Marxism and FLOSS.
Marxism and FLOSS.
I think that a Marxist society should allow for 0 proprietary software, and instead support for everything in free and open source decentralized technology.
It goes hand-in-hand with a post-revolution socialist society. Proprietary software is essentially private property, which would be eradicated in a worker's state. It would most likely not be a first priority for the new state as there are more pressing matters - for the US for example, the dismantling of the military and the closing down of all international bases - but it would be inevitable with socialism.
I was trying to figure out how to say what you said so I'll just piggy back. I agree that moving from proprietary to foss is definitely one aspect of the "withering away of the state". Engels didn't explicitly write about software for obvious reasons but yeah lol.
I think, and this is probably preaching to the choir, but one thing that we can keep doing is just supporting foss and try to get more people to use and contribute. Regardless of if the revolution were to happen tomorrow, we've definitely seen a big uptick in open source being used over the last 20-30 years.
I've seen people bring up that Lemmy/Mast/kbin are open source and my thoughts is always "as it should be". We are living through what I think might be a software revolution as more people get fed up with data harvesting and proprietary services. Will this era last? Who knows but I hope it does.
Funny enough, Linux and foss were what actually started my radicalization to the left. Back when I was using Ubuntu 9.10 I just kept asking why this wasn't this the norm? I mean Linux growing pains baggage aside that is.
We are living through what I think might be a software revolution as more people get fed up with data harvesting and proprietary services
I think the issue is that a lot of people, especially younger kids and older boomers, are not so much "choosing" a social media app as getting addicted to it. No one would "choose" an app like tik-tok just based on how much they enjoy it or how it affects their lives. They get addicted to it because it is an app designed to be addictive.
Because there is no profit motive, open-source, decentralized apps tend to be designed for ethics rather than addiction. But I fear that because these apps are not designed to be addictive, they cannot truly compete with corporate social media for the mass audience.
As nice as it feels to fight back, I don't feel as if anything can compete with the profit motive in a Capitalist system.
The intellectual property industrial complex in the US is pretty darned severe, which is why we have really draconian maximalist IP laws that lock out any small content creators from becoming large content creators without a challenge or buyout from a large holder like Disney, Warner Brothers or Sony.
It's not that we're worried that they have guns, but they certainly have money with which to hire guns, and routinely do.
"Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your proprietary software" - Karl Marx
Of course. Without private property there is no longer any possibility of proprietary software existing, nor any benefit. We wouldn't necessarily need licenses anymore, but something like the current copyleft model comes close.
Thank you for all the up votes and comments folks. Btw, I use Gentoo :D
I use Gentoo too. But I'm soon installing nix and guide in another machine soon.
But I think, RMS himself is anti communist
That's one occasion where we can gleefully separate the work from the person.
Sadly, yes, but I think this is caused by him living in the usa. On his personal webpage, he tells people to vote green party, so he probably hit a roadblock after progressivelib.
Honestly would be very surprising if RMS wasn't a hardcore libertarian or Anarchist.
Although these days he maybe following the ideology of Marxism-Stallmanism
0 propertiary software is possible when you do programming, IT etc. but not for a mechanical engineer, who needs AutoCAD, Inventor, Catia, Abaqus, etc. I know that there are FOSS alternatives, but they are far less developed, since producing such a software requires hundreds of people and many many hours of work. Such a software could be made by large state owned enterprises, which would make the code public, but rather not by few hobbyst in their spare time.
As a machinist, I try to get away with FreeCAD as much as I can. I have access to Solidworks, Creo, MasterCAM, and Esprit at work, as long as the engineers aren't hogging all of the seats. I prefer modeling in FreeCAD though. It is what I am able to practice at home. (I have a cracked copy of Creo, but the crack only works on Windows).
I do still have to feed this through Esprit for the CAM portion of my work though. FreeCAD's CAM workbench is pretty much limited to routing and 3 axis milling at the moment. No turning, and definitely no wire EDM (what I normally do). That said, Esprit is fucking garbage and I have no doubt FreeCAD has the potential to do this better.
FreeCAD isn't wonderful at assemblies. I generally work on a component level, and this isn't an issue for me, but the learning curve only gets steeper if you are trying to design intricate assemblies.
None the less. I've used it to reverse engineer several replacement parts which remain in service, and used it to create the toolpath for one CNC program which is being used in production. I also edit my G-Code in Emacs.
IMO, the problem isn't that free software is incapable. The problem is if you are running an engineering / manufacturing firm you need to use software which is fully compatible with what your clients use. This is a constantly moving target which even commercial offerings struggle with. If your client designs a skyscraper in AutoCAD, you literally have no choice but to use AutoCAD. It doesn't matter how good the AutoCAD importer is in SolidWorks. Something in your massive assembly is going to break, or you are going to waste a bunch of mechanical engineering resources trying to solve what is effectively an information technology problem.
Of course, this doesn't touch on the CNC controller firmware at all, which, in production, is uniformly proprietary. Predominantly FANUC controls, with some Citizen, Charmilles, Mitsubishi, and Makino sprinkled in. FANUC in particular has grown to be a pain in the ass to maintain, as they've been locking down as much shit as possible to combat cloned hardware. In practice, this only makes life more miserable for the shops purchasing genuine hardware to keep their machines running. At least if the Charmilles sinker EDM dies for good, I'll still be able to play Doom on it until the riggers take it away.
Thank you for this knowledgeable answer comrade. I am by no means professional machine engineer, as you are, but sometimes I need to look at complicated pipework assembly, covered by few layers of sheets and tanks, in the STP format. This is very easy in Inventor, I suppose that with Catia it is very easy too, but I am unable to do it with FreeCAD. Maybe I am not skilled enough. Certainly, as you write, FreeCAD is not so well in assemblies. But quality of software is composed also from ease of use.
IMO, the problem isn’t that free software is incapable. The problem is if you are running an engineering / manufacturing firm you need to use software which is fully compatible with what your clients use.
I certainly agree. When the client or enterprise you cooperate with uses DWG format (as is the case most of times), you cannot use, etc., librecad.
There are many other cases, for example Matlab, editors for programmable logic controllers, software for industrial robots, etc.
Therefore, in such cases, I think the pragmatic solution under capitalism is to pirate such software. In the end, this is a mean of production and we just need to seize it. But under communism, such software could be made by state owned enterprises and the code could be available at least within all communist states.