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Comment by js8 | Hacker News Reader

I am not familiar with either, but I am curious why does "anti-capitalist message" matter so much? I thought the purpose is to build a messaging network that everybody can use. And even GNU founder can be considered anti-capitalist.

I am asking because to me, to decide to join some (not political) community based on your own political opinion, is a good way to live in your own bubble. The real strength of the Internet is that we are exposed to contrarian positions, even at the expense of our comfort.

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Before the horde descends, I thought I might respond to the suggestion that RMS is anti-capitalist. This comes up frequently and is a bit of a red herring. I won't try to speak for him (he can obviously do that well enough himself), however I think it is worth considering the free software movement in today's reality.

Back when they only thing that described free software was the GNU manifesto, we still had the idea that writing software that enabled businesses was a good idea. It may be a consequence of free software that it will become difficult to charge money directly for software (as a product), but that shouldn't stop companies from making money.

Especially now when we see how open source software is almost taken for granted, we can see that companies flourish, not die. It is true that you practically can not charge money for a compiler any more, but are we worse off? No. We have different and arguably better business models for that kind of software -- and we haven't given up capitalism at all. My tools are dramatically better than they were 30 years ago (when I first started in this business). The cost has also dropped to nearly zero. We have become efficient.

It is true that the FSF considers software freedom a moral imperative. While it may be true that some kinds of software will be difficult to produce in this manner, we can see that there are several very large companies that thrive producing virtually every kind of software. Personally, I don't think there are many businesses that will be better off with our old software-as-a-product business models -- games being a probable exception. What we have now is better, more efficient, enabling for the general population -- and much better for businesses. I have a hard time seeing it from an "anti-capitalist" position. And, just from my personal perspective, I don't think RMS ever did either.

I am not talking primarily about Stallman's free software work; have you ever read his political notes? It seems that he is very critical to capitalism (as a description of the existing economic system, contrary to free market, which describes - somewhat different - ideal). In fact he also seems to be critical about free market, in particular in environmental and social issues.

RMS is a classic Green Party guy, explicitly. That is not the same as being anti-capitalist.

And only idiots think that free markets don't have externalities, so RMS noting that there are environmental or social issues free markets fail to address is itself completely unremarkable. Anyone who denies those facts should be completely disregarded. Even the most staunch free market advocates who have any understanding of reality accept that externalities exist.

Usually the staunch free market advocates don't want to do anything about those externalities, though. They accept that they exist, but that doesn't stop them from fighting whenever regulation or taxes come up as a way to fix those externalities.

Sure. There are idiots who deny/ignore externalities, and then there are intelligent dogmatic fundamentalists who prioritize their fundamentalist model regardless of ramifications.

Being critical of, and believing that those systems can better work for most people, rather than those at the top, isn't enough to make someone anti-capitalist.

Have you ever read anything by RMS on what he calls Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS)? I can't think of many large businesses who aren't "guilty" of that.

This looks like the SaaSS article:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...

The payoff comes at the very end, "Do your own computing with your own copy of a free program, for your freedom's sake."

Nah, I'll pay someone to do compute (and maintain the API, infrastructure, etc.) for me. I'm a huge free software advocate, but in the SaaS situation, I'm not paying for a program, I'm paying for results.

As such, it's immaterial how I get those results--they could have a roomful of people arranging bits by hand. (What if that's how they were doing it? Would that represent a loss of freedom, if I were paying people to shuffle bits by hand?)

This particular essay seems like the RMS take on that old saw, "if all you have is a hammer..."

The loss of freedom, in your case, is control over the development direction of your tools. If the tools match your business, fine. Let's hope they still do in a few years.

If the match is only partial, your choice is between lobbying for tool change from your vendor, or conforming your business to match the tool.

> I have a hard time seeing it from an "anti-capitalist" position.

The FSF position is anti-capitalist in at least one technical sense -- in the domain of software, it morally opposes capitalist model of property rights (and, in practice, uses a hack around the mechanism by which that model is implemented to subvert it.)

I don't agree with your assessment. Although they encourage people not to use the term "Intellectual Property", I think that's from the perspective that ideas are not property. This is not at odds with (my understanding of) the legal definition of IP (the name notwithstanding). The property in IP, is the monopoly it affords, not the idea. You can't own an idea (i.e. it is not legal to do so). You can own the government granted monopoly for implementing that idea.

The FSF is pro-copyright and pro-trademark. You can literally own software. In fact, one of the things the GPL makes very clear is that once you have given/sold someone the software, you can't suddenly revoke their rights to use it in any way they see fit. In fact the FSF is very outspoken about the dangers of using services which remove that right (for example ebooks where the seller can suddenly revoke your right to read the book).

When you receive software under the GPL, you own that copy. It is literally yours. You can modify it. You can study it. You can give it or sell it (for any amount of money) to someone else. Not only that, but you do not own the copyrights. The copyrights are owned by someone else and are not transferred with the software. So this means that you can not change the license, even with a derived work.

They like it that way. They do not want to change the ability to own software or own copyrights. The GPL does not subvert the notion of software as property -- it enforces the normal rights you would have if it were physical property.

I always saw intellectual property rights as a hack to try and encourage the production of non-rivalrous goods. The scarcity is in some sense enforced and artificial, and there's a strong argument to be made that they aren't they aren't "natural" property rights in the same sense as you get with rivalrous goods.

I think pro-capitalist (mostly libertarian) thought on this matter is divided.

> The scarcity is in some sense enforced and artificial

The problem is, you can mount the very same argument even in the case of normal property rights. At the beginnings of capitalism, the scarcity was in fact enforced by means of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure.

IMHO, most libertarians are used to idea normal property and take it for "natural", but not so in the "intellectual" world of ideas. It is partly because they benefit from intellectual world not yet completely owned by rich people. But I think people outside computing (unless they are distinctly leftist) are unfortunately lot more content with the idea of "intellectual property".

In my view, there is always a balance between "property rights" and other needs of society - availability of resources to the needy and the general public, innovation and growth.

You have the draw the line somewhere and using physical boundaries is quite useful. It create a natural distinction.

The problem with IP is that there isn't any limit to it. A driver license is not more or less a property than a patent, but it acts wastingly different. Can I sell a driver license? can I rent it? Can I cut it into two different part and give a friend half of it? What makes the exclusivity of state granted driver license a non-property, in contrast to the state granted exclusivity of an patent?

The distinction doesn't look natural to me..

I don't see why anyone should "own" natural resources, or beaches for instance. I understand that we all need a place to live and we want to own our personal possessions, but it doesn't seem to me at all natural to extend this to mines, factories or huge tracts of lands on the other side of the planet, that you perhaps even never see. Maybe the scarcity of natural resources isn't such a big deal unless you have people who simply own to much of it.

In the same vein, I agree that authors and inventors should be compensated for the efforts, but the copyrights and patents shouldn't create more scarcity.

I don't think I can go along with the idea that a license is property. By the very nature of a license, you can't do any of that stuff with it. I'm the one, who, by nature of being granted the license, was granted the privilege the license confers (driving, practicing a specific trade, etc). It would make absolutely no sense to rent out a driver's license to someone who has not demonstrated the competency needed to get one.

You can and it is done. Land ownership is restricted in many ways in many countries just like IP should be.

"it morally opposes capitalist model of property rights"

Does it? Or does it take a much more hardline stance in favor of property rights, by saying you should control what is running on your property?

Just a RMS quote from the latest FOSDEM: the Free Software movement takes some ideas from capitalism, some from socialism and some from anarchism. (Quoted from memory)

Unfortunately I can't give you a verifiable source, but the whole talk will be available at http://video.fosdem.org/2016/ud2218a/ at some point.

Agreed...you grow by entertaining ideas other than your own, or those of the group you find yourself closely identifying with...

As F Scott Fitzegerald said:

A test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

Using the Internet just to confirm your existing beliefs sounds a bit too much like tribalism...isn't there something better to aspire to?

The GPL couldn't work without one of the common features of capitalism: protection of intellectual property. Also, Stallman has never gone record saying capitalism should be abolished. He simply didn't feel computers should be constrained by IP. At worse, he's a Georgist on IP since IP to most modern Georgists is held in common like land.

Not all of us are anti-capitalist. Before I woke up to the reality of the world around us, I was strictly anarcho-capitalist (like, "Fire Departments should negotiate contracts for payment before putting out your fire" level). Turns out, I just hate monopolism, to the point that extreme competition turned out to be the lesser evil.

The only political opinion you should share about Free Software, is whether the software honors the four freedoms[0]. The rest (open source software, FOSS, etc), are corporate add-on sales attempts.

0.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition

> And even GNU founder can be considered anti-capitalist.

You are mixing up anarchism with anti-capitalism.

Not really, IMHO you're the one mixing them up. Take Noam Chomsky, he self-identifies as anarchist too, but I think you would have a hard time not to call him anti-capitalist.

I understand anti-capitalism as a criticism of the current economic system (or at least aspects of it), so it's independent to anarchism, just like it is, say, independent to Christianity.

Noam Chomsky doesn't speak for all anarchists. Anarchism comes in different forms.

> I understand anti-capitalism as a criticism of the current economic system (or at least aspects of it), so it's independent to anarchism, just like it is, say, independent to Christianity.

That's exactly my point (that it's independent). In case of Stallman, he isn't anti-capitalist per se, but he is definitely an anarchist.

What makes him anarchist?

His core ideas of free software are based on the concept of being free from control over it. The idea is anarchistic since by controlling the software and computing technology one controls society in some way, and the more technology is intertwined with social aspects (which gradually happens the more technology progresses), the higher is that level of control.

You could just as well argue that his ideas are democratic, giving power to larger groups of people than before.

Teaching the people to run their own services sounds pretty similar to what happened during the enlightenment, when people were taught to read at a large scale for the first time.

Anarchism is by nature truly democratic, except that it aims to avoid hierarchical powers.

As someone else said, Stallman does not identify himself as being an anarchist. If you listen to his talks, he does spend some time on what we need to do to protect ourselves politically and the need to protect democracy.

I may be in the minority: I agree with almost everything that Richard says.

> As someone else said, Stallman does not identify himself as being an anarchist.

Self identification is his personal choice. I'm talking about his ideas however.

RMS is on record saying "I am not an anarchist. In fact, I have a pro-state gland"

I assume that's because someone tried to attribute to him certain anarchistic positions that he didn't share. This doesn't make his own ideas less anarchistic however.

Indeed, but promoting some anarchist (or just anarchy-compatible) ideas does not make one an anarchist.

It makes him anarchist in the context of those ideas. Are people defined by a single label? Rarely so.

Anarchism is anti-capitalist… but RMS is neither an anarchist nor strictly anti-capitalist

> Anarchism is anti-capitalist

Some of it. There are various views on this subject as well as different variants of anarchistic approaches.

> RMS is neither an anarchist nor strictly anti-capitalist

Giving a single label is probably pointless. He definitely has anarchistic ideas.

It is a federated messaging network. I don't see that it is any more subject to filter bubbles than Twitter is. Everyone chooses who they follow anyway. If you want to subscribe to feeds from people with politics opposite yours, you can do that.

That was my point. The intro site may have "anti-capitalist" in it, but at the end of the day, it's up to users what they do with that network.

I didn't say that I wouldn't read from Quitter. I follow a few people from there. But, I said that I didn't register there. To me, registering with the service after reading that goal would be a vote in favour of that goal.

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