Re: IP: Marxist Theory and Free Software

[David Farber <dfarber@earthlink.net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 14:30:34 
To: farber@cis.upenn.edu, ip <ip-sub-1@majordomo.pobox.com>
Subject: Re: IP: Marxist Theory and Free Software

At 04:52 PM 3/13/2002, Mikael Pawlo <mikael@pawlo.com> wrote:

>First Monday published an article by Johan Soderberg, where Soderberg
>explores free software from a Marxist perspective. 

Alas, Soderberg's article makes several serious mistakes -- among the
most serious of which is ignoring the significance of BSD UNIX. 
Soderberg states,

"Today the only challenger to Microsoft's monopoly in operative systems, 
Windows, is one of these community projects - Linux."

In doing so, he completely ignores the significance of BSD UNIX, upon
which nearly all of the viable competitors to Microsoft operating
systems -- including Linux -- have drawn for both ideas and code.

Soderberg states, "The free software community is not as pluralistic as 
it appears. First mover advantage is strong, maybe even stronger than in 
commercial developments, because a successful project tends to cannibalise
similar projects. One such case is the BSD Unix that effectively was 
absorbed by the success of Linux."

Again, Soderberg fails to recognize the continued growth and success
of BSD UNIX.... Perhaps because its truly egalitarian licensing does 
not conform to the rhetoric of the GPL, much of which borrows heavily
from Marx.

--Brett Glass

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