🚀 go-pugleaf

Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when vladr13@my-deja.com
would say:
>Those who are trying to find a place for open source software are
>wrong. Free software is clearly anti-capitalist. The suceess of Linux
>abnd other open source projects cleasrly shows that capitalism is
>doomed, it show that thousands of people can work together on a product
>as free people outside of opressive corporate enviroment and create a
>great product distributed for free. Sopom , not only software but other
>products like cars will be made in anarchist collectives, there will
>be no money, no private property. no monsters like Microsoft.

If "free software" is anti-capitalist, so also are such things as:

a) Working for wages rather than for capital participation,
b) Government regulations that force people to be employees rather
   than independent contractors (thus throttling attempts to
   establish independent sources of share capital),
c) Labour unions, which impinge on the power of the "capitalists."

The claim that something is "anti-capitalist" is usually an attempt
to wave a flag to get Americans that don't think enough to realize
that their economic system is basically NOT a "capitalist" system to
start "flag-waving" in favor of "America is Great, Democracy is Good,
Capitalism is The Only Efficient Way," and to shut their minds off to
any minor discrepancies such as *actual details.*

(With the relative paucity of participation in capital markets, it is
fairly evident that while there may be substantial control *OF AMERICA*
by holders of capital, as is true for many nations, the nation does not
basically run as a "capitalist economy.")

Moving to a system run by "anarchist collectives" seems to me to be
about as likely as everyone agreeing that RMS has a wonderful singing
voice when he sings the "free software song," and the BSD folk
deciding that they've been wrong the whole time and that the GPL
is truly a much better license.
-- 
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
cbbrowne@hex.net - - <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>