Hi, Haines Brown wrote: > > Incidentally, I'm not suggesting that FOSS is crypto-socialist.
Piyavkin wrote: > No, but it is new growing relations of production. It's in no way crypto, but quite near to the vision of Karl Marx in the 19th century. He expected it to happen for classic economy after socialism succeeded and evolved into true communism. Google found me a nice summary in german language: http://stattkapitalismus.blogsport.de/2008/11/12/665jeder-nach-seinen-faehigkeiten-jedem-nach-seinen-beduerfnissen/ which is obviously by a person not aware of free software. It quotes Marx' book "Das Kapital", 1867: "Stellen wir uns endlich, zur Abwechslung, einen Verein freier Menschen vor, ..." which i translate as: "Let us imagine finally, just for a change, a club of free humans, who work with commonly used means of production and self-confidently spend their many individual powers of work as a united work effort for society. [...] The result of the club's work is a product of society. In part it serves in turn as means of production. Another part is consumed by the members as subsistence." He did not imagine highly valuable objects which can be copied at nearly no cost and can be used by affordable means. He only predicts that the relation between production and consumption will change but then goes on to describe a non-communist structure of work merits and right to consume. In our world, even Linus Torvalds gets more from GNU/Linux than he gave. Marx also did not imagine that a (from his view) ideal society would emerge on top of capitalism rather than replacing it. In real life i do not get my food for free. Housing is expensive. Even the preconditions for linuxing cost monthly money. But during my life there were only a few months of what i'd call work. I earn my keep by selling myself doing my favorite sports. Nevertheless i am aware that i am swimming as grease drop on a watery soup of hardship and boredom. Have a nice day :) Thomas