If we don’t want to live in a jungle, we must change our attitudes. We must start sending the message that a good citizen is one who cooperates when appropriate, not one who is successful at taking from others.
There’s much to debate concerning the speed, scope, and desirability of political and social change led by peer production. However, I find observations like the above rather satisfying and I believe deeply underappreciated. Peer production will not lead to absolute equality, but it does increase the scope for equality, freedom, autonomy, and decrease the need for violence or threats thereof. In other words, liberal ends achieved through liberal means, for a very broad range of meanings of “liberal.”
This I find more compelling than discussion of liberal/libertarian fusionism embedded deeply in the context of current U.S. jurisdiction politics. But perhaps my thought is too embedded in the free software context, and too cynical about power politics.
Stallman quote via Dan Connolly.
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What juvenile gibberish.
“Peer production will not lead to absolute equality, …”
You are writing to yourself.
JHoward,
Yes, I do primarily write for myself, and for the future.
I would love to read your explanation of what I’ve written amounts to juvenile gibberish.
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So if all software is free, how should I as a software engineer make a living?