On 12/20/06, Rogelio Serrano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 12/20/06, rexonf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 12/20/06, Rogelio Serrano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Isn't communism (and any other social structure) an agreement and a > convention? > Thats a matter of degree. A whole state enforcing the sharing of ownership of all means of production is a communist state. The open source community is far from that. Its not even a state! Participants did not agree to share everything!
Yes it's a matter of degree. In the case of GPL participants agree to share the sourcecode and share it forever. They do not agree to share anything else. Is adoption of open source in government the beginning of a communist
state? Nonsense!
It is a [small] move towards communism. Does not mean of course that the government will move towards an extreme degree of communism in which my clothes are owned by the state.
> Yes. In communism the means of production (in the case of software, the > source code), is under shared ownership. What you do with your share of the > produce is up to you. What matters is no one can monopolize the means of > production. > That still does not constitute communism. Sharing ownership does not make any participant a communist. Is sharing ownership of source code enough to say we are becoming involved in communism? Of course not! Is NASA communist because they released source code under the GPL? Are scientists communist because they want unrestricted sharing of knowledge.
If NASA releases source under GPL it means they agree with the principles of the GPL (which I contend to be communist). This does not mean that they apply the GPL to their space shuttle, as the GPL is only for software. There are scientists who do not want unrestricted sharing of knowledge. So the scientists who favor unrestricted sharing have a communist ideology with regards to knowledge. While those on the other hand have a capitalist ideology, treating knowledge as capital. So do we avoid the GPL so we will not become a communist state? Adopting the GPL does precious little to turn us into a communist state. It only applies to software. Thats nonsense. Pure nonsense.
Saying GPL is communist is just pure propaganda. You are trying to turn people off the GPL by using their aversion to communism!
I am not trying to turn anybody off the GPL. I am merely saying that the GPL is communist, but people who are averse to communism should not reject the GPL. Because their aversion to communism is merely a product of FUD. When communism works, as in the case of the GPL, every fun loving human being should embrace it.
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