones which basically went crazy or suicidal on their first contacts with capitalism) does not have to be this kind of financial determinism. 2. There are alternative explanations of their own data even on this level: they assume that because the US is the richest country, it has the richest population, and the best paid programmers, and these are the only relevant measures of wealth. Sticking at this purely empirical level and looking at their own maps, I would guess that their data is highly correlated with which countries fund education the most and where most people can afford to be students for longest. On this measure of wealth the US is certainly not going to come near the top. If this is right, they haven't shown any causal relation at all with wages. 3. They've provided a prediction as to what should happen as the recession in technology hits in America - the number of people writing free software should go through the roof. I don't think there's going to be any such event - but it should be something perfectly testable (just watch freshmeat and compare the number of entries from Stefan Merten with the number from Americans ;-). So can oekonux provide a better, equally testable hypothesis about the way things are going? I'm pretty sure that it can... Graham ------------ I believe that terms like "altruism" and "opportunity cost" don't provide much insight into why people develop open source or free software. Lancashire, who bases his analysis on such ideas, overlooks the fact that computer programming is not only an occupation but also a hobby and sport, particularly for those who are good at it. The obvious fact that people will do it without being paid no more "poses a serious challenge to traditional political economy" than does bird-watching or basketball. So the interesting economic question about open source development isn't why some people do it for free. Instead, I propose that we consider instead what kind of contractual instruments, other than those that impose legal monopolies, are capable of creating sustainable economies. Recasting the discussion in these terms can also make it clearer why the "open money" issue is related to the "open source" and "free software" discussions. After all, both currency and software license agreements are contractual instruments, and the issue before us is whether such instruments can enable a sustainable economy without resorting to the restrictive monopolies of central banking and copyright, respectively. I'll start out by stating my own understanding of how an "open money" system would work and how it compares with the "open source" paradigm. As will quickly become obvious, I'm very ignorant on the first subject (and only a little less ignorant on the second) and hope that my inevitable errors will lure Keith Hart and Felix Stalder, our experts, into the discussion to correct me. :) When you sell something in exchange for (say) a USD100 currency note, you have given up ownership of a real asset in exchange for a claim against the Federal Reserve. In other words, you have essentially "loaned" money to the US government. That USD100 note is carried on the Federal Reserve's balance sheet as a liability, usually collateralized by the equivalent amount in US government securities. To maintain the market value of the note you hold, the Federal Reserve must limit the amount of such liabilities with respect to the underlying performance of the US economy. It does this by buying and selling US government securities on the open market, changing the interest rate it charges to its member banks, and varying the reserve requirements that it imposes on them. In contrast, there is no central bank in an "open money" system. When you sell something in exchange for 100 "dollars" on such a system, you essentially grant an interest-free loan to the community of LETS users in general. There is no limit placed on any single user's indebtedness; each member acts as her own Federal Reserve Board, deciding for herself the liability she feels she may responsibly incur to the LETS community based on her own ability to sell items back to it. Naturally, there are many possible problems with such a system. What happens, for instance, if people establish accounts on a LETS system, "buy" expensive items, and then leave without ever having sold anything themselves? Essentially, they've stolen from the community. If too many people do this, the system will collapse. Or what if everybody on the system is selling aromatherapy and no one is selling legal services? If there is a unbalanced distribution of products or services on offer, the system won't work. As with any central bank currency, the health of an "open" currency depends entirely on the economy and behavior of the community that adopts it. A similar situation applies to free software. If the GPL instrument is to serve as the basis of something more than a hobby economy, it must provide a way to compensate those who can't afford to give their time away. The compensation theory of the GPL seems to be (according to the FSF web site) that it forces software to be paid for in software. In other words, if A writes a program that uses B's GPLed code, then B gets to use A's program as compensation. This assumes, of course, that A has no workable, non-GPL alternative to B's code, and that A's program is equally valuable to B. In other words, the abilities and needs of the community have to be balanced in a rather exquisite way if the community is to be self-sustaining. Therefore, it seems to me that asking whether "open source" and "open money" contractual instruments can support a viable economy simply restates two very old political questions. Namely, is this exquisite balance achievable simply by letting human beings do exactly as they please, or is the thumb of coercion (e.g., copyright and central banking) required on the scale? And if the latter, whose thumb? And who will control it? Kermit Snelson ---------------- Kermit, I am very grateful for the clarity of your post on open money and open source, especially for seeking to return the argument to basic political and legal theory, as in: >what kind of contractual instruments, other than those that impose legal monopolies, are capable of creating sustainable economies.< and ------xxx----- > is this exquisite balance achievable simply by letting human beings do exactly as they please, or is the thumb of coercion (e.g., copyright and central banking) required on the scale? And if the latter, whose thumb? And who will control it?< ------xxx----- I would add that there is a substantial amount of writing about open money available on the web. See www.openmoney.org for a comprehensive and recent compilation of educational sources. As for how LETS systems function, your instant diagnosis goes to what most people would see as the core of the issue: ------xxx----- >Naturally, there are many possible problems with such a system. What happens, for instance, if people establish accounts on a LETS system, "buy" expensive items, and then leave without ever having sold anything themselves? Essentially, they've stolen from the community. If too many people do this, the system will collapse. Or what if everybody on the system is selling aromatherapy and no one is selling legal services? If there is a unbalanced distribution of products or services on offer, the system won't work. As with any central bank currency, the health of an "open" currency depends entirely on the economy and behavior of the community that adopts it.< ------xxx----- But -- there has to be a but -- effective answers to these questions require some understanding of how community currencies have evolved in the last two decades. One big problem lies in our general inability to think outside the box of national currency systems. These are, as you point out, central bank monopolies encouraging citizens to perceive of 'the economy' as singular and in important respects self-sufficient. When people try to set up some alternative, they often unconsciously mimic the dominant model, setting up a single, self-sufficient closed circuit, with a central register, its own currency and usually a committee of leaders to run it. Members are individuals trading goods and services in parallel with the national economy of which they are of course also members. Soon enough such organizations run up against problems of size, quality of service, high transaction costs, inadequate division of labour and so on. Some LETS systems have persisted for a considerable length of time, but many also fail in the short run, as often as not because of a weak conceptualisation of the mechanics of community currencies. One handicap of such systems is that the participants are sometimes motivated to replicate 19th century utopian communities, wanting nothing to do with conventional commerce, perhaps reverting to a labour theory of value in their standard measure. There is even a Victorian charitable arm of the movement, bringing subsidised succour to the poor by this means. Many circuits run on paper scrip like national money. The key intellectual and practical breakthrough consists in thinking of community currencies as plural rather than singular. Individuals may belong routinely to as many circuits as they already have credit cards and other plastic instruments at their disposal. In the latest phase, smart cards can carry up to fifteen currencies, reflecting each person's interests and pattern of association. Just as important, if LETS systems are to allow people to carry out their daily tasks without spending all their time in exchange transactions, they much be fast, cheap and effective. This means integrating them with normal commerce to a variable degree. Businesses and non-profit organizations can be and are members of LETS communities. If they sell more than they buy within the circuit, they can give purchasing power to deserving causes or to employees as a bonus. Loyalty loops to particular firms can be built separately into the system. Members who feel that their interests diverge from those of others can set up a sub-circuit of their own. Prices can easily be calculated in a mixture of national and community currencies, with only the latter element being registered. It is difficult in this shorthand way to convey the possibilities to people who have spent their lives adapting to conventional money as inevitably the only game in town. Each community is free to design its own rules. In many cases, the moral, political or ecological purposes of the circuit may make fine calculation of economic benefits to individuals less pressing. The question of 'free riders' is a problem that every economist brings up (their lives depend on it). Some communities may insist on positive balances only (no overdrafts) or limit negative balances to a certain amount. Most allow new members to buy without selling first and some allow unlimited negative balances. The money is supplied by any member whenever they go negative. If they default on their commitment, they lose reputation and perhaps more. It all depends on the kind of community and its size. Most LETS systems have been local so far, but the possibility of virtual communities of exchange is made palpable by recent technological developments. It is all a matter of learning which methods work best for particular situations. This also should be stressed, that community currencies are a means of political education, showing people how conventional money works, how other kinds of money operate, and providing lessons in direct democracy. Open money has yet to take advantage of the crowds that are now routinely brought together by the internet. A system of national domain names is being established and the software for multiple-currency cross platforms is almost ready. There is no reason why, in an expanded community currency network, the banks should not handle many transactions, as long as it is at a fair price. Clearly, the vision I am presenting here is not anti-capitalist in the usual way. Open money is not a scarce commodity, it has no price (interest) and cannot be hoarded or used as capital. My colleagues and I believe that markets and money can be developed on non-capitalist principles, initially as part of capitalist commerce, not independently of it. This inevitably sets us at odds with those who believe that any taint of exchange or money is as good as selling out to capitalism. Even so we have been inspired by the example of the Free Software movement and consider that open money is one way towards democratising access to money itself. It would be wonderful if money, which has long been the source of exclusive private property, might one day be a commons to which all of us have free access to make our own. Keith ----------------- As usual, I enjoyed reading Kermit's post and agree with most of Keith Hart's ideas, but I see some real difficulties, conceptual and practical, with their realization. First, the main agreement is that open money and national money is complementary, in the same way that open and closed source software are complementary. If Stallman and Thorvalds had demanded to abandon all proprietary code before we could begin to use open source software, nothing would ever have happened. If we demand a leap from the old to the new, only few people will follow (for very good reasons, I must say). But the main issue is see concerns the question of trust. I agree with the Keith that there must be multiple LETS systems, because their main advantage is that they can be highly flexible and adapted to their community's specific needs and characteristics. However, that compounds the problem of trust and reputation management. If I'm member of a lot of LETS communities, defaulting in one is less of an issue than if I'm only member in this one. Peer pressure and incentives are strongest when the community comprises many aspects of a member's life, which is the case in local communities, but much less the case in virtual ones. In order to trade reputation between communities, there must be some kind of reputation super structure, similar to the way certificate authorities are envisioned in PKI systems, or Moody's rates corporate debt. Cash solves the reputation problem elegantly, by transferring the trust from the person to the token. Credit cards solve the problem horribly with an incredible invasive global authenticating infrastructure which is queried virtually every time one uses the card. I cannot but imagine this reputation trading between LETS communtities as incredibly privacy invasive. How you behave in different LETS communities tells even more about you than how you spend your national currency. I remember that during a side conversation at the Wizard of OS conference last year in Berlin, Keith not being particularly concerned about the probleme of privacy invasion, saying something, if I recall correctly, that a true global citizen must be responsible and accountable for his/her actions. This reminds me of the argument that if you got nothing to hide, then you do not have to worry about surveillance. Then there is the practical argument. Keith and Michael Linton seem to put much hope into smart cards and their ability to process multiple currencies efficiently. Sure chip catds can do this, technically. But, the economic of smart cards are so prohibitive, that introducing them will be restricted to organizations that can afford incredibly high up-front costs, hoping to recoup these costs by later selling "real estate" on the chip. I don't see, for merely practical reasons, how LETS systems would get access to that pricey real estate. That might change over time when smart cards are widely available and issuing another yet another one is a minor project, but I would not bet on that happening anytime soon. Felix Les faits sont faits. http://felix.openflows.org ------------------- Hello all, Keith has forwarded your latest messages about open money and i have just joined the forum. I have been working with Michael Linton developing community money systems for almost 7 years. I am a community activist by nature and technologically challenged - i just use the programs that you people create and i thank you all. It is interesting that we tend to focus our attention on the possibility that people will somehow abuse the system and default on payments rather than the opposite. As Keith said in an earlier post, we naturally tend to "mimic the dominant model" when thinking about community currencies. It's like applying how we feel about microsoft to linux. It just doesn't compute. The reality is that some people die owing money. In the scarce money world if i die owing you, you have lost the money. In the cc world, if i die with a negative balance - ie in commitment - you have lost nothing. You are not deprived of the means of exchange and neither is anybody else. At 02:46 PM 1/15/2002 -0500, Felix Stalder wrote: >But the main issue is see concerns the question of trust. ------xxx----- Trust is such a difficult concept - i mean, who do you trust? anyone over 30? or no one? All you really need to know in order to do business with me is whether i will honour my commitment to provide and that becomes apparent soon enough. If i don't, you can have the payment reversed and my reputation is tarnished. In a small network or community that can be a serious problem. In a large community it takes longer for such information to get around, but eventually it will. You can always check on my balance of trade to see if i am way too far in the negative for you to feel comfortable doing business with me. Some systems will want much higher levels of security and authentication when dealing with large amounts but there is no need to encumber all cc systems with unnecessary baggage. As you say... ------xxx----- > I agree with the >Keith that there must be multiple LETS systems, because their main >advantage is that they can be highly flexible and adapted to their >community's specific needs and characteristics. ------xxx----- And each of us can choose the kinds of systems that suit our needs, just like joining email conferences. Some are wide open free-for-alls and others are heavily managed, but you decide which ones you want to use and to what extent. As for smart cards, they are just one of the ways to move the money around - like cash money in a wallet. Much less expensive than using paper scrip - less than $10 for cards and much less in large quantities. Currently, smart card transactors in small quantities are $150 for point-of-sale machines and $100 for battery operated gizmos that look like calculators. http://www.gis.co.uk/prods_1.htm Eventually, cell phones and other electronic devices will enable faster and cheaper payments - online, directly through your account. Those without access to such technology can use paper, like traveller's cheques and record sheets at businesses. The original LETSystem in the Comox Valley still operates with a phone line, answering machine, and someone to enter the transactions in a spreadsheet at less than 25 cents per transaction. Right now, smart cards are the preferred means for payments made in shops where ease of use and time spent are serious issues. Here in the Comox Valley, Canada, about 20 retail businesses have been using smart cards for the last two years. ernie yacub www.openmoney.org ---------------- It's funny because some weeks ago after months I finally removed a mail from Ernie Yacub from my `+inbox' where he commented on my interview with Geert Lovink. I just did not have the energy to answer and now some of you are here :-) . That's good because I'm - surprise - - *very* sceptical about the idea of open money as about LETS in general. Actually I'm not interested very much in the details like credit cards and the like because I have big problems with the fundaments. And I'd really like to sort this out here. I think LETS have something - if it would not be the case they would not be as successful as they are. I'd like to know what this something is to have it available to be used in other concepts. As you may expect for me the principles of Free Software are guiding principles. So I'm looking to that phenomenon often and try to find out how things work there. Indeed I think many things in Free Software can't be understood with too much of the principles of exchange in mind. Ok, so I'll link into what Keith said. 2 days ago Keith Hart wrote: > But -- there has to be a but -- effective answers to these questions > require some understanding of how community currencies have evolved in the > last two decades. ------xxx----- Here comes my first question: Is this all limited to a community? How big (i.e. number of people) may a community be? Actually I guess you need a relative limited community to make your social glue work. I guess this is one of the things interesting in LETS: the social glue they provide to otherwise atomized indiiduals. ------xxx----- > One big problem lies in our general inability to think > outside the box of national currency systems. I'd add that our biggest problem lies in our general inability to think outside the box of exchange systems at all. Can you do that? If not, why? Actually I think this is the most interesting question at all. At least Free Software is not based on exchange. That means a lot to me. ------xxx----- > These are, as you point out, > central bank monopolies encouraging citizens to perceive of 'the economy' > as singular and in important respects self-sufficient. ------xxx----- There is a natural link between states and currencies: The states by having the monopoly of power ("Gewaltmonopol" - can't find correct translation :-( ) have the possibility to enforce the validity of a currency. By having repressive forces like police, courts and jails, or sometime armies they have the possibility to keep people from say copying banknotes. One major aspect of this is that they are able to keep money a scarce resource. This reflects the coercion potential inherent in any sort of money. Money is nothing but a structural mean to coerce someone to do something which s/he would rather not to without being paid for it. In a sharp contrast Free Software shows us a way to produce goods which are useful on a worldwide basis and there is no coercion involved. Because everybody is free to join or leave a Free Software project whenever s/he likes and has no more "cost" for either of it than there is inevitable on a factual basis, there is a structural absence of coercion. ------xxx----- > When people try to > set up some alternative, they often unconsciously mimic the dominant model, > setting up a single, self-sufficient closed circuit, with a central > register, its own currency and usually a committee of leaders to run it. > Members are individuals trading goods and services in parallel with the > national economy of which they are of course also members. Soon enough such > organizations run up against problems of size, quality of service, high > transaction costs, inadequate division of labour and so on. Some LETS > systems have persisted for a considerable length of time, but many also > fail in the short run, as often as not because of a weak conceptualisation > of the mechanics of community currencies. ------xxx----- There is one thing I simply don't understand in this whole concept. You're proposing an exchange based system. But at the same time we already have an exchanged based system with a history of several thousand years but the last two- or three-hundred years being the important ones because during this time money / exchange became the dominant form in Western societies and in other parts of the world. The things you're suggesting at least remember of older forms of money which vanished during the history of implementation of exchange based societies. I tend to say that it is not by chance that these older forms vanished. I mean, there is a reason, that for instance limited markets like the ones you have, when the validity of your money is limited to your community, vanished. In the EU for instance they gave up national currencies some years ago - and they say that it is useful to have lower transactions costs and basically to have bigger markets. I think these things don't appear from nowhere but are results of the cybernetic machine called capitalism which runs without human intervention the same as without human measure. So - as I stated in another post yesterday - I think capitalism is the most unfolded system based on exchange. And now for the question: How do you think your system can stop these mechanisms, this invisible hand? ------xxx----- > The key intellectual and practical breakthrough consists in thinking of > community currencies as plural rather than singular. Individuals may belong > routinely to as many circuits as they already have credit cards and other > plastic instruments at their disposal. As I understood this is the key difference between ordinary LETS and open money. Well I'd say this limits the validity of your money even further - even to a point where you virtually can't buy anything for your money because you have always to little from something at least when your available currency is of this sort: ------xxx----- > Some communities may insist on positive > balances only (no overdrafts) or limit negative balances to a certain > amount. Which is BTW basically the same I guess. A limited negative balance can be seen as the same amount of advance money for everybody. ------xxx----- > Clearly, the vision I am presenting here is not anti-capitalist in the > usual way. ------xxx----- BTW: I'm not very much in favor for all the antis. So my main concern is not to fight capitalism but to overcome it. In this we may have different directions anyway. I think LETS / open money may be useful to some people in capitalism - as I said: They have something. But as I am sceptical about any system based on exchange IMHO this could only be temporary solutions. Actually I don't know what you are proposing: Open money as a aid for people in (a declining) capitalism (unable to provide things on a regular basis) or whether you're proposing a society based on open money. ------xxx----- > Open money is not a scarce commodity, ------xxx----- Ahm, what? A money which is not scarce is anything but money. If I can create money by free will out of nothing than what would it be good for at all? ------xxx----- > it has no price (interest) ------xxx----- Uuh the old Gesellian thesis. Again I'd say that in a society based on exchange at some point interest is something which can't be prevented as such a society unfolds. ------xxx----- > and cannot be hoarded or used as capital. ------xxx----- Capital is money which is used to create more money. For that aim hoarding is counterproductive anyway. I can't see why this is not possible with open money. Why for instance is wage labor impossible with LETS / open money? ------xxx----- > My colleagues and I believe that > markets and money can be developed on non-capitalist principles, initially > as part of capitalist commerce, not independently of it. ------xxx----- This pops up the question what capitalist means to you. I understand any society based on exchange as capitalist - even the former Soviet Union. Mit Freien Grüßen Stefan ------------- Firing up ding and looking up a translation for "Tausch", which is the german phrase Stefan Mn. refers to, I get "exchange, swap" and "tradeoff" as possible translations. Both of these terms mean, that two parties, which have commodities (Waren) under their command, exchange these commodites in a way, which marks the ammount of both commodities as equivalent. The value (Wert) of the commodities is use to determine, if the transaction is "fair": both parties only give an ammount of value equal to the one they receive. The practical value (Gebrauchswert) of the goods which act as commodities is of no interest in an exchange. Of course on of the commidities in this exchange can be money. Free software is distributed in a different way. It is given without return of an equivalent and can be taken by everybody according to his needs. This is no exchange since no equivalent values are involved. Regards, Lutz ------------- Indeed that's the right question here. I'll try to give a definition: * Exchange means that something is exchanged between two parties. I.e. both party get something. This delimits exchange from unidirectional flows such as we see in Free Software. Moreover this needs two separated parties to exist. When there are no separated parties there is no need to exchange. This delimits societies based on exchange - which need to have separated parties - from other societies - which need not have separated parties in the sense exchange based societies need them. For material commodities this usually means that the giving party looses the commodity while giving. This is not true for information commodities and this is the basic reason you need artificial things like copyright stating what is obviously not factual. * To make an exchange on a rational basis, there must be a common ground to base the exchange on. Economists for long wondered what this common ground might be when looking at money / commodity exchange and I go along with Marx' analysis that it is the societal average amount of labor embodied in a commodity. This rather abstract thing is called (exchange) value and is reflected in the prices of a commodity. Money in this sense is only the concrete abstraction of value. This common ground delimits exchange from mutual flows without such a common ground. Because (I guess) ants have no notion of value they do not exchange - despite the fact that they organize a flow of matter which at some times may even be mutual. This delimits exchange from flows which take place because of brute force. Well, this might be reconsidered, but I think it does not make sense to count robbery as exchange. Mit Freien Grüßen Stefan ---------------- I think "exchange" is not the ideal word, because the point here (I think) is that one thing *is given away to get another*. In other words, one *thing of value* is exchanged with *another thing of value*, which we'd rather have than the first one. I think "trade" would be a better word. "Exchange" can mean "trade," but it does not in the context of a colony of ants. (And remember that German "ich tausche X gegen Y" would more likely be translated as "I trade X for Y" than "I exchange X with Y...") Maybe best would be to say that what's meant here is the least common denominator of "exchange" and "trade" ;-) - Benja ------------- Thanks for the clarification, but I'm still not convinced. Richard Stallman himself has denied that Free Software is based on "unidirectional flows." In an article called "Pragmatic Idealism", he argues that the GPL is in fact explicitly designed to force the users of free software to compensate its creators with free software in return: If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough--you need to choose a method which works to achieve the goal. In other words, you need to be "pragmatic." Is the GPL pragmatic? Let's look at its results. Consider GNU C++. Why do we have a free C++ compiler? Only because the GNU GPL said it had to be free [...] The benefit to our community is evident. Consider GNU Objective C. NeXT initially wanted to make this front end proprietary; they proposed to release it as .o files, and let users link them with the rest of GCC, thinking this might be a way around the GPL's requirements. But our lawyer said that this would not evade the requirements, that it was not allowed. And so they made the Objective C front end free software. Those examples happened years ago, but the GNU GPL continues to bring us more free software [...] The GNU GPL is not Mr. Nice Guy. It says "no" to some of the things that people sometimes

want to do [...] The GNU GPL is designed to make an inducement from our existing software: "If you will make your software free, you can use this code." Of course, it won't win 'em all, but it wins some of the time.Nor am I convinced by the "Selbstentfaltung" theory of political economy. If I've understood correctly, the argument restates a platitude [Klischee] that we sometimes encounter in English as "If you do what you love, you'll have what you need." If that principle is to work as the basis of an entire society, a lot of people will need to love jobs like garbage collection and coal-mining [Abfallbeseitigung und Kohlenbergbau]. That's unlikely. As they say in the movie business, what everyone really wants to do is direct [Regisseur sein]. Kermit Snelson 0------------- Kermit Snelson wrote: > Richard Stallman himself has denied that Free Software is based on > "unidirectional flows." In an article called "Pragmatic Idealism", he > argues that the GPL is in fact explicitly designed to force the users of > free software to compensate its creators with free software in return: ------xxx----- Has he really? "To force the *users* of free software to *compensate its creators* with free software *in return*?" If I want to use free software, first I have to write some other piece of free software so I'll be allowed to use the first piece? Even if he had, the GPL would of course not live up to this standard: Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does. Considering what you quoted, I can only suppose you are refering to the following part of the quote: ------xxx----- > The GNU GPL is designed to make an > inducement from our existing software: "If you will make your software > free, you can use this code." Of course, it won't win 'em all, but it wins > some of the time. ------xxx----- But "you can use this code" is not using the program. So your statement would at least have to be re-phrased as "to force the *programmers of derivative works* of free software to compensate its creators with free software in return." But again I don't think that's what he's saying (and it's certainly not what I believe to be desirable, but that's off the point). I think from Stallman's writing it's pretty clear that he thinks everybody who publishes software should publish it as free. In the above quote, I understand him as saying that the GPL is designed to make more people publish software as free, because all people should. Thus this is not compensation for the original authors, but trying to make more people act the way Stallman considers right. Also compensation would mean the original creators did something unpleasant and they have to be compensated for it. Maybe some feel it's this way, but I'm sure the GPL was not explicity designed to meet this goal. (Rather, as I said, to spread the idea of free software to benefit all; this means the creators of the program in question, too, but not more or less than anybody else.) Do you really understand Stallman differently in what you quoted? If so, could you explain why? - Benja ------------- Hi All, I really enjoy this open money debate on oekonux and nettime. ------xxx----- > Has he really? "To force the *users* of free software to *compensate its > creators* with free software *in return*?" If I want to use free > software, first I have to write some other piece of free software so > I'll be allowed to use the first piece? ------xxx----- Yes, this logic makes in a small world where producers and users are the same people. The GPL so far only works amongst a small group of programmers. What I would like to introduce in this debate is the issue of scale. The free money people must have made thoughts about it but in the free software world I don't Scale in a science in itself. Ideas that may work well on a micro level perhaps won't a macro level. I think many debates on Oekonux are testing the treshold between micro and macro but have not really gone beyond the self-satisfied small scale communities (that we all like and nurture, including me). We all know certain principle work well in small groups and amongst specialists. But will they in society at large? And if not what is then our conclusion? At the moment I can see very real cultural boundaries why free software is not leaving the boundaries of male hobbyism and (consequently) the very specific server market linux operates within so well. But the issue is: can it first of all jump into other fields of IT, even outside of the IT- industry and join similar force within society which practice similar ideas (copyleft, basic income, LETS, etc.). I agree with Benja that 'exchange' is not going to be a very likely leading category/practice on the level of society. Ciao, Geert -------------- Hi Geert and all! Yesterday geert lovink wrote: >> Has he really? "To force the *users* of free software to *compensate its >> creators* with free software *in return*?" If I want to use free >> software, first I have to write some other piece of free software so >> I'll be allowed to use the first piece? > ------xxx----- > Yes, this logic makes in a small world where producers and users > are the same people. The GPL so far only works amongst a > small group of programmers. ------xxx----- Well, the GPL works for *me* because it gives me the freedom to use free software any way I want to (besides privatizing derivative work) - - regardless whether I'm a programmer or only a user. Actually I don't understand what you're trying to say. ------xxx----- > What I would like to introduce in this debate is the issue of scale. > The free money people must have made thoughts about it but > in the free software world I don't ^^^ ------xxx----- ??? A bit hasty that mail ;-) . ------xxx----- > Scale in a science in itself. Ideas that may work well on a micro > level perhaps won't a macro level. ------xxx----- Sure. IMHO particularly the open money / LETS / "Tauschring" is an example for that sort of problem. Exchange works best with big markets - - and it changes its shape radically. ------xxx----- > I think many debates on > Oekonux are testing the treshold between micro and macro > but have not really gone beyond the self-satisfied small scale > communities (that we all like and nurture, including me). ------xxx----- GNU/Linux and other Free Software is used not only in small scale communities but meanwhile has a worldwide user community. And the numbers still go up. I can't see your point here. ------xxx----- > We all know certain principle work well in small groups and > amongst specialists. But will they in society at large? And if > not what is then our conclusion? That's simple: Drop them. > At the moment I can see very real cultural boundaries why > free software is not leaving the boundaries of male hobbyism > and (consequently) the very specific server market linux > operates within so well. ------xxx----- Why the hell should a female worker not work with say KDE, OpenOffice and Mozilla? All this is readily available and I know a number of "only"-users using GNU/Linux in such a way. I guess I don't understand what you're talking about really. ------xxx----- > But the issue is: can it first of all > jump into other fields of IT, even outside of the IT- > industry and join similar force within society which > practice similar ideas (copyleft, basic income, LETS, etc.). ------xxx----- Are there similar forces? If we see the fundamental absence of exchange as a principle of Free Software nor basic income neither LETS are similar. And copyleft in other fields is a result of Free Software so there is no need to join it. Mit Freien Grüßen Stefan --------------- >The free money people must have made thoughts about it but >in the free software world I don't -------- Yes, we have and the quickest answer is that we expect most businesses, organizations and people in the world to use community currencies - cc. We don't know how quickly it will happen, but anticipate the same kind of proliferation as the internet, particularly since there already is an internet. At first, they will be independent networks, like intranets were at the beginning and cc will follow the same pattern towards connectivity as the internet. It could happen very quickly when it starts to move. The software kernel has been written for the independent system - www.openmoney.org/go/cc.html ernie ---------------- Benja: > Do you really understand Stallman differently in what you quoted? > If so, could you explain why? Now that I'm a little more familiar with Oekonux's language, I now understand why Benja objected to what I thought was a fairly literal reading of Stallman's article.[1] It's true, of course, that one may use GPL software without giving anything in return. Therefore, it does not in most cases imply an "exchange" in the sense that Oekonux uses the term. You're right about that. But... ------xxx----- > But "you can use this code" is not using the program. So your statement > would at least have to be re-phrased as "to force the *programmers of > derivative works* of free software to compensate its creators with free > software in return." But again I don't think that's what he's saying [...] ------xxx----- I disagree. I think that's exactly what Stallman and the GPL are saying. Anyone who uses GPLed code in her own program (which makes it a derivative work under copyright law, according to Stallman) must, under force of law, release that program under the GPL and therefore make it freely available to anybody. Even if she doesn't want to. And that's the basis for Stallman's claim that using copyleft is not only idealistic, but also pragmatic. Read the example he gives. Because we published a free C compiler, he writes, we got a free C++ compiler. "The benefit to our community is evident." That's an appeal to a bidirectional flow, isn't it? Why did we get a free C++ compiler? As he says in the article, "The GNU GPL is not Mr. Nice Guy." He even uses the word "lawyer" [Rechtsanwalt]. As you know, a lawyer specializes in the dark arts of convincing judges to deploy the organized violence of the state in order to deprive her opponents' clients of money, liberty or (in most USA jurisdictions) even life itself. It is this awesome power of the state to which Stallman is appealing. Not Selbstentfaltung. Now, state coercion obviously can't force anybody to publish her software under the GPL, or to use GPLed code. Unless, of course, the state passes legislation to that effect, and it's interesting that Stallman didn't respond with a simple "yes" or "no" when recently asked whether he would favor such a statute. Again, I'm not saying it would be immoral for Stallman to believe (if he does) that the state has the right to dictate to developers the terms under which they may publish their own work. Many industries are regulated by the state in the public interest, and there's no inherent reason why software should be an exception. But I'm sure many people (like Eric Raymond) would see such legislation as tyranny. Political views aside, however, one thing is clear: a concept of "freedom" that requires forcing people to do things against their will has always been difficult for some people to understand or accept. I think this is the main reason for the political split between the "Free Software" and "Open Source" camps. By the way, I think it's interesting to note that in the case of libraries, the only possible purpose of which is to create "derivative works", the FSF found it necessary to create a weaker (i.e., less "free") version of the GPL. Of course, the FSF had no choice; without this LGPL (and I'm thinking of the GNU C library here), GNU/Linux would have been a complete non-starter. But what does this tell us about the principles of Free Software if they had to be weakened by the FSF themselves in order to bend to economic reality? In fact, I think the FSF's definition of "derivative work" is the Achilles heel of the GPL. Even assuming that their interpretation of this legal term of art would hold up in a court of law (and as far as I know, it's never been tested), there are grave problems with its practical enforcability. First of all, the FSF FAQ itself[2] is enough to send most corporate counsel running for their lives. Their definition of derivative work is absurdly technical and possibly even platform- or deployment-dependent; it requires knowing things like whether the GPLed code is linked, forked, subclassed, etc.; whether code intended for an interpreter is OK depends on whether or not the interpreter contains bindings to external facilities. And so on. Only a programmer, in other words, can figure out whether the GPL is being violated. Multiply that by the insanely huge, multi-licensed heirarchy of RPMs used by a typical Linux product such as PostgresSQL and you've got the legal equivalent of an NP-incomplete problem. Even if there are a few lawyers who actually understand such things, they would never be able to make sense of it to a judge or a jury. That's why a lot of law firms involved in corporate mergers are now requiring possible acquisition targets to certify that they don't have a single line of GPLed code anywhere in their company. They simply don't know how to handle the legal risk. ------xxx----- > Also compensation would mean the original creators did something > unpleasant and they have to be compensated for it. ------xxx----- What does pleasure (or lack of it) have to do with the concept of compensation? I love my job, but I still expect to be paid for doing it. Perhaps we're getting stuck on the German-English thing again. Where I live, "compensation" means "Gehalt, Fringe Benefits und Aktienoptionen." I think the only thing pleasure has to do with compensation is the fact that starving to death is unpleasant, and that's exactly what will happen to most of us unless we're compensated in some way for a fairly significant portion of our time. That's why the MacArthur Foundation gave Richard Stallman a US$240,000 grant and health insurance back in 1990, so he could spend his time saving the world without worrying about missing meals. Selbstentfaltung ist ja nicht billig. [That long German word Oekonux swears by sure ain't cheap.] :-) Kermit Snelson ------------ > > I think the only thing pleasure has to do with compensation is > > the fact that starving to death is unpleasant, and that's > > exactly what will happen to most of us unless we're compensated > > in some way for a fairly significant portion of our time. ------xxx----- > But why needs this to be linked? Why not asking for the right to live > a decent life completely independent of what you're doing? ------xxx----- Why not? Metabolism. The facts of biology are such that living things need to work in order to eat. Even plants compete for water and sunlight. If you don't work and still stay alive, that just means that somebody else has done the necessary work for you. That's what child-rearing, pensions, charitable institutions and foundation grants are all about. Richard Stallman, for instance, lives on foundation grants. But somebody along the line had to do the work to grow or slaughter whatever it is that Stallman eats. That's why only a few of us can be privileged to live on foundation grants. And in anticipation of a possible response, I'll go ahead and say now that we can't automate every aspect of sustaining life. That's just a variation on the old, thermodynamically impossible argument for a perpetual motion machine. Somebody will always have to work in some form or another, and social justice requires that it be all who are capable of it. Again, thanks for a great post. But you didn't mention my point about the "Library/Lesser" LGPL. I'd be interested in knowing your thoughts about it. Kermit ---------------- Yes, not everything can be automated. Though the pressure to automate everything which a) is too unpleasant for people to want to do and b) which can potentially be automated, would be much greater in such a society. Things which people do want to do can be done by working on them, on the free software model. The problem for me is with your last sentence: 'Someone will always have to work... andsocial justice requires that it be all who are capable of it' which for me is one huge can of worms. A closely related phrase with more historical resonance is: 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'. For your version, you need someone to measure how capable you are of work, and whether what you are doing counts as 'work'. For the second version, you need someone to measure your ability, and measure your work, and see how they match up. In other words, they need both a government with powers to enforce work, and a measure of work (which can only be some variation of money). Going by the historical evidence, this doesn't work out too well. Even ignoring history and talking more abstractly, suppose I decide to spend some years learning to paint, will 'social justice' consider me as working or not? Suppose I decide to spend a year in bed, as a conceptual art project? And who makes the decision - is social justice embodied in courts? So I prefer the Oekonux version, which IIRC goes something like - 'give what you want to, take what you need'. The real underlying problem hasn't gone away though - suppose the total of what people want to contribute is less than the total of what people need? Then there will be at the least social pressure (if not legal or state) pressure on people to do more. This is the point that I'm stuck on at the moment. The 'selbst' in 'selbstentfaltung' is great as an emphasis on people doing things because they choose too, linking personal with social because the unfolding of the self is only possible in a social context. But in a sense it seems like wishful thinking: it works perfectly for free software, which people aren't physically dependent on. But what happens when the things we physically depend on are produced in this way too? I can imagine at the least a tendency for the neighbours to be commenting "you know so-and-so in number 33? Hasn't done a stroke of productive work in years, claims she's inventing some abstract mathematical theory but I reckon she's just taking it easy and living off everyone else's work. Did you ever see her on the local garbage truck?" And that kind of thing could build up to quite an unpleasant environment where everyone is monitoring what everyone else does and things become very conformist. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't see any structural guarantee that 'selbstentfaltung' will be maintain itself; I would like to think that it would, but I'm afraid it might turn out to be a modern equivalent of 'liberte, egalite, fraternite': all deeply believed in, enough to motivate many people to support a revolution, but in the end more ideological than factual. Stefan? Have there been discussions on the German list around this point? Graham ------------- Hi Graham, I agree with your post, but I obviously need to clarify one thing: > The problem for me is with your last sentence: 'Someone > will always have to work... andsocial justice requires > that it be all who are capable of it' which for me is one > huge can of worms. A closely related phrase with more > historical resonance is: 'From each according to his ability, > to each according to his needs'. You're reading quite a bit more into my statement than what I said. I was simply arguing that no one should live at another's expense without mutual consent or compensation. In other words: exploitation bad. I wasn't arguing for police state totalitarianism. I think that's bad, too. > Suppose I decide to spend a year in bed, as a conceptual art project? > And who makes the decision - is social justice embodied in courts? Spending the year in bed as a conceptual art installation is perfectly OK as long as somebody is paying for it voluntarily, either through personal savings, private philanthropy or an allocation of public funds through democratically enacted law. That's how such projects are currently funded, and I think that's fine. Of course, current societies can afford to support only so much "non-commercial" activity in this way. It's a rather elite game. It appears to me that Oekonux is thinking about ways to organize society so that this funding model may be extended to support any form of human endeavor, not just those currently deemed worthy of support by those who control private and public philanthropy. Kermit ---------------http://straddle3.net/context/ 02/020315_science.en.html via indy 153482 the global commons for the benefit of scientific progress, education and the public good (about info-flowfreedom) the global commons "The steady march of information technology plays an ever-increasing role in shaping, preserving, enlarging, and uniting humanity's overall scientific and cultural heritage. With the growth of the Internet, an ever-increasing portion of all human art and learning is available at the speed of light, worldwide. The shared on-line environment, like our physical environment, constitutes a global commons, with similar imperatives for stewardship and preservation." >from *Nurturing the cybercommons. Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility annual conference*, october 19-21, 2001. "In The Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig explains how the Internet revolution has produced a counterrevolution of devastating power and effect. The explosion of innovation we have seen in the environment of the Internet was not conjured from some new, previously unimagined technological magic; instead, it came from an ideal as old as the nation. Creativity flourished there because the Internet protected an innovation commons. The Internet's very design built a neutral platform upon which the widest range of creators could experiment. The legal architecture surrounding it protected this free space so that culture and information -the ideas of our era- could flow freely and inspire an unprecedented breadth of expression. But this structural design is changing both legally and technically... The choice Lawrence Lessig presents is not between progress and the status quo. It is between progress and a new Dark Ages, in which our capacity to create is confined by an architecture of control and a society more perfectly monitored and filtered than any before in history. Important avenues of thought and free expression will increasingly be closed off. The door to a future of ideas is being shut just as technology makes an extraordinary future possible." >from *The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World* ^ >for the benefit of scientific progress, education and the public good A new model for scientific production, publishing and access are emerging in the new environment of the networked society, in the free culture that flourish in this commons built by the Internet. This developments preserve the public domain of knowledge "for the benefit of scientific progress, education and the public good." In this trend we can found recent initiatives such as the Public Library of Science, the Petition to Public Funding Agencies: Support Open Source Software or the Budapest Open Access Initiative. The Public Library of Science is a grassroots initiative by scientists. "The Public Library of Science is a non-profit organization of scientists committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature freely accessible to scientists and to the public around the world, for the benefit of scientific progress, education and the public good. We are working for the establishment of international online public libraries of science that will archive and distribute the complete contents of published scientific articles, and foster the development of new ways to search, interlink and integrate the information that is currently partitioned into millions of separate reports and segregated into thousands of different journals, each with its own restrictions on access." Since their published open letter to support the establishment of an international online public library on medicine and the life sciences, more than 29,630 scientists from 175 countries have signed it. "To encourage the publishers of our journals to support this endeavor, we pledge that, beginning in September, 2001, we will publish in, edit or review for, and personally subscribe to, only those scholarly and scientific journals that have agreed to grant unrestricted free distribution rights to any and all original research reports that they have published, through PubMed Central and similar online public resources, within 6 months of their initial publication date." Now some journals adopted the policies they advocate, "however, the resistance this initiative has met from most of the scientific publishers has made it clear that if we really want to change the publication of scientific research, we must do the publishing ourselves. It is now time for us to work together to create the journals we have called for." So they will launch early next year new scientific journals that will publish peer-reviewed scientific research reports online with no restrictions on access or distribution. Articles published by the forthcoming journals will be released under terms of a new *Public Library of Science Open Access License*, analogous to the way in which open source software is produced. The costs of peer review, editorial oversight and publication will be recovered primarily by charges to authors (approximately $300 per published article; costs will be subsidized for authors who can not afford these charges.)" >from *The Public Library of Science site* "Software funded by publically-funded research should be released under Open Source or Free Software licenses. This will benefit the public by promoting both the pace and progress of science by encouraging open and verifiable peer-reviewed research and the reuse of previously reviewed software. Software plays a large and growing role in scientific research. Modern science uses software to simulate complex systems, collect data, and to analyze the results of experiments. We feel that public distribution and critical examination of software source code are critical to the progress of science. We believe that researchers supported by publically-funded grant agencies should be required, as a condition on funding, to publish any source code under an Open Source or a Free Software license. Such licensing is the software equivalent of peer-reviewed publication of research results. The first obvious benefit of mandatory software source release is a speedup of software development. The longer-term benefit is that the software can be studied and reviewed in the same way as the other parts of scientific research." >from *Petition to Public Funding Agencies: Support Open Source Software*, september 24, 2001. "An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds... Open access to peer-reviewed journal literature is the goal. Self-archiving and a new generation of open-access alternative journals are the ways to attain this goal... The Open Society Institute, the foundation network founded by philanthropist George Soros, is committed to providing initial help and funding to realize this goal [ with a $3m grant ] ... We invite governments, universities, libraries, journal editors, publishers, foundations, learned societies, professional associations, and individual scholars who share our vision to join us in the task of removing the barriers to open access and building a future in which research and education in every part of the world are that much more free to flourish." >from *Budapest Open Access Initiative*, february 14, 2002 ^ >information should be kept free The free software (refers to freedom, not price) and open source are initiatives of the hacker culture of the Internet to support independent peer review and rapid evolutionary selection of software. "In summary, open source software/free software programs are programs whose licenses permit users the freedom to run the program for any purpose, to modify the program, and to redistribute the original or modified program (without requiring payment to someone else or restricting who the program can be given to)." >from *Open Source Software / Free Software References* by David Wheeler. The original license is *GNU General Public License* (or GPL) based on copyleft (beyond copyright). "We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software. Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software." Stallman, founder of free software movement, encouraged programmers to keep software in the public domain by using copyleft and the General Public License. "Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of under which the open-source software must comply with the following criteria: 1. Free Redistribution. The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale... 2. Source Code... 3. Derived Works. The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software... 4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code...an open-source license must guarantee that source be readily available, but may require that it be distributed as pristine base sources plus patches... 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups... 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor... The major intention of this clause is to prohibit license traps that prevent open source from being used commercially. We want commercial users to join our community, not feel excluded from it... 7. Distribution of License... 8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product... 9. The License Must Not Restrict Other Software...". >from *The Open Source Definition*, version 1.9. Eric Raymond's Open Source Initiative said that the term 'open source' is 'a marketing program for free software' (and recommends using the term 'open source' instead). "Open Source campaign... a sustained effort to argue for 'free software' on pragmatic grounds of reliability, cost, and strategic business risk... It has almost completely turned around the negative image that 'free software' had outside the hacker community." >from *OSI Launch Announcement*, november 22, 1998. "The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing. We in the open source community have learned that this rapid evolutionary process produces better software than the traditional closed model, in which only a very few programmers can see the source and everybody else must blindly use an opaque block of bits. Open Source Initiative exists to make this case to the commercial world." >from *Open Source Initiative site*. At the origins of all the grassroots movement is the Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985 by Richard Stallman, "dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software -- particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants -- and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software." >from *Free Software Foundation site*. Stallman take part in the debate about a new model for scientific publishing. "The modern technology for scientific publishing, however, is the World Wide Web. What rules would best ensure the maximum dissemination of scientific articles, and knowledge on the Web? Articles should be distributed in non-proprietary formats, with open access for all. And everyone should have the right to 'mirror' articles; that is, to republish them verbatim with proper attribution... The US Constitution says that copyright exists 'to promote the progress of science.' When copyright impedes the progress of science, science must push copyright out of the way." >from *Science Must Push Copyright Aside by Richard Stallman ---------------     From: ernie yacub <yacinfo mars.ark.com> list-en/archive/msg00336.html From: "Kermit Snelson" <ksnelson subjectivity.com Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 20:57:32 -0800 word social forum/stallman/patents Graham Seaman: Is this something new, with elements from free software, anti-patent campaigns, anti-globalization and the old 'new left' (Chomsky, Saramago, Wallenstein) coming together, or has it been going on for a while and I just missed it? -----xx----- I discovered this convergence only recently myself, and I've been trying to figure out the ideological reason (if any) for it. The people who attend the World Social Forum have many conflicting opinions. But the common idea seems to be that information (the bit) is ontologically distinct from matter (the atom), and that the increasingly information-driven character of modern economies will consequently lead to the overthrow of today's atom-based social norms. Of course, this means that the World Social Forum essentially shares the metaphysical world-view of its Davos-bred opponents. The difference is that whereas the Davos crowd wants to enable an exchange-based economy for "information products," the WSF generally wants to prevent one. To accomplish this, Davos advocates stronger legal restrictions on the transmission or use of information, whereas the WSF generally advocates weaker ones. Davos, in other words, believes that information should be bought and sold and that artificial scarcities should be introduced by law in order to make such markets possible. Porto Alegre, on the other hand, believes that information, which naturally lacks the scarcities inherent in atom-based markets, should remain completely unrestricted and thus remain res extra commercium. That's my latest theory, anyway. In any case, it may indicate at least one way in which Negri, Stallman and Raymond might ideologically overlap. Kermit ------------------ Hm. One of the mean point of Attac, which is an organisation with much influence in WSF, ist th "Tobin-Tax" (an special tax on international financial trade), which tries to implement an scarcity in information. Or i am missing something? Benni------------ Yes, you missed something ;-) By using the word "trade" rather than "speculate" or "gamble", you have missed the essence of what the Tobin-Tax is trying to accomplish. There are many of us that would like to separate "trade and investment" from "speculation and gambling". Trade and investment would be treated as economic issues with attempts to protect free(fair) market principles. Speculation and gambling, and their leading to addictions, would be treated as a health and social problem. As an example, the old MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment) was an example of an agreement intended to reduce the responsibility of speculators, not increase investment that would lead to enhancement of the economy. Once seen from the context of these mixed issues, many multinational treaties make much more sense (as do those who oppose them). --- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: < TARGET="_blank"http://www.flora.ca/ See http://weblog.flora.org/ for announcements, activities, and opinions "If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." -- Noam Chomsky ------------ mmm. I'm puzzled here (not about what you're saying, but about the reality behind it). You're saying this is on both sides a 'metaphysical' view, and I can see your argument for that. On the other hand, Davos forms the tactics for the owners of the current economy, where the people attending the WSF are largely people from or associated (eg Oxfam) with the very poorest countries. For those countries disputes over patents for medicine or crops are not just metaphysics, and the tactics they follow are important in the real world. The Davos people's decisions have even more direct real-world effects. So I don't think there's any argument that what the two sides are arguing over has considerable real world importance, and any tactics eg. in relation to TRIPS that come out of these conferences are also important. But what does it mean if the tactics are derived from a 'metaphysical world-view'? Are they necessarily wrong? Or does it weaken the arguments and make it harder to get support for them? -----xx----- Davos, in other words, believes that information should be bought and sold and that artificial scarcities should be introduced by law in order to make such markets possible. Porto Alegre, on the other hand, believes that information, which naturally lacks the scarcities inherent in atom-based markets, should remain completely unrestricted and thus remain res extra commercium. That's my latest theory, anyway. In any case, it may indicate at least one way in which Negri, Stallman and Raymond might ideologically overlap. Since everyone keeps mentioning him, guess I'll have to read some Negri (I know nothing about him). Can you recommend any particular work to give me some idea? Ciao, Graham ---------------------- But what does it mean if the tactics are derived from a 'metaphysical world-view'? Are they necessarily wrong? Or does it weaken the arguments and make it harder to get support for them? -----xx----- Those are big questions, and I wasn't trying in my post to make such ambitious claims. But now that you mention it, I do in fact believe that it is impossible to base truly radical theory and practice on metaphysical premises. I think many (but certainly not most) of today's progressive movements have lost effectiveness by adopting them. But that's a topic for another list, oder? -----xx----- Since everyone keeps mentioning him, guess I'll have to read some Negri (I know nothing about him). Can you recommend any particular work to give me some idea? -----xx----- The most accessible work is: Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio, Empire, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press; 2000 (ISBN:0674006712). In my none-too-popular opinion, that book represents the state of the art in how to cloak reactionary metaphysics in a progressive disguise. ------------ From: "Kermit Snelson" <ksnelson subjectivity.com Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 09:32:51 -0800 Hi Benni, For me this is perfect on topic here. And i would like it to read your mails about this. -----xx----- OK, here goes: John Norem: Could you provide an example of what you mean by 'truly radical theory and practice'? -----xx----- I'm using the word "radical" in the sense that Marx did. I can't improve on his own words, so I'll cite the same passage I quoted at Graham the other day on the German list (except this time at greater length, and in translation): "The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter. But, for man, the root is man himself. The evident proof of the radicalism of German theory, and hence of its practical energy, is that is proceeds from a resolute positive abolition of religion. The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man -- hence, with the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence, relations which cannot be better described than by the cry of a Frenchman when it was planned to introduce a tax on dogs: Poor dogs! They want to treat you as human beings!" [Marx, "A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Introduction"] In other words, I subscribe to Marx's argument that a theory is "radical" and has "practical energy" only if it "proceeds from a resolute positive abolition of religion." Instead of "religion", however, I use the word "metaphysics." Which leads me to John's next question: Also, maybe you could specify in what way Hardt and Negri's work is based on a reactionary metaphysics? Could you define reactionary metaphysics? -----xx----- My thinking here follows Hans Kelsen, the famous jurist and the lead architect of the constitution of Austria. Kelsen is associated with the school of legal positivism, which is the main rival of the natural law school. (Incidentally, Negri and Hardt cite Kelsen in the early pages of _Empire_.) I think it's clear that Negri and Hardt's book is a typical example of natural law thinking which, as Kelsen demonstrated, derives from a metaphysical worldview. In fact, Kelsen's description of natural law thinking in his 1949 book "General Theory of Law and State" very closely matches the argument and style of _Empire_. For instance, Negri's anarchism, assault on the nation-state and every other organized institution, even trade unions, closely fits Kelsen's description of natural law: "Natural law is, on principle, a non-coercive, anarchic order. Every natural-law theory, as long as it retains the idea of a pure law of nature, must be ideal anarchism; every anarchism, from primitive Christianity down to modern Marxism is, fundamentally, a natural-law theory." [Kelsen, "General Theory of Law and State", p.393] Negri appeals throughout _Empire_ both to modern Marxism and to primitive Christianity, identifies his project as based on St. Augustine of Hippo, and ends the book with a invocation of St. Francis of Assisi. Kelsen also makes it clear that natural law theory is not only inherently reaactionary, but tends to hide this reactionary character under revolutionary trappings: "All the natural-law teachers to whom there is still attributed any eminence belong to the conservative trend. How could it have been otherwise? Were they not all either faithful and obedient servants of the State, or ministers of a State church, professors, envoys, privy councillors, etc.? After all, the climax of natural-law doctrine, its classical period, coincides with the time of the most unmitigated political absolutism [...] Why is it that the opinion concerning natural-law theory, which today prevails among scholars, presents exactly the opposite picture? [...] It is an error in the history of ideas which was further strengthened by the fact that the idea of natural law may actually have a revolutionary character, while, in its historical reality, natural-law doctrine [...] has manifested just the opposite." [ebd., p.417-8] Both tendencies, toward overt revolution and covert reaction, are also evident in Negri's book. In addition to the theological messianism and appeal to Christian saints that I mentioned above, the book relies on several ideas propounded nearly a century ago by Georges Sorel in his 1907 book "Reflections on Violence". That book, although it also claimed to be Marxist, was in fact a great influence on Mussolini and Fascism. A more obvious link between Negri and today's forces of reaction is his unstinting advocacy of globalism and the decline of the nation-state. Negri's work, in other words, is nothing more (or less) than a way to sell globalism to the left. This is why he and Hardt have enjoyed such access to Harvard's press and to the global media marketing machine (Time, Newsweek, London Review of Books, etc.) Convincing the world that the nation-state is obsolete has, in fact, been the purpose of what is perhaps history's most elaborate public relations campaign. A 1974 study tied this nicely to Negri-style protests in the 60s as follows: "[A] new breed of globalists have launched an attack on the nation-state more radical than anything proposed by the World Federalists, U.N. enthusiasts, or other apostles of "woolly-headed internationalism" who traditionally cause dismay in boardrooms and country clubs. The men who run the global corporations, aware that ideologies, like crackers, travel well only if skillfully packaged, are putting great energy into marketing a new gospel of peace and plenty, which has more potential to change the face of the earth than even the merchandising miracles that have brought Holiday Inns and Pepsi-Cola bottling plants to Moscow and Pollo Frito Kentucky to Latin America. [IBM chief] Jacques Maisonrouge likes to point out that "Down with Borders," a revolutionary student slogan of the 1968 Paris university uprising -- in which some of his children were involved -- is also a welcome slogan at IBM." [Barnet, Richard J. and Müller, Ronald E., _Global Reach_, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1974, p.19] Kelsen also identified what might be a possible reason why today's situation might closely resemble that of the declining Weimar Republic in his own time, which would help explain the recent resurgence of natural law thinking on both the right and left: "An anti-metaphysical, scientific-critical philosophy with objectivity as its ideal, like legal positivism, seems to thrive only in relatively quiet times, in periods of social balance. The social foundations and, with them, the self-confidence of the individual, have been deeply shaken in our time. Most values thus far taken for granted are questioned; the conflict between interest groups has been tremendously intensified, and with it the struggle for a new order is under way. In such times, a greatly deepened need for the absolute justification of the postulates put forth in the struggle will manifest itself. Even if the individual naively experiences his temporary interest as a "right," how much more will every interest-group want to invoke "justice" in the realization of its demands! Before we had reason to expect it, the reaction has set in which augers a renaissance of metaphysics and, thereby, of natural law theory." [Kelsen, a.a.O., p.446] I could go on, but that's probably enough to get things either started or stopped :). Kermit oekonux.org/ ----xx----- Eh, it may be my bad english, but: What the hell ist "natural law" and "legal positivism". You seems to think, everybody knows this. Maybe you can explain this in short words? Thankyou. -----xx----- A more obvious link between Negri and today's forces of reaction is his unstinting advocacy of globalism and the decline of the nation-state. -----xx----- What is good on nations? Nobody needs this phantasmas. Benni ------xx----- "Legal positivism" and "natural law" are basic terms in the science of jurisprudence [Rechtswissenschaft]. Trying to explain them in short words could only mislead, but fortunately there's a lot on the Internet about them. The German equivalents are "Rechtspositivismus" and "Naturrecht", so search away. I don't assume that everybody knows legal terminology, but I'm certainly not assuming any more than Negri does. It's absolutely impossible to understand _Empire_ without knowing the basics of jurisprudence, because that's primarily what the book is about. He cites Kelsen. He cites (with more approval) Kelsen's main Weimar rival, Carl Schmitt. A keystone of the book is US constitutional theory. He carries on long, technical discussions concerning the theory of post-national sovereignty. He throws around, completely without explanation, professional legal terms like "res gestae" and "posse comitatus." There's even an old German legal term, "Vogelfrei", which he uses but completely misinterprets (perhaps intentionally.) _Empire_, in other words, is about law. And it's about reviving ancient Roman imperial legal theory in particular. That's why there's all that stuff about Machiavelli and Virgil and Polybius and early Christianity. Negri is arguing for the overthrow of current models of sovereignty and their replacement by a global, "deterritorialized" version of US constitutional federalism. And so is President Bush, although it obviously took some "persuading" first. -----xx----- What is good on nations? Nobody needs this phantasmas. Without strong, democratic nation-states, there is absolutely no way to keep countries, even rich ones, from being looted by private corporations. That's exactly what globalization is: a very well-organized effort by global corporations to rewrite the world's law to make it possible to move goods, capital and technology around the world without the interference of nation-states. And as Barnet and Müller wrote in their 1974 book _Global Reach_, "such a crusade calls for the public relations campaign of the century." The net result of this campaign is that 28 years after _Global Reach_ appeared, much of the Left has been duped into fighting for precisely the same goal as that of the major corporations. This aspect of the campaign has been accomplished primarily through the world's universities, and I consider it a shameful corruption of the educational system that many of the world's most educated and influential activists have dedicated their lives to advancing Negri's ideas without the slightest background knowledge necessary to understand even what _Empire_'s words mean, much less its argument. Kermit ____ http://www.oekonux.org/ ----- -----xx----- Ah thanks. Now i know it. A good explanation is here (in german): http://www.dadalos.org/deutsch/Menschenrechte/ Grundkurs_MR2/Naturrecht/naturrecht.htm But what i not understand is, why natural law is a problem for you (or Kelsen). Maybe you can explain this? -----xx----- What is good on nations? Nobody needs this phantasmas. Without strong, democratic nation-states, there is absolutely no way to keep countries, even rich ones, from being looted by private corporations. -----xx----- Without strong nation-states, there is absolutely no way for private corporations to reach any goal. The (positive) law of the countries and there ability to enforce them with police and military forces are the ground which are needed bye the globocorps. Nations and corporations are only two sides of the coin, which is called capitalism. That's exactly what globalization is: a very well-organized effort by global corporations to rewrite the world's law to make it possible to move goods, capital and technology around the world without the interference of nation-states. -----xx----- Yes, and thats a good thing. But you need to add free movement of peoples and ideas. Thats the difference between a "left" and a "right" globalisation. Benni ---------- But what i not understand is, why natural law is a problem for you (or Kelsen). Maybe you can explain this? -----xx----- First of all, let me clarify that I'm not against natural law per se [an sich]. Problems arise only in the relationship between positive and natural law. In this case, I'm arguing against the idea that natural law can replace positive law. But the reverse isn't a good idea, either. That said, the theory that natural law can replace positive law is dangerous because in order to work, it assumes that a single idea must dominate. That's why natural law is being used today to implement globalism, or what the US foreign policy establishment is now calling the soon-to-be "American Commonwealth of Nations." That's why it was originally developed to replace the Roman Republic with the Roman Empire, and why it was used in both early Christianity and early Islam to justify world conquest. It assumes the replacement of politics (which, in practice, is the question of deciding "Who pays?") by some ethical, cultural or even "scientific" ideal. But of course, you'll never get everybody to agree on any such thing. Therefore, sophisticated (or at least not completely naive) arguments for the replacement of positive law by natural law always end up rejecting democracy and liberalism in favor of some concept of conquest or violence. See Christianity's Crusades, Islam's jihad, Sorel's "myth of the general strike", Marcuse's "negative thinking" and essay on "repressive tolerance", Negri's ontological concept of total opposition, and now President Bush's "Axis of Evil." In other words, eternal war for eternal peace. This is inevitable, and it follows from the logical structure of natural law argument. -----xx----- Without strong nation-states, there is absolutely no way for private corporations to reach any goal. -----xx----- The private corporations themselves say precisely the opposite, and for decades have been funding very expensive campaigns to get nation-states out of their way. The published evidence for this statement is overwhelming. Are you saying they've simply been mistaken about their own interests? For over sixty years? -----xx----- Yes, and thats a good thing. But you need to add free movement of peoples and ideas. Thats the difference between a "left" and a "right" globalisation. -----xx----- But is getting rid of patents and copyright and border controls and every other kind of positive law, including nation-states themselves, really sufficient to enable a free movement of peoples and ideas? Wouldn't you also need free transportation? Free housing? Free foreign-language instruction? Free cultural sensitivity training? Are you really arguing that a society based on Selbstentfaltung will be able to produce all these things? And if so, how do we get there from here? Kermit ----------- xxxx --------- xxxxx -------- science commons building a free flow of knowledge [abstract]: The free flow of knowledge can be found in the Internet. A new model for scientific production, publishing and access emerge in the new environment of the networked society. But the shared on-line environment, "like our physical environment, constitutes a global commons, with similar imperatives for stewardship and preservation." And, in this terrain, the choice we face, and science in particular, is not between progress and the status quo, it is between progress and a new Dark Ages. Information should be kept free. [table of contents]: > the global commons > for the benefit of scientific progress, education and the public good > information should be kept free [background]: > [ references +related context + grafik ] [keywords]: budapest open access initiative, computer professionals for social responsibility, free software, gnu general public license, gpl, intellectual property, lawrence lessig, linux, open access, open source, public domain, public library of science, eric raymond, richard stallman, scientific publishing [date]: march 15, 2002 > press release ^ >the global commons "The steady march of information technology plays an ever-increasing role in shaping, preserving, enlarging, and uniting humanity's overall scientific and cultural heritage. With the growth of the Internet, an ever-increasing portion of all human art and learning is available at the speed of light, worldwide. The shared on-line environment, like our physical environment, constitutes a global commons, with similar imperatives for stewardship and preservation." >from *Nurturing the cybercommons. Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility annual conference*, october 19-21, 2001. "In The Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig explains how the Internet revolution has produced a counterrevolution of devastating power and effect. The explosion of innovation we have seen in the environment of the Internet was not conjured from some new, previously unimagined technological magic; instead, it came from an ideal as old as the nation. Creativity flourished there because the Internet protected an innovation commons. The Internet's very design built a neutral platform upon which the widest range of creators could experiment. The legal architecture surrounding it protected this free space so that culture and information -the ideas of our era- could flow freely and inspire an unprecedented breadth of expression. But this structural design is changing both legally and technically... The choice Lawrence Lessig presents is not between progress and the status quo. It is between progress and a new Dark Ages, in which our capacity to create is confined by an architecture of control and a society more perfectly monitored and filtered than any before in history. Important avenues of thought and free expression will increasingly be closed off. The door to a future of ideas is being shut just as technology makes an extraordinary future possible." >from *The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World* ^ >for the benefit of scientific progress, education and the public good A new model for scientific production, publishing and access are emerging in the new environment of the networked society, in the free culture that flourish in this commons built by the Internet. This developments preserve the public domain of knowledge "for the benefit of scientific progress, education and the public good." In this trend we can found recent initiatives such as the Public Library of Science, the Petition to Public Funding Agencies: Support Open Source Software or the Budapest Open Access Initiative. The Public Library of Science is a grassroots initiative by scientists. "The Public Library of Science is a non-profit organization of scientists committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature freely accessible to scientists and to the public around the world, for the benefit of scientific progress, education and the public good. We are working for the establishment of international online public libraries of science that will archive and distribute the complete contents of published scientific articles, and foster the development of new ways to search, interlink and integrate the information that is currently partitioned into millions of separate reports and segregated into thousands of different journals, each with its own restrictions on access." Since their published open letter to support the establishment of an international online public library on medicine and the life sciences, more than 29,630 scientists from 175 countries have signed it. "To encourage the publishers of our journals to support this endeavor, we pledge that, beginning in September, 2001, we will publish in, edit or review for, and personally subscribe to, only those scholarly and scientific journals that have agreed to grant unrestricted free distribution rights to any and all original research reports that they have published, through PubMed Central and similar online public resources, within 6 months of their initial publication date." Now some journals adopted the policies they advocate, "however, the resistance this initiative has met from most of the scientific publishers has made it clear that if we really want to change the publication of scientific research, we must do the publishing ourselves. It is now time for us to work together to create the journals we have called for." So they will launch early next year new scientific journals that will publish peer-reviewed scientific research reports online with no restrictions on access or distribution. Articles published by the forthcoming journals will be released under terms of a new *Public Library of Science Open Access License*, analogous to the way in which open source software is produced. The costs of peer review, editorial oversight and publication will be recovered primarily by charges to authors (approximately $300 per published article; costs will be subsidized for authors who can not afford these charges.)" >from *The Public Library of Science site* "Software funded by publically-funded research should be released under Open Source or Free Software licenses. This will benefit the public by promoting both the pace and progress of science by encouraging open and verifiable peer-reviewed research and the reuse of previously reviewed software. Software plays a large and growing role in scientific research. Modern science uses software to simulate complex systems, collect data, and to analyze the results of experiments. We feel that public distribution and critical examination of software source code are critical to the progress of science. We believe that researchers supported by publically-funded grant agencies should be required, as a condition on funding, to publish any source code under an Open Source or a Free Software license. Such licensing is the software equivalent of peer-reviewed publication of research results. The first obvious benefit of mandatory software source release is a speedup of software development. The longer-term benefit is that the software can be studied and reviewed in the same way as the other parts of scientific research." >from *Petition to Public Funding Agencies: Support Open Source Software*, september 24, 2001. "An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds... Open access to peer-reviewed journal literature is the goal. Self-archiving and a new generation of open-access alternative journals are the ways to attain this goal... The Open Society Institute, the foundation network founded by philanthropist George Soros, is committed to providing initial help and funding to realize this goal [ with a $3m grant ] ... We invite governments, universities, libraries, journal editors, publishers, foundations, learned societies, professional associations, and individual scholars who share our vision to join us in the task of removing the barriers to open access and building a future in which research and education in every part of the world are that much more free to flourish." >from *Budapest Open Access Initiative*, february 14, 2002 ^ >information should be kept free The free software (refers to freedom, not price) and open source are initiatives of the hacker culture of the Internet to support independent peer review and rapid evolutionary selection of software. "In summary, open source software/free software programs are programs whose licenses permit users the freedom to run the program for any purpose, to modify the program, and to redistribute the original or modified program (without requiring payment to someone else or restricting who the program can be given to)." >from *Open Source Software / Free Software References* by David Wheeler. The original license is *GNU General Public License* (or GPL) based on copyleft (beyond copyright). "We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software. Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software." Stallman, founder of free software movement, encouraged programmers to keep software in the public domain by using copyleft and the General Public License. "Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of under which the open-source software must comply with the following criteria: 1. Free Redistribution. The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale... 2. Source Code... 3. Derived Works. The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software... 4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code...an open-source license must guarantee that source be readily available, but may require that it be distributed as pristine base sources plus patches... 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups... 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor... The major intention of this clause is to prohibit license traps that prevent open source from being used commercially. We want commercial users to join our community, not feel excluded from it... 7. Distribution of License... 8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product... 9. The License Must Not Restrict Other Software...". >from *The Open Source Definition*, version 1.9. Eric Raymond's Open Source Initiative said that the term 'open source' is 'a marketing program for free software' (and recommends using the term 'open source' instead). "Open Source campaign... a sustained effort to argue for 'free software' on pragmatic grounds of reliability, cost, and strategic business risk... It has almost completely turned around the negative image that 'free software' had outside the hacker community." >from *OSI Launch Announcement*, november 22, 1998. "The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing. We in the open source community have learned that this rapid evolutionary process produces better software than the traditional closed model, in which only a very few programmers can see the source and everybody else must blindly use an opaque block of bits. Open Source Initiative exists to make this case to the commercial world." >from *Open Source Initiative site*. At the origins of all the grassroots movement is the Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985 by Richard Stallman, "dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software -- particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants -- and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software." >from *Free Software Foundation site*. Stallman take part in the debate about a new model for scientific publishing. "The modern technology for scientific publishing, however, is the World Wide Web. What rules would best ensure the maximum dissemination of scientific articles, and knowledge on the Web? Articles should be distributed in non-proprietary formats, with open access for all. And everyone should have the right to 'mirror' articles; that is, to republish them verbatim with proper attribution... The US Constitution says that copyright exists 'to promote the progress of science.' When copyright impedes the progress of science, science must push copyright out of the way." >from *Science Must Push Copyright Aside by Richard Stallman* ^ Nurturing the cybercommons Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility annual conference. october 19-21, 2001 =The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World by Lawrence Lessig =Public Library of Science Open Access License =The Public Library of Science =Petition to Public Funding Agencies: Support Open Source Software september 24, 2001 =Budapest Open Access Initiative february 14, 2002 =Open Source Software / Free Software References by David Wheeler =GNU General Public License =Richard Stallman =The Open Source Definition version 1.9 =Eric Raymond =Open Source Iniative Launch Announcement november 22, 1998 =Open Source Initiative =Free Software Foundation =Science Must Push Copyright Aside by Richard Stallman. june 20, 2001 =>references Declaration on science and the use of scientific knowledge july 1, 1999 =>related context scince commons street signs + knowledge flow =>grafik > share this document with a friend your name : email to send to : add comments : Note: Your name, and your recipient's email address, will only be used to transfer this article, and will not be stored or used for any other purpose. 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