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Re: China?
by Ideology on Tuesday 19/Aug/2003, @19:29
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Which just goes to show that when we get to the point where you can duplicate physical goods including skyscrapers, bridges, etc. as easily as you can duplicate software communism will finally be practical :).
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Re: China?
by Chris Bordeman on Wednesday 20/Aug/2003, @05:10
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I just want to point out that China has not been truly communist for more than a decade. It has been embracing captialism very rapidly, which makes it *fascist*.
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Re: China?
by Ac on Wednesday 20/Aug/2003, @13:58
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Facism and communism are like fire and water. Communism + Capitalism != Facism!
Communism is both an economic and governing type. Capitalism is only an economic type. Fascism, in many respects, is an ideology of negativism: anti-liberal, *anti-Communist*, anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, etc. As a political and economic system in Italy, it combined elements of corporatism, totalitarianism, nationalism, and anti-communism.
In other words: a communist country cannot turn into a facist country simply by adding an element (capitalism). It needs a revolution and complete flip-over to turn into a facist country.
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Re: China?
by Chris Bordeman on Wednesday 20/Aug/2003, @21:47
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??? Communism is simply centralized control on both the political and economic sides, no matter what the underlying ideals are. Fascism is totalitarian on mostly just the political side. When a communist state abandons Socialist ideals and decentralizes on the economic side, they are moving toward fascism. It is absurd to say a communist country *cannot* evolve into a fascist one.
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Re: China?
by F@lk on Thursday 21/Aug/2003, @10:05
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Your definition of Communism is total nonsense.
Not only the fact of centralization is important but most important the underlying idea! Facism is the last state of Capitalism where in both ones 'big profit' is the underlying idea. Communism is an ideal society of Socialism where 'all equal, all free, no exploitation' is the main idea. You see, both ones are the opposite to each other.
P.S.: I hope the manpower of China will reflect itself in contributions/patches/fixes to the KDE sources
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Re: China?
by Chris Bordeman on Thursday 21/Aug/2003, @15:09
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Your definition of fascism as only a *right wing* phenomenom is incorrect, and seems designed to hide the natural evolution of Marxism and Socialism to a form of Fascism as is now occuring in China.
For a quick explanation why, please read this:
http://www.mail-archive.com/mutti-l@taklamakan.org/msg01091.html
And for a more thorough study:
http://www.yale.edu/yup/books/078277.htm
There tons of articles, research papers, books, studies, etc. documenting and exploring China's move to Fascism, just do a quick google search. This narrow "original intentmeans as much as the end results" response is a left-wing defense mechanism for their precious socialism and everyone should see through it.
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Re: China?
by Tom on Tuesday 19/Aug/2003, @19:29
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The Open Source ideology is: develop in the most efficient, bug-free manner, which happens to be by opening the source code to encourage more eyes to look at the code and develop it.
You're thinking of the Free Software ideology...
Anywho, Free Software emphasises the important of the freedom of the individual user, and by extension the "society" of users, over the individual programmer(s) who write the code. As RMS recently commented, proprietary software tends to promote division and control. Marx wrote about similar themes, so in a sense they're close, even though what you see in China is about as far from Marxism as any "communist" state has managed.
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Re: China?
by MH Dixon on Tuesday 19/Aug/2003, @19:56
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Hey, there's nothing about capitalism or free enterprise that keeps good-hearted individuals, or even governments, from producing free software. If you're free to choose, you're free to choose not to charge. Anyway, congratulations KDE team for spreading your good work to China!
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Re: China?
by Aaron J. Seigo on Tuesday 19/Aug/2003, @19:57
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how is it scary, exactly?
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Re: China?
by Lee on Tuesday 19/Aug/2003, @20:06
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There's nothing fundamentally wrong with communism. It's just a little tough to implement correctly. The same could be said for capitalism; there are many flaws in its implementation, too. Yet, if OSS shares the benefits of either of those systems, yet continues to work the way it does, then it's a good thing. Certainly not something to be afraid of :)
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Re: China?
by Eric Laffoon on Tuesday 19/Aug/2003, @20:54
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> There's nothing fundamentally wrong with communism. It's just a little tough to implement correctly.
You mean "theoretically" wrong with it. In theory it sounds wonderful. It is worth noting that by definition governments can't implement it because they always revert to socialism with a ruling class. I studied communal societies as a young man because of the idealisms. One could argue it had some degree of success in the first century Christian church. It failed the pilgrims and in a book on communes in America over several hundred years I was stunned to find that every single one of them failed. In fact it is safe to say that it is nearly impossible to implement because it restricts any reward incentive, is antithetical to individualism and tends to have an adverse impact on personal responsibility.
> The same could be said for capitalism; there are many flaws in its implementation, too.
One could argue it's chief flaw is it's inequitable distribution. Certainly the failing of either ideal centers on their practice by greedy and immoral people. Monopolies, government corruption and exactly where to balance the socialist elements of the common good create problems, but of the forms mentioned only capitalism has demonstrable proof of long term success.
> Yet, if OSS shares the benefits of either of those systems, yet continues to work the way it does, then it's a good thing.
The communist slur on OSS is very wrong. The truth is that it is agnostic to your political views and social ideals. If you believe in the worker's utopian paradise or you think the government has no business in insurance and retirement you will still have something to like in OSS. The only ones who can object are those who wish to run IP like a lottery and work once so they can collect forever... an ideal that is not really of either camp. (Those who want to be paid for what they don't produce because they once produced are lazy gamblers.)
OSS makes sense because:
1) Financially you can get a tool for less money
2) Since infrastructure (like highways) is both too expensive and too vital to be produced by individual entities it is managed as a public resource... Operating system and other software is already demonstrating that being entrusted to OSS groups prduces superior results.
3) By enabling development of better software tools enterprising business types can offer powerful value added services at competative prices with nominal expenses.
> Certainly not something to be afraid of :)
Being afraid of this couldn't be more obtuse. By delivering open source software to China we in fact deliver our friendship and a message of the values of free software. We are saying "We want you to have these tools and we hope you will be enriched and they can help you make your life better." What could be better than that? This also means more Chinese are connected to the internet. I wish the North Koreans were all connected but they endure total information control. Do you know what they are told? Ask yourself if you think people will be more likely to march off to war with you if they only know they were told you are a murderous hoarde, or if they are using software you gave them freely to use and they have communicated with you by email.
We should all be very happy that China is moving to get people connected and to improve opportunity for their people. The only thing we should fear is ignorance, and being connected is where the cure lies.
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Re: China?
by Giuseppe Bilotta on Wednesday 20/Aug/2003, @02:38
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> The communist slur on OSS is very wrong.
Ehm. I think this statement is wrong :)
> The truth is that it is agnostic to your political views and social ideals.
While I agree with this.
To make a long story as short as possible (and henceforth wrong like all simplifications of an inherently complex matter) there are two "layers" of communism: a social level, and an economical level; and the two are somewhat distinct, even if related. Oversimplifying, at the economical level communism basically means (usually) a sharing of the tools and of the deriving products. Again oversimplifying, at the social level communism means "no ownership".
Translated into software terms, FLOSS *does* result in an essentially economically communistic environment; what it doesn't do is fit the "social" communistic point of view, which would rather become something akin to "no intellectual property (of software)".
If some social structure has to be found in the FLOSS, this would rather be, IMO, an anarchic (self-aggregating, self-ruling communities) one. But that's another matter.
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Re: China?
by Ken on Tuesday 19/Aug/2003, @20:28
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China nowadays is less communist than you might think? Market driven policies are leaving a lot of people out to dry, as they can't rely on state-run companies anymore.
I think this has to do more with technological independence (and security to some extent) rather than communism.
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Re: China?
by CE on Tuesday 19/Aug/2003, @22:24
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The problem is China is a dictatorship with a more and more capitalistic system.
It doesn't match any good meanings of communism, but seems to be engaged to match all bad meanings.
But there are enough "good" countries not caring about humanity and individual rights, especially in the last years.
You're right, this decision is about independency and strengthening its own economy.
So it isn't surprising that they choose Linux and KDE. (OK, they could also use FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD, etc.)
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Good Point
by a.c. on Wednesday 20/Aug/2003, @02:09
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It is just like it. Lets see
1) All actions are dictated from top down like a CEO.
2) If anybody trys to compete against you,
then just "kill" or inprision them.
3) If anybody is succeding at making money,
then take it all away from them unless they are the right people
oh wait, This does not sound like OSS, but sounds like .....
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Re: China? FOSS software, capitalism, free markets
by cmoss on Wednesday 20/Aug/2003, @03:01
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Actually if you look at capitalism it is based on a free market economy(in theory)
A free market has low barriers to entry and high demand. In a free market economy the cost of goods and services will trend towards the marginal cost to produce.
With electronic duplication and internet distribution the marginal cost to produce one unit of software (an office suite for example) is close to zero. So the cost of for downloading software should be close to zero.
Worldwide internet distribution should be as close to free market economics as possible. As far as barriers to entry, you can produce software with a single PC.
chuck
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Re: China?
by fault on Wednesday 20/Aug/2003, @04:21
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Have you seen Chinese economic theories since 1978? hardly communist (they never were, and neither was the soviet union)
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Re: China?
by Chris Bordeman on Wednesday 20/Aug/2003, @05:34
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Interesting though, how OSS was invented inside capitalist societies...
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Re: Red, Red China?
by beccon on Wednesday 20/Aug/2003, @09:45
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>>To me its a little scarey about China picking it up. Ever notice how close of an ideology Open Source is to Communism?<<
You never lived in a communist country did you? name a few countries) - has nothing toCommunism - in the form the world has seen it (Russia, China, East Germany to do with colaboratoring, sharing resources (unless we talk about widespread theft and corruption) and working cooperatively.
Communism is rather state monopolies - one size fits it all: You have to buy that little, clunky, smelly two-stroke lawn mower engine powered Trabant car or walk because it's the only car you can buy.
If you want something special, say Banana or Mango fruits for dinner - you get probably laughted upon by the rough shop keeper in the government owned store. (if not they go after you for provokation ;-) )
Doesn't it rather match the business practices of a big software company from the North east of the United States? (let me see: one size has to fit, it's clunky, it will explode in a spectacular fire ball in the case of the slightest accident as its Trabant counterpart, you get ridiculed if you want something special ;-) )
Well the Chinese do what they want to do and their government is their business. If many of them choose Linux and KDE then they are our friends, aren't they;-)
Conrad
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Re: China?
by anonon on Wednesday 20/Aug/2003, @14:33
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Ever notice how far China is from being Free and Open?
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