But it’s not leftist. Stallman certainly wanted it to be when he created the GPL, but it has worked incredibly well (and perhaps better) as a capitalist structure. It turns out, things like standards reduce costs overall, so you’ll get a better return on your capital by cooperating with others than keeping everything to yourself.
You can see this across the board. Most products are a derivative of other works, and being able to focus on your unique value proposition dramatically reduces costs and thus increases return on capital.
The whole notion of intellectual property is anti-capitalist, it’s government protectionism. Before IP laws were a thing, people built on each other’s innovations without restraint. Sometimes that lead to copycat works, and sometimes it lead to new works. IP law restricts derivative works, FOSS allows it, but puts limitations on them. I personally believe IP laws are one of the biggest hurdles to innovation and believe we should have much shorter patent and copyright duration to encourage more derivative works. FOSS is but one way to get around the current system.
because it’s a Capitalist entity
No, it’s because the leadership is stupid.
There are other privacy-respecting, “capitalist” companies that do just fine, they just have a different profit model. However, it just so happens that the masses seem to prefer paying with data and ad time over money for services. I don’t, so I avoid ad-supported services, mostly because I think that runs counter to the type of content I want to see. Sometimes that means I use FOSS, and sometimes that means I use privacy-respecting proprietary software.
When I used Reddit, I paid for an ad-free, proprietary mobile app. I’d do the same today if Reddit allowed fair competition with its app. But they have decided that ads, data collection, and mass appeal are the direction they want to go.
leftist structures are better than Capitalist structures in certain instances
I certainly believe that’s true, I just don’t think FOSS is inherently leftist. It’s a tool that works well both for capitalist and socialist interests, it has no economic or political bias.
Here are some areas where I think leftist structures are superior:
- education - I’m a fan of charter schools, and I think they should be run as co-ops owned by the teachers
- utilities - these are natural monopolies, so they should be run as a service to the community; that said, raw materials used by the utility could be for-profit (depending)
- banking - credit unions beat for profit banks in pretty much every area
I absolutely do have some leftist views, in fact I’m probably more left than both major US parties, on net. The left/right spectrum isn’t as interesting to me as the liberty/authoritarian spectrum. I want government to be less involved in my life, and I don’t really care if the solutions that make that happen come from the left or the right. But to me, FOSS isn’t either, it’s just a way for me to decide how I want my work to be used by others.
Oh, but it is. Leftism is a rejection of hierarchy and individual ownership of the Means of Production, while FOSS is a rejection of ownertship. Again, you’re incorrectly tying Capitalist entities taking advantage of leftist products as a way to call the leftist products Capitalist. FOSS itself is leftist, regardless of who uses it.
IP is absolutely Capitalist, Capitalism is all about profiting off of ownership of property, as opposed to creating Value. Rent-seeking is built into Capitalism, that’s why it still exists, it consolidates power and influences the state. Believing Capitalism contains within itself the contradictions that work against itself is a leftist belief, after all!
Capitalist companies can certainly choose to make a better product, but that does not mean Reddit’s choice to pursue profit over a better product was not caused by Capitalism.
All in all, I really do think you need to understand that structures themselves can be left and used by right wing entities. FOSS is leftist itself and does not care who uses it, that does not make it Capitalistic if a Capitalist uses it.
FOSS is a rejection of ownertship
But it’s not. If it was, I could relicense any GPL project to whatever I want because nobody owns it. The GPL is very interested in ownership, to the point where all contributors must agree to a license change or those contributions must be removed.
Capitalism is all about profiting off of ownership of property
No, it’s about profiting off of capital. Property is one form of capital, though I reject the idea that IP is valid, I don’t believe anyone has an exclusive right to ideas. So my support of IP law in any form is purely pragmatic.
Basically, I derive rights from whatever could morally exist w/o a government w/o an initiation of force. In order for someone to take my real property, they would need to initiate force against me to deprive me of using it. In order for someone to use my intellectual property, they just need to see/hear it, and their use does not deprive me of using it, therefore no force.
So no, I reject the idea that IP has any moral foundation, it’s merely a structure governments use to encourage sharing of IP. FOSS is a community-driven way of achieving the same thing, just without the period of exclusivity. So IP law is a corruption of capitalism, not a feature of capitalism.
Capitalist companies can certainly choose to make a better product, but that does not mean Reddit’s choice to pursue profit over a better product was not caused by Capitalism.
Sure, but it wasn’t inevitable. There are multiple ways to profit from a given class of product, and Reddit chose the one they thought would appeal to investors. I think that’s short-sighted and probably an indication that /u/spez is looking for an exist, not to build a quality product.
So I left. Reddit no longer appealed to me as a user, so I found something that works better for me. I actually started building my own, but Lemmy was “good enough,” so here I am. I’m still working on that project in my spare time, but not with the energy I once did. I don’t want to run a SM app, I just want something that works reasonably well. I left Facebook for Reddit for the same reasons.
structures themselves can be left and used by right wing entities
I agree, I just disagree that it applies to FOSS.
For example, many co-ops are leftist because the structure is all about spreading out the ownership of the organization among the workers. Perhaps the most relevant is an HOA, is owned by the residents of the community, who elect representatives to make decisions for the whole. A lot of right-wing people develop and live in areas with an HOA as evidenced by the way suburbs tend to vote. So I agree with the premise, I just disagree that it applies to FOSS.
I have no problem using leftist or right-wing structures, neither is a particularly dirty word, provided it’s not a top-down structure. I reject authoritarianism, and I don’t particularly care about which economic systems are used to solve problems (e.g. I think georgism has a lot of value for real property, socialism is great for certain types of orgs, and capitalism should be the way our markets work in general). FOSS doesn’t really fall on that spectrum for me, it’s just a way to structure a contract between individuals for mutual gain.
But it is. FOSS is free and open source software, not Capitalist owned IP. Simple as.
Capitalism is many things, but primarily is rent-seeking off of owning Capital. I used the term property instead of Capital because we are talking about IP, but it’s nearly interchangeable.
You can’t support Capitalism without being a statist. Capitalism requires a monopoly on violence to exist.
The fact that Capitalism ruined Reddit yet that could have been avoided does not mean it isn’t the fault of Capitalism. That’s like saying someone shooting someone else to desth isn’t their fault, because the gun could have misfired.
Again, I really think you’re misunderstanding FOSS as a concept being different from FOSS as used by people.
