The Free Software Community After 20 Years
20 years ago today, Richard Stallman began work on the Free Software operating system known as GNU/Linux (or often just "Linux"). In this article he reflects on the extraordinary growth of the Free Software community, and priorities for the future.
As a Free Software developer myself I have a special interest in this - however, I believe Free Software is an important meme to watch for all democratic transhumanists, for three key reasons:
- It not only promises but delivers a new mode of production, made possible by near-zero replication costs.
- This mode of production, even whilst it is presently embedded in capitalism, still advances humane goals such as co-operation, sharing, and the optional reduction of unnecessary labour
(Note that, just with craftsmen and craftswomen choosing to expend labour on manufacturing which has been commoditised - labour which is therefore in a crude sense "unnecessary" - programmers are of course quite free to "reimplement the wheel" for whatever reasons - special needs, educational possibilities, or even just for fun! All of which are legitimate reasons. Indeed this happens a lot in the free software world, which paints a picture of the leisure society which nanotech could make possible. Some Linux users wail and gnash their teeth at the sheer number of choices on offer, strangely, but I feel this just exposes the lopsidedness of the community. Rather than savagely killing off competing projects to enforce a conformist and Microsoftian notion of "uniformity", which is an absurd suggestion made by some people who don't seem to understand the community, more effort should be directed towards guiding new users in making sensible choices so that they don't feel lost at the range on offer - and the indecipherability of some of the Free Software project websites!)
- The low replication costs of many of today's "everyday" objects engendered by advanced molecular manufacturing will extend the domain of "free software" to encompass "free hardware designs" - barring extremely authoritarian restrictions on nano. (By the way, to advance the causes of free software and free hardware designs in molecular manufacturing, I have purchased the domain name open-nano.org, which is presently undeveloped - anyone wishing to develop it or even set up a nonprofit to run it, please get in contact)
As a Free Software developer myself I have a special interest in this - however, I believe Free Software is an important meme to watch for all democratic transhumanists, for three key reasons:
- It not only promises but delivers a new mode of production, made possible by near-zero replication costs.
- This mode of production, even whilst it is presently embedded in capitalism, still advances humane goals such as co-operation, sharing, and the optional reduction of unnecessary labour
(Note that, just with craftsmen and craftswomen choosing to expend labour on manufacturing which has been commoditised - labour which is therefore in a crude sense "unnecessary" - programmers are of course quite free to "reimplement the wheel" for whatever reasons - special needs, educational possibilities, or even just for fun! All of which are legitimate reasons. Indeed this happens a lot in the free software world, which paints a picture of the leisure society which nanotech could make possible. Some Linux users wail and gnash their teeth at the sheer number of choices on offer, strangely, but I feel this just exposes the lopsidedness of the community. Rather than savagely killing off competing projects to enforce a conformist and Microsoftian notion of "uniformity", which is an absurd suggestion made by some people who don't seem to understand the community, more effort should be directed towards guiding new users in making sensible choices so that they don't feel lost at the range on offer - and the indecipherability of some of the Free Software project websites!)
- The low replication costs of many of today's "everyday" objects engendered by advanced molecular manufacturing will extend the domain of "free software" to encompass "free hardware designs" - barring extremely authoritarian restrictions on nano. (By the way, to advance the causes of free software and free hardware designs in molecular manufacturing, I have purchased the domain name open-nano.org, which is presently undeveloped - anyone wishing to develop it or even set up a nonprofit to run it, please get in contact)
<< Home