Free and Open Source Software

tl;dr : No, FOSS project are used by military and fascists

long: It's link to a common misunderstanding of "mean of production". FOSS developers do not own the mean of production. Mean of production is not just the tool to produce goods and services, but all the industry needed to make them available : promotion, distribution, ... Socialization (for anarchists) or collectivization (for comies) of industries mean that workers own and manage (or self-organized) every establishment needed for this and organize together to get their power back. In this case, we could abolish some industries, change them, or choose where to send the production or not. This is the same for cooperatives and self-managed places; it's may be some interesting experience or complementary with class struggle, but is not a revolutionary move in itself

Honestly, yes, I think it's one of the best examples of anarchism in action the world has ever seen. And an especially pertinent example to point out to those who'd say things like, "Why would anyone do work or innovate without a profit motive?" Lots of good and innovative software, made without any profit incentive by a collective of people who are working on it just because they want to and they enjoy it.

Yes, as an anarchist I regularly point to FOSS as a plausible example of it working

I'm going with communalism. And its even simpler. A group of like minded people wanting to be creative nd share creativity without monetization. Seems more akin to artist movements to me. And I'm all for it.

I often think of community run open source free license software projects as an example of communalism, personally. Maybe when I learn about more forms of anarchism and socialism there will be other ideas that feel more apt to describe it

BoringCactus wrote a tentative post-mortem to "open source"/free software (five-and-a-half years ago already?!) that I find/found interesting and somewhat relevant to your question.

Fuck yea! I'm not those dumb tear down the government people, I'm the make it redundant pragmatic people. I will go as close to my ideal state as possible.

Cory Doctorow has a novel "Walkaway" which is basically "what if society but FOSS". It's really good!

Open source is not literally communism, but I do think it's one of the best examples to demonstrate that anarcho-communism is plausible.

Yep, and that's why I use it.

I consider FOSS a step toward prefiguring an anarchy.

Current source control management systems however perpetuate heirarchies with roles such as maintainer and developer with different permissions. I like to keep the permissions similar for roles. I might take away foot guns like force push from developers.

Another problem limiting anarchy is consensus. Getting agreement from everyone effected is still not quite there in the merge request process.

Only if you use GPL, not MIT.

It can definitely be a form of praxis.

Not really.

I compare it more to fan fiction and amateur writing. Some is a great read, much better than the garbage you might find on NYT's best seller list. Very talented people doing what they love and trying to be of service to others along the way. FOSS often seems more of a passion project for the creator(s) than an anarchist/communist project, IMHO - although there are obvious parallels.

I think FOSS enable those kind of communities but I don’t think FOSS as a concept is any of those things. those communities could equally work with a non FOSS license (eg one that prevents commercial use or a license that allow usage only by members of a specific community). They uses existing licenses because they go momentum and have legal precedents that allows people to defend their rights.

Most FOSS licenses were specifically designed to allow profiting from the wok of others, even the GPL. Just see how many billion dollar companies (think Azure, AWS, etc) profit from projects without giving anything back.

While not explicitly so, FOSS as a concept aligns very closely with far left anti-capitalist principles. The existence of corporate and right-winger-owned FOSS projects is a bit of an oxymoron, but doesn't discredit the fact that it's inherently a far left concept.

It's an observation of Marx, I think correct, that society organises in a manner aligned around the means of production. Agrarian -> feudal, industrial -> capitalist etc. I think the essential distinguishing feature of software vs capital goods is that software can be copied without the loss of the original. Hence I think the concept of ownership fails and the mode of production becomes anarchist.

Not Communism in a political sense. More like community based, friendly software.

Open Source as in transparent or non proprietary.

It's a non-market way of doing things, so sure it fits the definition, but labels are dumb, and the people who really like labels are worse.

You'll also notice that you still have to pay for whatever device Linux goes on, which is a strong hint about the economics at play.

I was introduced to communism/socialism through Linux.

I'm definitively printing this and putting it on my wall

Anarcho Communism

I do not.

FOSS is the natural conclusion of public code having a negligible cost to supply once it has been produced. Ideally it takes IP out of the equation and allocates compensation towards development rather than rent extraction.

FOSS is a question of centralization & authority vs decentralization & freedom.