Re: [Fsfe-uk] Stalls at Marxism 2003

[Chris Croughton]

On Sun, May 18, 2003 at 08:45:03PM +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:

> On Sat, 2003-05-17 at 14:22, Chris Croughton wrote:
> > 
> > Please note that many of us who are supporters of free software are
> > /not/ anti-capitalist nor against 'globalisation' (at least some
> > definitions of it, it's a term which tends to be defined differently by
> > everyone who uses the term).
> 
> I'm not sure he was necessarily saying that, more the other way around -
> that it's likely that 'those types' would be inclined to be supportive
> of Free Software, rather than that supporting Free Software makes you
> more likely to be 'one of them'.

I'll accept that it was not intended that way, but I think the Free
Software Movement has to be careful in associating itself with extremist
groups of any sort, or at least to keep a balance between them.

Since most people assume symmetrical relationships, it is likely to get
confused: "the Free Software community supports Marxism" (true, but it
supports everyone else as well) and from there it's a very easy step to
"people who support Free Software are Marxists", particularly because
the attitudes of several prominent people in the FS movement are indeed
anti-capitalist (those who rant that all 'proprietary' software is evil,
for instance).  It makes it easy for certain companies and regimes which
benefit from state-capitalism to brand anyone who uses or writes Free
Software as 'commies'.

> AFFS is, of course, entirely non-political in those terms - we'd pretty
> much talk Free Software anywhere, unless it would be detrimental to our
> profile overall. I suspect, as you suggest, that the idea of Free
> Software fits into a number of political ideologies, so we have to be
> pretty agnostic IMO. I think I can probably say that we don't talk about
> ourselves being a socialist organisation or some such, no matter what
> the views of the committee/members/etc.

Would the organisation take a stall at a pro-capitalism or a
pro-globalisation rally?  That would be needed for balance, I think.

Perhaps I'll have a go at writing an essay on Free Software from a
libertarian minarchist-capitalist perspective -- don't hold your breath,
I'm not fast at writing text I'm comfortable with distributing...

Chris C