[lbo-talk] identity politics and Ubuntu stuff

shag carpet bomb shag at cleandraws.com
Thu Aug 20 11:31:09 PDT 2009


At 12:16 PM 8/19/2009, Matt wrote:
>OK, if esr is the owner of the straw argument, then I am with you. I
>thought that book was crap and believed he was FOS.
>
>So if we are just discussing the Stallman vs. esr definitions and
>their specific benefits of FOSS - then I am in the Stallman camp.
>Didn't we already know esr was wrong?

The claim that open source is better at bug finding (thus less buggy) has been put forth on the list -- by you, among others. And it is the reason why there are repeated comparisons between open source and proprietary software in terms of comparisons of bug reports on bugtraq and the like. i think you guys have latched on to this arcane distinction that motivates very few people or organizations. like I said, Linux.com didn't give a crap, and bundled them all in together FOSS. they understand the distinction, but most people shift back and forth between projects, and major ones -- like mozilla, ubuntu, and firefox -- have been comprised of people who support open source and those who support free software.

what i can't fathom is why this hoary "pragmatic" approach from esr, is so awful? Ubuntu is an excellent example of an OS that practically works out of the box for most people. World domination esr argues, and what many others have said before, is going to have to require that open source start giving a shit about the 99% of users who don't want to write code or tinker with it or even report bugs: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/world-domination/world-domination-201.html

What he's talking about there is that, in 2006, he's still having to write about the fact that linux is made for linux users by linux users for the most part. The hoary compromise is to, gasp!, make stuff for people who don't give a shit about tooling around in the code -- which is the *only* compelling reason behind open source or free software that's ever been put out there. you can play with it yourself. wheee!

I've never been invested in the claim that it's got a better approach to bug finding (reliance on community) or that it has a better approach to development.

I didn't bring it up to put a nail in the open source coffin. I brought it up as something interesting to consider, a good book to read. If you're at all involved in software development, this book nails it. I think the biggest problem he points to is that coders, by and large, don't have clue one about the history of their profession, aren't trained to care about what goes on in it beyond their day to day lives, etc.

this is becoming even more clear to me as I have been saddled with responsibility for training all the newbs that come our way, including the jr year college students working as summer interns. my gawd. smart, bright kids, from all over the world. but dayum, they don't have one clue about anything big picture. i see this as a function of the fact that, while some people call themselves "software engineers" we hardly train people to think like engineers when it comes to code.

but that was a side trip. back to the point: I do think that there is no reason to support open source other than personal whim. Its primary advantage is to the adept programmer, and one who actually _wants_ to tinker with the code. There is no socially beneficial reason to support open source software other than that an individual wants to. For the 99% of users who might use it, it can be rather more of a problem than it is worth - to them. And I think open source fans need to leave it at that. World domination, as esr says, will come when, well, open source and free software becomes just like all the other shit out there.

All the moralizing about why it's a friggin political and/or moral act to use free software, etc. is just that An attempt by one person or a band or a "community" to convince others to do things *their* way. But they end up having utterly no overarching reasons to which they can appeal. It's ultimately preference, whim, personal taste, your own likes and dislikes.

I am, obviously, a open source user since I work in a LAMP environment and use open source tools all day. one thing that always has infuriated me about these discussions is that the FOSS fans are generally so conceited as to be aghast that someone might not be an unalloyed kool-aid drinker.

For me, it's interesting because the behavior of open source fans is much like the behavior of radical feminists and others of an moralizing identity politics persuasion (among whom I generally also include most non-marxist anarchists but even then, they show tendencies toward moralizing identity politics).

It is a thesis I've been developing for years, drawn out over the coruse of two years on the old blog (and sometimes here). My argument is that these groups share certain foundational assumptions about the nature of social change.

The system is so big and all encompassing, so baked in to society and baked in to individuals heads, that it's hard to escape. (Janet Halley calls this way of thinking 'paranoid structuralism'.) In fact, no one really does except a few people who, for inexplicable reasons, come to see the light. It is then their job to whip other people in to shape using polemic, moralizing, scolding, etc. and so forth. Everyone is duped by society and the only way to fight it is to cajole, persuade, moralize, scold, finger way, and so on, insisting that the only way to change things is for *everyone* to do x, y, z, etc.

Under this approach to moralizing identity politics, a major portion of people's energy is geared toward rooting out those people even within the social movement who do not uphold the correct lifestyle and behaviors.

yadda yadda.

obviously open source and free software folks aren't much of a movement, but when they do appeal to any sort of social change, their only answer is an individual-based, moralizing approach to winning over the majority.

but it was another disaster recovery morning, up and at work by 2:00 a.m., so TIFWIW. YMMV. HTH. HAND. Close cover when striking. Objects may appear larger in mirror.



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