Anarchism article draft

1 files changed, 95 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/content/en/posts/dev-anarchism.org b/content/en/posts/dev-anarchism.org
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c40709
--- /dev/null
+++ b/content/en/posts/dev-anarchism.org
@@ -0,0 +1,95 @@
+#+TITLE: Why libre software development is not an anarchism
+#+DATE: <2023-02-25 Sat>
+#+LANGUAGE: en
+
+* Why libre software development is not an anarchism
+#+BEGIN_abstract
+This short article is dedicated to explaining, why anarchism is not so
+revelant when we talk about libre software development. You might find
+some comments on the internet where people comparing free software to
+"communism ideologies". They share some common points, but they are not
+true in general.
+#+END_abstract
+
+** What is anarchism
+We are not interested in a whole anarchist movement, but few crucial
+characteristics of that movement ([[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-communism][ancom]] to be precise):
+- Anarchism is about equal rights of everyone. There is no hierarchy of
+  classes, noone can rule the other, there is no state.
+- Because everyone is equal there is no property, everything is
+  collective and freely available to everyone
+- Anarchism is about helping each other instead of competing
+- Anarchism is about decisionmaking process. Instead of bosses/owners or
+  different sort of democracy processes, anarchists propose making
+  different desicions by a consensus. Consensus means that desicion will
+  be applied only if everyone voted "yes" for it, one "no" is enough to
+  not doing something.
+
+I have used only points that needed next in the article. Anarchism is
+deep and old movement and I'm not so involved in it, but I do share its
+ideals in general. 
+
+To learn more about anarchism you can read [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-editorial-collective-an-anarchist-faq-full][An Anarchist FAQ]] by
+installing it on debian-based systems by:
+
+#+begin_src bash
+  apt install anarchism
+#+end_src
+
+** Common
+- Libre software projects are trying to be self organized
+- Libre software projects are against copyright (intellectual property)
+- Libre software projects can be cloned by anyone and anyone can
+  contribute in it, so everyone can be involved (so it belongs to everyone)
+- Some projects are trying to be decentralized by using federated communications (so noone owns infrastructure)
+
+All those points have a small problems, which we discuss next. Also some
+things are not common at all and differs from anarchism.
+
+** Difference
+What differs intellectual property from physical property is an ability
+to clone the work. In real world you can only transfer the object from
+one person to another. In digital world you can copy the object of
+person #1 to the person #2, so they have two equal objects in total. But
+the problem of property it doesn't remove and even creates more problems.
+
+- Copyright :: Free software movement tries to use copyright to defeat
+  copyright as intellectual property defense mechanism. That is wrong
+  from anarchist point of view. To defeat copyright you just don't use
+  it or try to minimaze its usage, making it less legitimate. There is
+  Public Domain licenses to note, that you don't want to hold copyright
+  anymore, the only problem here is that such code can be privatized by
+  others.
+- Vertical organization :: Libre software projects is organized
+  vertically, so there is the owner(s) that have more priveleges than
+  others.
+- Private infrastructure :: Those owners might own crucial
+  infrastructure, that they don't share to public like the code. Also
+  some projects don't share database data.
+- Centralized infrastructure :: Many infrastructures of libre projects
+  are centralized, so users are forced to be admins / moderators and so
+  on. Hierarchy partly is used because of that technical limitation.
+
+** Examples
+- gnu.org :: The project and its website is centralized. There are
+  members, there are anonymous users and there are owners of website and
+  a non-profit company fsf. They decide to do something or not to do not
+  by consensus or even democracy process.
+- Many web-based free software projects.  
+
+** Why anarchism in software development is real in a future
+- You don't need a lot of resources to contribute. Computers are very affordable, programming can be learned by anyone.
+- People are motivated to self-organize horizontally, but we don't have right technology for it yet.
+
+** What limitations are on the way
+- Copyleft licenses are weak against illigal corporate usage. Public
+  domain like licenses can be privatized.
+- Programming language vendor tries to limit a programmer in
+  expressiveness.
+
+** Other articles on a subject
+- [[https://applied-langua.ge/software-and-anarchy.pdf][Software and Anarchy]]
+
+** Conclusion
+
+Remember that I share my personal opinion on the subject and the topic itself is very subjective.