Marx was right - about open source
Posted by Max Dunn Mon, 10 Apr 2006 17:55:00 GMT
Marx was right; he was just 150 years to early.
In the Communist Manifesto published in 1848, he outlined the principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” as the next step in society’s development.
Of course we have seen how this principle has failed miserably when applied to anything that is resource limited. Who would work hard growing food if others would just take it all away? This is exactly what happened in the Soviet Union during the grain crisis of 1928 when the Politiburo set too low a price for grain and, when not enough was sold at this price, they seized what they needed. The next year, the peasant farmers engaged in massive hiding of grain which resulted in an agricultural collapse.
However the situation changes greatly when dealing with software. Since distributing software over the Internet costs essentially nothing, making software available to whoever needs it doesn’t take anything away from the creator. So open source software is the perfect embodiment of this communist principle: those that are able to contribute do, and those that need it can take it at will.
Marx also envisioned a stateless society where there was no central power exerting control over its citizens. This is another stark parallel to open source.
So while the ideals of communism have not been successfully applied to society, many of these principles can be vividly seen in the open source software movement.