If open source had not been a success I can bet you the libertarians would have stated their usual BS that effort without profit is a waste.

Also if you vist Richard Stallman’s site you can see that he is as far away from libertarianism as can be - in fact he’s endorsing Dennis Kucinich for President and you really don’t get any further left than that.

Glad to see that libertarians can embrace leftist ideas - especially when its proving to be a runaway success - very libertarian of the ;)

No one is claiming that the Free Software movement is a libertarian idea per se. Just observing it’s nature and how some of the actions are libertarian.

Stallman’s personal philosophy has also been discussed in the links I provided — if you bothered to read them before starting your usual tirades.

From Unpersons:

open source has its fair share of left-wing idealists such as Richard Stallman, who believes the sale of software is immoral, but there are also an increasing number of libertarian spokesmen for the movement like Eric S. Raymond, who advocates minimal government and private gun-ownership

From the Mises blog:

Though RMS is not a libertarian, he is also not a communist, and accusations of such confuse an individual’s private morality with what he thinks should be law. RMS has not suggested that contracts should not be obeyed; indeed, when he was refused the source to printer-drivers due to a NDA, rather than raving to the government and mandating they invalidate all such consentual contracts, he did something productive. He created software that required signing a different kind of contract, which would turn copyright upside down (into “copyleft”).

I do not undersand how Open Source software is libertarian. If anything it appears counter-libertarian. I advise you to read the principals of open souurce here http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php
and tell me which of these the libertarian movement would support if open source hadn’t turned out to be such a success. I really do want to know how the libertarians think this is libertarian in nature I would like to see your analysis on it.

I notice that libertarians are up in arms when the pharmaceutical industry in the third world wants the MNC’s to forgo some rights and makes some of the drug technologies open source - so they can be developed independently.

A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are *not* libertarians, regardless of what they may claim.”

Read a bit more about libertarianism. The definition above can be found here. A few FAQs can be found here.

Now, what in the Open Source link provided above contradicts the defn I gave above? In a libertarian world, you’re free to set up a communist commune if you wish as long as you don’t insist that everybody becomes a member of your commune or prevent capitalists from running for-profit housing.

CK, the particular example that you gave of pharma. If you apply OSS/FSF/GPL type licensing to Pharma, you would have to setup a new research instituition or company, that develops *new* drugs, the patents to which are released under a GPL-like license.

Backward inference of what you are suggesting, is what the Justice Department/Netscape case tried to do with Microsoft, i.e. force it to release its code. FSF/OSS/GPLers don’t try to force MS to do anything, they just make good solid software that can compete with MS. But since they have had a lag I think, they will take a while till they come up to the level of MS.

Moral indignation on the part of Stallman and others, is their equivalent of MS’ efforts to deface Linux through T.C.O studies and maybe through this SCO case.

A libertarian would whole heartedly support the Linux cause in the SCO case especially against the back hand legislation tactics that are being used.And at the same time would defend MS on the grounds that it is doing a helluva job of providing usable software, and more importantly if people *choose* they can use other software, for instance i gave up IE long ago, and now I’ve even given up Explorer.exe in favour of GeoShell an open source alternative.

Strict,boxed categorisation of people into classes, is an extremely nasty habit, that many people seem to find convenient when trying to lambast people whom they don’t see eye to eye with.

CK, the particular example that you gave of pharma. If you apply OSS/FSF/GPL type licensing to Pharma, you would have to setup a new research instituition or company, that develops *new* drugs, the patents to which are released under a GPL-like license.

Backward inference of what you are suggesting, is what the Justice Department/Netscape case tried to do with Microsoft, i.e. force it to release its code. FSF/OSS/GPLers don’t try to force MS to do anything, they just make good solid software that can compete with MS. But since they have had a lag I think, they will take a while till they come up to the level of MS.

Moral indignation on the part of Stallman and others, is their equivalent of MS’ efforts to deface Linux through T.C.O studies and maybe through this SCO case.

A libertarian would whole heartedly support the Linux cause in the SCO case especially against the back hand legislation tactics that are being used.And at the same time would defend MS on the grounds that it is doing a helluva job of providing usable software, and more importantly if people *choose* they can use other software, for instance i gave up IE long ago, and now I’ve even given up Explorer.exe in favour of GeoShell an open source alternative.

Strict,boxed categorisation of people into classes, is an extremely nasty habit, that many people seem to find convenient when trying to lambast people whom they don’t see eye to eye with.

http://www.stallman.org/brave-and-free.jpg

I look at the historical Libertarian view on the profit motive, charity and property rights to make my judgement - not on 3 lines which can be universally applied to the entire human race.

I’ve noticed that this is a common libertarian tactic - ignore the details and complexity of an issue and come up wiht a key catch phrase which can be universally applied - a bit like CCS’ Economics in 1 Lesson - damn and I spent 5 years in university studying it and getting a bachelors and a masters - what an idiot I am when CCS can teach me everything I need to know in a few hours.

I am interested in seeing a side by side analysis of libertarian principles (since you don’t agree with the popular libertarian institutions)I will accep the Yazad version of libertarianism (though I distinctly recall that a while ago you had distanced yourself from libertarianism and were calling yourself an Anarcho-Capitalist).

The libertarian paradox

By Gerry McGovern

There seems to be a rule that everything embodies a paradox, that everything embodies its opposite.

From the very first period I used the Internet around 1994, I came across information by libertarians who were calling for government to get off the Internet. The more I learned about the Internet, the more strange this demand became. If ever there was a case of ‘biting the hand that feeds’ these libertarians were exhibiting it in spades.

What the hell is a libertarian, I hear you ask? According to the Advocates for Self-Government website, libertarians “want a win-win world of peace and plenty. And we believe that the only way to get it is through self-government… NOT others-government. Self-government is the combination of personal responsibility and tolerance. Responsibility means you govern yourself. Tolerance means you don’t force your values on peaceful, honest people. Today, however, others-government is giving us insecurity, conflict and poverty. Let’s revitalize our heritage of self-government to create a win-win world where everyone comes out ahead.”

A liberal believes in freedom in personal issues and in government support in economic issues. A conservative believes in freedom in economic issues and government control in personal issues. A libertarian believes in freedom in all issues – no interference anywhere.

So, if libertarians don’t believe in government, how come they have embraced the Internet with such energy? Surely, the Internet is one of the greatest examples of long-term government funding the world has ever seen? The libertarian philosophy is also evident in the open source software movement.

Again, surely libertarians would accept that without government-funded universities (not to mention the Internet), there would be very little open source software about today. (Linux, for example, having been originally developed at the University of Helsinki.)

The more I think about open source software, the more I come to believe that it is based on an essentially libertarian philosophy and thus exists within a paradox that will test it severely as it spreads out into the wider world.

The Internet is a frontier and libertarianism is very much frontier-thinking. It is, in essence, every man (and woman) for himself/herself. Open source software, which is thriving on the Internet, is very much a peer-based environment. Everybody helps out by throwing into the pot some of their free time. Everybody contributes, whether it is in lines of code or bug reports. Everybody pulls their own weight and everything is fine.

Although things are changing, the Internet has been very much a rarefied environment inhabited by a select group of relatively wealthy, technically literate individuals. Unfortunately, the great mass of people are not able to write lines of code, nor are they interested in sending in bug reports. If you market to them well, they might buy your product, but in that money they pay is an implicit contract that the product will work and that if it doesn’t work, you will fix it.

The Internet to me is one of the greatest validations of central government and taxation. Sure, I don’t like paying tax, but I like even less the alternatives. To further develop, open source software needs to square the circle – how to be built at the frontier and yet serve the mass market.

I am sure you have already read Hayek’s Constituition of Liberty (though I have read only parts), in the Postscript titled “Why I am not a conservative”, he outlines the ideas that more or less explain his core liberal/libertarian position vis-a-vis the Conservatives. His position is also something that would encompass most of humanity, in that we would like to think that we are classical liberals - tolerant, peace loving and humble etc. But there are conservatives, socialists, militarists and nationalists in this world of many hues, among them people who firmly believe that the rich are the ruin of this earth that they are exploiting the rest of us, and others who believe that military rule, of discipline and coercive adherence to a particular line of action is the only thing that can save the world. These are common people who hold these beliefs, and would never agree with the liberal/libertarian line of thought.

Most of your critique, or atleast its tone seems to have been picked up from the Anti_Lib FAQ. You are taking a blithely critical stand, which is what you accuse Libs of doing about government and people who preach bigger government.

Also regarding the linear description of the ideology space cf. Hayek’s Postscript.