Relevant Section under Gift economies:
The expansion of the Internet has witnessed a resurgence of the gift economy, especially in the technology sector. Engineers, scientists, and software developers create open-source software projects. The Linux kernel and the GNU operating system are prototypical examples of the gift economy's prominence in the technology sector and its active role in using permissive free software and copyleft licenses, which allow free reuse of software and knowledge.
Essentially the line of thought is that open source software is an example of mutual aid and the gift economy.
Listen, strange penguins biting people is no basis for a system of government.
Supreme executive power derives from using sudo, not some farcical user account control.
I mean, if I went 'round saying I was a sysadmin just because some angry Finn lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away
Linus' power doesn't come from Ownership, but respect. Anyone can fork it and do what they want, but because Linus is respected, everyone else follows suit.
Anarchism would function in a similar manner, it wouldn't be a bunch of opinionated people doing whatever they want, but people generally listening to experts who don't actually hold systemic power.
Problem is that the average person cannot discern between an actual expert and a charlatan.
And yet Linux works fine. Not everyone needs to be a dev, devs can tell the difference between an expert and a charlatan.
I meant that as a reply to the second paragraph which generalised anarchism; including the non-Linux world.
I also disagree that this isn't an issue in the broader Linux community however. See for example the loud minority with an irrational hate against quite obviously good software projects like systemd who got those ideas from charlatans or "experts".I know, I used Linux as an example. Just like not everyone needs to be a weatherman to trust weatherman that can recognize experts among themselves, so too can engineers recognize experts among themselves, and so forth.
You can fork it, sure Linus is very respected and his decisions are considered very important but you can fork it and change however you want so it's still compatible with Anarchism.
Free software doesn't have owners. If someone else did a better job of being the "benevolent dictator" of a fork of Linux, everyone would start using that fork. Arguably this is a more free-market system than non-free software.
Cory Doctorow has a book, "Walkaway" that is basically exploring the politics of FOSS on a societal scale. It's pretty nerdy obv but I enjoyed it and it doesn't overly glamourize any political system the way you'd typically see in political fiction.
It’s actually an example of something that doesn’t work so anarcho communism
Pretty much all of the internet and most appliances run Linux. If you are actually taking the comparison seriously it would say that it does work.
EDIT: Or BSD, but the same holds true for it as well.
not to mention Android and iOS are essentially gnu/linux...
(different kernels but, still)
Interesting assertion, but is it really?
The Linux kernel is a single software product produced by a single entity and ultimately controlled by a small cadre of highly trusted people.
Anyone can fork it and do what they want, people respect Linus and follow suit because he's good at what he does and knows it best. He holds no power or authority beyond the willful respect and acknowledgement of the people.
It's actually a really good analogy, because it can only run on fully-capitalist hardware.
What in the hell is capitalist hardware? Does my computer own a factory?
That answers absolutely nothing. Do you think Capitalists designed hardware, or Engineers?
Do you think Capitalists designed hardware, or Engineers?
I'm just gonna leave this quote as is, so you can think about it.
I have. Engineers, ie workers, designed the hardware. It was not the Capitalists that owned the companies doing the design.
Are you saying capitalists and engineers are one in the same? Maybe sometimes, but it's not capital that makes things, it's labor.
Well you solved that conundrum rightly. Now let's go linch those dirty Apple and John Deere engineers. Since they've designed those machines, they must be the only responsible parties for designing them with their extreme anti-consumer and anti-repair policies. They must get commissions on every licensed repair or something, it's definitely got nothing to do with capitalists putting restrictions on the design team in order to increase profits, nope...
You're completely off on what I'm getting at. The idea of "Capitalist" hardware, as though the Capitalist did the labor, is wrong. Engineers are paid for their labor power, they don't typically get royalties or anything of the sort, just like any other laborer.
Someone saying that FOSS software relies on Capitalist hardware is putting the Capitalist over the Engineer, as though the Capitalist created the hardware, and not the labor of the miners, assemblers, designers, engineers, and so forth, regardless of who owns the Capital the labor is done by the Workers. FOSS is agnostic to whoever owned the Means of Proruction of the hardware using or producing it.
its sad that you're so closed-minded and brainwashed to think "communism bad" that you wouldnt even consider the possibility of this being true
Neither, the title specifically states Anarcho-Communism, not Marxism-Leninism. Closest analog would be any other AnCom that created a large publicly available service.
