Comments on: Cord Blomquist on Free Software and Libertarianism

By: Don Marti

Don Marti — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:47:49 +0000

“They spend the bulk of their time creating, using, and helping others use free software.”

Actually, they probably work on a lot of proprietary and in-house software too.

According to a 2003 survey, only 30.6% of free software developers have never worked at a proprietary software company: http://www.stanford.edu/group/floss-us/

So the actual developers are comparing free and proprietary software from direct experience. Maybe it’s like talking about the “Flat Screwdriver Community” and the “Philips Screwdriver Community” when everyone’s toolbox has some of each.

By: Gavin

Gavin — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:48:22 +0000

Simplified, we all want power to the people. Libertarians think the best way is to just leave it there, The opposing view is for the government to take it away and then give it back. As we know from all history, Part B in the collectivist plan always seems to be forgotten.

Where is the State in OSS? In fact, being so diffuse, OSS is probably more immune to state co-option than large corporations.

By: Mike T

Mike T — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:30:04 +0000

What I find interesting about is that the fight between the GPL and BSD licenses is practically identical to the one between left and right libertarians over cultural issues. The GPL camp prohibits a large swath of behavior in the name of protecting and advancing FOSS goals, whereas the BSD license has no such baggage. Virtually any legal use is legitimate use, even creating a proprietary branch.

While I have no problems with either, I tend to release my FOSS work under a BSD-like approach because its value-free approach is more closely aligned with my right-libertarian views on separating cultural goals from political goals.

By: Rhayader

Rhayader — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:19:21 +0000

And so even though your average 50-something libertarian intellectual wouldn’t have read his actual writings, the second- and third-hand accounts he does read would have made intuitive sense to him.

Yeah good point Tim.

By: Asa Dotzler

Asa Dotzler — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:56:01 +0000

I’ve been working in FLOSS since 1998 and my experience has been that the FLOSS world is rife with libertarian (or at least leaning) participants.

What problem are you trying to solve here? Just to push back against libertarians who misunderstand or misrepresent FLOSS? To bring more libertarians to FLOSS? To bring FLOSS into the libertarian movement’s toolkit?

By: Timothy B Lee

Timothy B Lee — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:07:50 +0000

They end up rejecting the idea because it sounds an awful lot like that farm compound their weird brother-in-law went to in the late 70s.

Well yes, but I think that’s an indirect consequence of the influence of Stallman, Moglen, et al. If the free software movement had been started by a group of libertarians, they likely would have chosen a vocabulary to describe what they were doing that was more congenial to libertarians. And so even though your average 50-something libertarian intellectual wouldn’t have read his actual writings, the second- and third-hand accounts he does read would have made intuitive sense to him.

The obvious example here is Jimmy Wales, who is a libertarian and has done a reasonable job of explaining how Wikipedia is based on libertarian-friendly bottom-up principles. I’m not aware of any prominent libertarian organizations that have written screeds attacking Wikipedia. I don’t think that’s because every libertarian has read Jimmy Wales’s work. But nor do I think it’s a complete coincidence that Wikipedia has a generally better reputation among libertarians than free software does.

By: Rhayader

Rhayader — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:11:05 +0000

I’d venture that the majority of older, non-geek libertarians don’t know a thing about free software or the community’s heavyweights. I think their rejection stems from a fundamental misunderstanding much more than an objection to the rhetoric of Moglen and Stallman, whom they probably haven’t even heard of.

In other words, non-techie libertarians don’t even get to the point of judging “the merits of the two sides based entirely on their rhetorical and ideological appeal.” They aren’t even aware of the rhetorical basis for the free software movement, and end up rejecting the idea because it sounds an awful lot like that farm compound their weird brother-in-law went to in the late 70s.