Open Source and its Limitations

“GNU serves as an example to inspire and a banner to rally others to join us in sharing. This can give us a feeling of harmony which is impossible if we use software that is not free. For about half the programmers I talk to, this is an important happiness that money cannot replace.”

Reading Richard Stallman’s “Gnu Manifesto,” the naiveté of the man is the first thing to strike me. Although not an ardent capitalist myself, I cannot help but think that Stallman is a rash idealist, one first discovering the wonders of a theoretical Marxist system. He is either unaware or willfully ignorant of the debate that has already raged over some of the Marxist claims implied in his writing. “Openness” and the miracle of open source evolution are merely disguised applications of Marxism, with the respective (and oft debated) benefits and consequences implicit in their model. An exploration of the implied socialist claims underneath the “Gnu Manifesto” is as follows.

Theoretically, open source programs, such as those created under the GNU project, are “just like air;” that is, they are plentiful and require no payment or labor to use. However, whereas air is a renewable source, and plants require no investment capital to replenish our oxygen supply, a human must devote his labor to renewing, distributing, or rewriting programs. This is a fundamental problem that Stallman thinks he addresses, but does not. To the question, “Don’t programmers deserve a reward for their creativity?” Stallman responds, “If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution.” However, the programmers in GNU are making a social contribution, supplying the need like good socialists are supposed to do. And, they are not being rewarded for their labor, even though they deserve one. To counter this, Stallman proposes ideas about an overhead tax that would make programming a subsidized vocation; this is yet another reference to a communist state, where all vocations are subsidized.

He continues shortly afterward with a critique of modern capitalism, in response to the comment, “Competition makes things get done better.” He begins by saying yes, this is true. However, he adds that “the paradigm of competition is a race […] if the runners get into a fist fight, they will all finish late.” This oversimplification is a weak argument against capitalism and has been made many times before, although it is nonetheless inviting. Much has been written on the subject; whether or not Stallman is right in this regard is still up for debate. But it is still an argument in favor of socialism.

Stallman’s critiques of capitalism segue into copyright law. He brings up books and the issue of plagiarism, but then explains the differences:

“The fact that the easiest way to copy a program is from one neighbor to another, the fact that a program has both source code and object code which are distinct, and the fact that a program is used rather than read and enjoyed, combine to create a situation in which a person who enforces a copyright is harming society as a whole both materially and spiritually; in which a person should not do so regardless of whether the law enables him to.”

This is a strange argument concerning the transcendence of law towards an agreed-upon “natural law,” a post-conventional moral system that also is open to debate. Because the democratic social contract has come up with copyright laws, and Stallman is contesting the use of copyright laws, he is implicitly advocating against the democratic (read: capitalist-based) social contract. It is evident that Stallman is on the cusp of advocating social change, a Marxian revolution grounded in post-conventional morality against the destructive process of copyright law.

But here’s where it starts getting really hairy:

“In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the post-scarcity world, where nobody will have to work very hard just to make a living. People will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun, such as programming, after spending the necessary ten hours a week on required tasks […] We have already greatly reduced the amount of work that the whole society must do for its actual productivity, but only a little of this has translated itself into leisure for workers because much nonproductive activity is required to accompany productive activity. The main causes of this are bureaucracy and isometric struggles against competition. Free software will greatly reduce these drains in the area of software production.”

Stallman’s term, the post-scarcity world, is a Utopian vision that first requires a revolution to a different, non-capitalist system (which would remove the “bureaucracy” and “isometric struggles against competition”), where the “pursuit of happiness” no longer means the vocation of choice but literally the chase after that which ensures happiness. Ah… if only!

Here is a good time to introduce that wonderful buzzkill, Fredric Jameson (not this guy). At one point in his essay “Cognitive Mapping,” Jameson digresses to the problem of generalizing a Marxist vision which currently only works in a specific spatial plane. Jameson uses the example presented in the book Detroit: I Do Mind Dying by Marvin Surkin and Dan Georgakis. In Detroit, the League of Black Revolutionary Workers is able to accomplish a startling feat: it “came within a hair’s breadth of […] taking over the city power apparatus” (Jameson 351). Once it began to expand, however, it encountered a spatial problem: “how to develop a national political movement on the basis of a city strategy and politics” (Jameson 352). Once the leaders of the League began working on the larger spatial plane, the base vanished under them. They became alienated from their own constituencies, for, in a socialistic society that stresses equality, there cannot be flashy media stars who don’t stay home to “mind the store” (Jameson 352). As the movement begun by the League collapsed underneath itself, its lone success—a riveting documentary of its achievement—also lost some of its flavor, because “in the process of becoming an image and a spectacle, the referent seems to have disappeared, as so many people from Debord to Baudrillard always warned us it would” (Jameson 352).

So, despite the vast possibilities given to humanity in the possibilities of open source software, it seems sadly limited by the Marxist philosophy lying ever so exposed beneath it. Open source works in some cases: many students I know at Brown use Open Office and are fervent supporters of free software (although perhaps for more selfish reasons—let’s just say I don’t know too many programmers and we’re all strapped for cash). But Jameson, with his example, explains how the grand image of a post-scarcity world, a generalization of the philosophy of openness, is much too high a goal for such a specific model, and it will inevitably fail. The spatial difference between the farsighted goals of open source—the implicit overthrow of capitalism for a socialist politic that Jameson (that buzzkill) says is impossible (Jameson 355)—and its present realities are too great for the model to overcome them. Indeed, the only result of such elegant posturing is the emergence of a narrative of defeat, a postmodern agony that creates nothing but longing.

So what lies in the future for open source? Perhaps the greatest potential lies not in the radical left-leaning words of Stallman, but in the centrist views described by Coleman in “How Free Became Open and Everything Else Under the Sun.” The metaphor of a “Commons,” a protected pool of resources and knowledge for common use by all, but non-threatening to the capitalist system, is an effective tool for combating the “runner’s fistfight” problem to which Stallman refers. Instead of being a radical step towards a (largely impossible) post-scarcity world, openness is instead “one example of a larger ‘liberal’ critique of the neoliberal face of ‘socially destructive unfettered capitalism’ [the runner’s fistfight], which is seen as a threat to democracy” (Coleman 15). This is a much more achievable goal for the open source model, one that even Jameson would not write off. That buzzkill.

As Stallman’s stepping-stone to a Marxist revolution, open source is crippled by the weight of that which it is trying to overthrow. As Jameson explains, it simply cannot bridge the spatial gap. As a sharp critique in the back-and-forth between neoliberalism and liberal thought, however, open source can truly shine.

Thanks for a great semester, Josh--enjoy your summer!

--Dan Ricker