Pintmaster

A comparison of Marxist Communism and the Open Source Software movement

The open source software movement is becoming one of the most influential parts of the computing industry as well as a part of the U.S. stock market. Karl Marx made predictions about the progression of society and believed that communism would surpass capitalism as the next societal stage, and that a society based on communism would be more advanced than one based on capitalism. Every member of society would work for themselves and for every other member. He was far from correct in his predictions, and the reality of his system was far from the idyllic state he predicted. His ideas are still alive and have become present in a different medium. The computer industry and the Internet, is an unmediated, largely unrepressed universe for the transmission of ideas. Open Source Software provides Marx’s basic ideas the gratification they deserve

Within the Internet, there is a growing group of developers and programmers writing software for each other, which is given away free along with all the thought that went into writing the code. This is Open Source Software. One may ask why would anyone do anything for free? What can these people possibly get out of writing software for free? I can truthfully say, I have no idea. I do know though, that I too have the desire to write code for free. Part of the reason for someone to use open source software is the ability to do anything with it. Because you have full access to the code that the person used to write the program, you can change that code to suit you or add to the code to benefit the rest of the community. This model is very different to the traditional software model where everything is created by a company who does not allow the end user access to the code. This code is guarded very closely and the company that developed the software must iron out any bugs or problems with it alone. One of the problems with this is that because of the small group of testers, limited by the companies desire to keep their projects secret, bugs generally come out after the official release of the software. An analogy that was made by the CEO of RedHat software refers to the purchasing closed-source software as like buying a car where the hood is completely shut and inaccessible to everyone except of a professional from the car manufacturer. If a breakdown were to occur, the owner may not even be able to take the car to the nearest garage. Not every car owner wants to look inside the engine and tune the car, but if the option was not available to them, people would be reluctant to purchase the car.

IBM, also known as “Big Blue” was the epitome of closed everything during the early days of the computing industry. They now are making efforts to support Open Source Software, specifically Linux, because they feel it is the way forward. Marx’s idea of Communism was a society where the members of that society had control over their destiny. IBM is planning to make money by providing server solutions with support packages, and their own proprietary hardware running the Linux operating system. They believe that they can offer companies a solution desirable and cost-effective.

The Open Source movement or the trading of software has been active in one form or another since the beginning of the personal computing industry. Bill Gates denial of the freedom to redistribute his software and the onslaught of seemingly inescapable high software prices led to a reaction that came into full force when Linus Torvalds, a Finnish university student created a POSIX based operating system based on UNIX which he dubbed Linux. His OS or operating system was released under the GNU GPL, the General Public License. This license enables all users to edit and redistribute the code. In order to prevent free software from being turned into proprietary software, copyleft was established. “Copyleft uses copyright law, but flips it over to serve the opposite of its usual purpose: instead of a means of privatizing software, it becomes a means of keeping software free” [i] . Since it’s debut in 1991, at which time it was version 0.02, the Linux Kernel (the core on which the whole system runs) has been developed, by the original creator, Linus Torvalds, and at the time of this writing is at version 2.2. Linux provides users with a low cost alternative to expensive operating systems. Even if one was to go ahead and purchase a copy of Linux, the software provided is free to be copied and distributed to friends. This is far from the requirements of Microsoft and others who require by law that each individual computer has it’s own operating system license, where in servers, this can cost hundreds of dollars for each license. It seems, that if a better service can be provided for free, to pay hundreds of dollars each time you buy an operating system is ridiculous. Computer users have been forced into paying high prices, by Microsoft and other companies who fix the price of their software higher than is competitive, but because of the market domination, the competition is not even in the picture. This practice is now starting to feel a reaction with the growing popularity of open source.

Marx’s communism which is too often confused with the communism of Stalin, and other dictators has given the word communism a negative connotation in western, capitalist society. Other derivatives of the same latin root are words such as companion, community. Communism is about community. The open source movement is also about community. One of the main reasons it is so similar to communism is that there is no higher governing power deciding the value of each. The various sectors and projects in the open source community are controlled collectively by the people involved. There may be someone who acts as the moderator or collaborator of the project, but no one person has more authority over another due to a higher position or more income. Collaboration and success like this can be found in the Mozilla project.

On January 3rd, 1999, Netscape Communications made a press release saying that the Netscape Communicator product would be free, and secondly that they would also release the source code for the Communicator product [ii] . This decision was made due to the dwindling market share that Netscape’s product had. Since the release of the source, development has been at a medium pace, but the large base of hackers (originally a term for programmers), has enabled the code to be under constant revision and optimization. The open source world has saved the Netscape Communicator browser. It is the number one browser in the only operating system that is increasing in market share annually. The project is organized and maintained by Netscape Communications, but the vast majority of programming is and has been done by open source programmers who participate in the project for nothing but the love of writing code. On one of the larger communities of open source projects, Source Forge, there are 4601 projects that are being worked on by developers. These projects range from programs to exploit the security flaws in Microsoft Operating Systems to programs to chat with friends online.

Another major player in a certain sector of the computing industry, Apple, is in the process of writing their OS, based on the BSD operating system. Apple is calling it OSX. OSX is completely inseperable from the BSD layer, which it runs on top of to provide a friendlier user interface, much like Windows 95 and 98 run on top of DOS. This can prospectively make cross-platform programming much easier. Apple is not an Open Source company though, but following a major trend, has released parts of their operating system to the open source community. Microsoft, may also in the near future be forced to open up its operating system. The United States government is deciding whether or not Microsoft is using its weight as the most powerful company in the world in order to further secure its grip around the neck and wallets of computer users and businesses. This decision by the US Government could be the most promising for the open source community so far.

The main problem currently facing Open Source Software, as faced communism, is the full implementation and the difficulty of the conversion of a person from one mindset and way of life to the other. In the attempts at communism, this was implemented through violence and terror. In the computing world, those tactics sound more in tune with Bill Gates intimidation of hardware companies and PC retailers. The infiltration of Open Source software into the world computer network is starting with servers. Servers provide companies and networks with the ability to network. Most websites are run on an Open Source web server, Apache. Although Apache is free, it is still believed to be the most efficient web server available to date. The infrastructures of computers that connect us together seem to be increasingly Open Source. It is only a matter of time before Open Source outgrows its current place in the computer society, and increases its market share on the desktop. “The number of Linux users grew from about 1,000 in 1992 to nine million last year [iii] ”. This will increase further as Open Source software becomes more easily accessible to all computer users.

The shared wealth system which open source provides favors developing nations. Countries whose general public cannot afford expensive software and most likely cannot afford computers, have one of those barriers brought down. India is one such country where open source is a very viable solution for the countries government networks. Countries such as China where software piracy is rampant, are most likely to benefit from Open Source’s increase in market share. The people that once sold pirated software can sell copied distributions of and software for Open Source operating systems without the issue of breaking the law but it never really mattered anyway.

Marx made his assumptions about society on the state of capitalism at his time, much like I make the assumptions based on the current state at mine. What Marx did not predict was that Capitalism would adapt in the way that it did. Much of the original declarations about the rights of workers in the Communist Manifesto were absorbed and imposed on the capitalist workers. These ideas took shape in trade unions. With these and other methods of workers achieving better conditions, the desire of the proletariat (as Marx called the urban working classes) to rise up in rebellion was diminished and communism failed in the countries and areas Marx believed it was destined to succeed. The United States, the penultimate example of capitalism is the breeding ground for this new breed of communism, where the incubation period of the virus depends on the level of the computer user’s hatred for Bill Gates, as well as their desire for something free, and revolutionary. The completely open source model cannot survive in a purely capitalist society. Fortunately, it too has adapted in order to generate revenue. Personalized service and help costs money. Many of the distributions of Linux and FreeBSD, as well as other “free” operating systems are free to download, but if one desires fancy packaging and user manuals, then those can be purchased from the companies providing the software.

This new form of communism has a much greater chance of full, or even partial success than the communism of Marx. Full success meaning market domination and the world as its user base, writing and creating software, thus achieving the fastest rate of quality software development, the world has ever seen. Partial success meaning domination in one specific area, such as web hosting, as it already seems to have. Open source is just a phase according to some analysts, a pop culture. Some people such as the developers of Eazel Inc. have put their lives into Linux, lives that once helped to develop the original Mac OS, the easiest OS to use… ever. Open Source software has inspired developers and software enthusiasts alike to pursue a less lucrative, but nobler cause in software design. If Marx’s theory is correct this time, in this situation, we should all come out on top.

[i] Stallman, Richard;

http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html

1998

[ii] The mozilla Organization

http://www.mozilla.org/mission.html

1999-2000

[iii] The guardian online

http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,221905,00.html

Thursday May 18, 2000