makeworlds - Social ontologies of open source

Tomislav Medak: A Continuum of Knowledge - A contribution to the Political Economy of Copyleft

fls — Sun, 22 Feb 2004 11:53:00 +0000

While, in the age of real existing socialism in Yugoslavia, the social production was supposed to be governed by the principles of public ownership & workers' self-management, all along the circulation of capital continued to rely on the solid principle of the industrial capitalism - the capital could generate surplus value if those who were selling the productive commodity - their labour force - into the labor market, meaning workers, were also the ones who were buying back the commodified products of their labour (and also if, this is the second principle in the equation of profit-making, but this is less to the point here, these transactions occurred with a differential in value).

Dan Bashaw & Mike Gifford: Top 10 Open Source Tools for eActivism

fls — Sat, 21 Feb 2004 22:44:00 +0000

People have been trying to use the web to create change from its conception. Along with the rest of the Internet community, activist focus has moved away from producing static content to building on- line communities. There are a number of Application Service Providers (ASPs) providing external eActivist applications that can be integrated with the look and feel of an organization's existing web site, but we will not be evaluating ASPs in this article. Instead, we want to discuss eActivist applications that can be run from the same server as the organization's existing website. Furthermore, we will be looking at Free Software applications that can be downloaded, modified, and distributed by the users of the software.

Robert Luxemburg: The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction

fls — Sat, 21 Feb 2004 16:39:00 +0000

The Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Culture, presided by Jan Philipp Reemtsma, has recently advanced science and culture to a whole new level: they obtained a warrant of arrest against Sebastian Luetgert, the founder of textz.com, who faces jail time if he refuses to pay around 2,300 euros in damages for the alleged copying of two essays by Theodor W. Adorno that the foundation claims as their "intellectual property". Jan Philipp Reemtsma was kindly asked to settle, but he refused. An "intellectual proprietor" of Adorno and Benjamin who claims to advance science and culture by sending people to jail for taking Adorno and Benjamin serious is seriously wrong on a whole number of points. In the end, he may even be wrong in thinking that he will ever get his property back. There is a universal right to reappropriation that will never cease to apply, and there is copyright legislation that will. Sooner or later, it will dawn upon Reemtsma that he should think of his "intellectual property" as a genie, and of his foundation is just another failing bottling company.

Matteo Pasquinelli: Radical machines against techno-Empire. From utopia to networks

Arianna — Sat, 14 Feb 2004 00:14:00 +0000

What is knowledge sharing? How does the knowledge economy function? Where is the general intellect at work? Take the cigarettes machine. The machine you see is the embodying of a scientific knowledge into hardware and software components, generations of engineering stratified for commercial use: it automatically manages fluxes of money and commodities, substitutes a human with a user-friendly interface, defends private property, functions on the basis of a minimal control and restocking routine. Where has the tobacconist gone? Sometimes he enjoys free time. Other times the company that owns the chain of distribution has replaced him. In his place one often meets the technician. Far from emulating Marx's Fragment on machines with a Fragment on cigarette machines, this unhealthy example is meant to show how postfordist theories live around us and that material or abstract machines built by collective intelligence are organically chained to the fluxes of the economy and of our needs.

David Berry & Giles Moss: LibreSociety.org Manifesto

fls — Sun, 11 Jan 2004 09:45:00 +0000

A constellation of interests is now seeking to increase their ownership and control of creativity. They tell us that they require new laws and rights that allow them to control concepts and ideas and protect them from exploitation. They say that this will enrich our lives, create new products and safeguard the possibility of future prosperity. But this is an absolute disaster for creativity, whose health depends on an ongoing, free and open conversation between ideas from the past and the present. In response, we wish to defend the idea of a creative sphere of concepts and ideas that are free from ownership.