[good stuff snipped]
Peter> I don't have enough time for a full analysis - I'm just
Peter> suggesting (as a semi-geek myself) that the geeks are worth
Peter> watching (and, if possible) engaging with.
Wow. This is nearly the raison d'etre of Monkeyfist.com: getting the leftists and the free software geeks talking to one another; free software work ought to be considered by the left and progressives, though it never is, as a kind of progressive activism: i.e., what has any other group of citizens, acting in global solidarity, done to fight the hegemony of corporate control of digital infrastructure/culture/workplace? Likewise, there are, IMO, far, far too many progressives and leftists enslaved to the tyranny of Microsoft's crappy, monopolistic, but "easy to use" (though that's ultimately a chimera) software dreck.
In other words, the progressives and the left generally need to know the free software geeks and vice versa, at least, that's my opinion, as a progressive and a geek. (The sort of baseline political temperament of most free software people is a kind of vague libertarianism, so Peter is absolutely right that they need some Marxifying. Most of them are completely apolitical, or so they think, until you start telling them how truly radical what they've accomplished happens to be. My goal is usually to sway them from right or center libertarian tendencies to full-on left libertarian tendencies.)
Monkeyfist.com has a pretty equal mixture of left-leaning political content and analysis alongside technical, geeky technology news/analysis and opinionating; the idea is that both communities can find some common ground (there's lots actually), learn about each other's concerns, each other's communities, etc. Monkeyfist.com is, by the way, a completely non-commerical production of a collective of leftist geek types spread about the country. I'm just the only one on LBO-talk at the moment. :>
Best,
Kendall Clark -- In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. --Oscar Wilde