Re: [OPE-L] OpenSource: a "new source of communism"

From: Paul Cockshott (clyder@GN.APC.ORG)
Date: Mon Dec 24 2007 - 12:29:26 EST


There seems to be some hicups sending mail to ope, so if this appears twice
I must say sorry.

I think open source important because
1. it is a growing portion of the means of production
2. it is not a commodity and hence is not capital
3. it is the form or materialisation of Marx's concept of abundance
which can only be made sense of in terms of Babbages copying
technologies, not technologies which depend on significant natural
resource or labour inputs.

For discussion of some of these issues see the Oekonux project and the
author Stefan Meretz


Quoting Howard Engelskirchen <howarde@IASTATE.EDU>:

> Paul and others,
> 
> I'd be interested in some theoretical elaboration of this -- why
> would left wing computer people say so and what would they mean when
> they say so?  How do they think existing relations of production are
> transformed?
> 
> howard
> 
> At 05:25 PM 12/22/2007, you wrote:
> >I think what Gates says here is what many left wing computer people
> >would also say.
> >
> >Paul Cockshott
> >Dept of Computing Science
> >University of Glasgow
> >+44 141 330 3125
> >www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/
> >
> >
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: OPE-L on behalf of glevy@PRATT.EDU
> >Sent: Sat 22/12/2007 5:34 PM
> >To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU
> >Subject: [OPE-L] OpenSource: a "new source of communism"
> >
> >A short article from the English
> >online version of
> >_L'Humanite'_,
> >published by the PCF, in which
> >Bill Gates
> >is quoted as saying
> >that Open Source is a "new
> >source of communism":
> >
> >  <http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/article319.html>
> >
> >
> >The article, though, doesn't
> >identify the
> >original source for
> >the quote.
> >
> >In solidarity, Jerry
> 


Paul Cockshott

www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc
reality.gn.apc.org

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