Similar motivations for sure. I mean there is a reason stallman like to call it copy left.
this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2026
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It’s an interesting question. I don’t think I’d say it’s inherently socialist, as that’s a fairly strong statement. I would say, though, that FOSS really shows humans’ ability and desire to create useful things outside of the profit motive. That we are not slaves to “rational self-interest” and without the profit motive, nothing will ever get done. I think that dovetails nicely with what we know a socialist society can be built on.
I would say so yes, but only if you view it as a communist enclave within capitalism.
The tricky bit is that FOSS exists in an environment that's devoid of scarcity. If I write code and post it under a Free license, you can make infinite copies and use it without depriving me of it. That's rather different from a scenario where I might spend my labour extracting a finite number of carrots from the earth.
Still, I think it's an excellent demonstration that the working class is willing to spend its efforts in a sharing economy... so long as the benefits are reciprocal.
Yes, but also no. Lots of communists support FOSS, but communism is a much broader movement that cannot be localized to individual software projects. A worker cooperative is not really socialist, because it only has equal ownership for the worker-owners within said cell, and isn't actually collectivized production and distribution. A society isn't socialist for having FOSS, but because public ownership is the principle aspect and the working class in charge of the state. When we think of socialism and communism, we need to recognize these as interconnected systems, and not something we can just slice out of any society and judge at an individual level in a vacuum.
I'd also add that a fundamental difference between a worker co-op, and a foss-produced software, is that the code and often the output of that code (the app or library), are freely available, and anyone can use them and change them.
That differs from the isolated structure of a worker co-op, where production is isolated to a single firm and closed, the output is a commodity, and the goal is still private profit within the marketplace.
A good analogy would be that a worker co-op restaurant might keep its recipes private, in order to better compete in the marketplace, and increase it's own profit. A foss restaurant publicizes their recipes so that anyone can use them and improve them.
So while the production of foss might seem like a worker co-op, it's public nature and incentive structure imo makes it more akin to public ownership. There are a good number of cases of projects being forked, because the creators take the project in a direction the majority of it's users disagree with (libreoffice, hedgedoc, mariadb).
IMO We can only truly call it full public ownership, when states employ people to work on foss, and decisions are fully made at the public level.
Thanka for your input, that's a great point! I agree with your opinion regarding FOSS as not just individual projects of small groups, but done at a broader, public scale. This way visibility is even broader, contributions more regular and with the whole of society in mind. At the same time, FOSS as it exists right now is still absolutely better than standard proprietary software, and maintains its utility even after it's no longer being maintained by the main group due to its open and transparent nature.
Great points!
Not inherently, but it does somewhat fall under the same umbrella. Cowbee summed it up far better than I could.
That being said, it's kind of ironic how many FOSS projects are maintained by nazi chuds.