On Thu, 22 Mar 2007 01:46:16 +0100, Dave Long wrote: > So, apart from the former being atoms and the latter being bits, > what are the differences between khadi and open source software?
Most of the work in khadi is manufacturing each individual instance of a garment, rather than in figuring out the pattern for the garment in general. In fact, one purpose of khadi was to reduce the amount of contribution from capital (up-front costs) and increase the amount from labor (per-copy costs), which is more like proprietary software than free software. The important thing, though, is that both khadi and open-source software are means of recapturing self-rule through self-reliance. In the past, the British exploited India by buying its raw cotton and selling it back as finished cloth from textile mills, but not permitting the creation of local textile mills in India. Today, the United States exploits India by buying its labor once to build software and selling it back a hundred million times in the form of per-seat license fees. The mechanisms are different, and perhaps today's mode of exploitation is more self-limiting, since it develops Bangalorean skills rather than American ones. We haven't yet seen the software equivalent of breaking the hands of the master weavers, as the British did. Perhaps software patent is the closest modern equivalent?
