The GPL as collective action

author: Owen Jacobson <owen.jacobson@grimoire.ca> 2015-10-21 01:55:22 -0400
committer: Owen Jacobson <owen.jacobson@grimoire.ca> 2015-10-21 01:55:55 -0400
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 						<li><a href="stop-building-synchronous-web-containers">Stop Building Synchronous Web Containers</a></li>
 					
+						<li><a href="gnu-collective-action-license">The GPL As Collective Action</a></li>
+					
 						<li><a href="webapps">Webapps From The Ground Up</a></li>
 					
 						<li><a href="why-scm">Why we use SCM systems</a></li>
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+		<h1 id="the-gpl-as-collective-action">The GPL As Collective Action</h1>
+<p>Programmers, like many groups of subject experts, are widely afflicted by the
+belief that all other fields of expertise can be reduced to a special case of
+programming expertise. For a great example of this, watch <a href="https://xkcd.com/1494/">programmers argue
+about law</a> (which can <em>obviously</em> be reduced to a rules
+system, which is a programming problem),
+<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2e5a7k/could_the_blockchain_be_used_to_prove_consensual/">consent</a>
+(which is <em>obviously</em> about non-repudiatable proofs, which are a programming
+problem), or <a href="https://github.com/google/deepdream">art</a> (which is <em>obviously</em>
+reducible to simple but large automata). One key symptom of this social pattern
+is a disregard for outside expertise and outside bodies of knowledge.</p>
+<p>I believe this habit may have bitten Stallman.</p>
+<p>The GNU Public License presents a simple, legally enforceable offer: in return
+for granting the right to distribute the licensed work and its derivatives, the
+GPL demands that derivative works also be released under the GPL. The <em>intent</em>,
+as derived from
+<a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html">Stallman's commentaries</a>
+on the GPL and on the social systems around software, is that people who <em>use</em>
+information systems should, morally and legally, be entitled to the tools to
+understand what the system will do and why, and to make changes to those tools
+as they see fit.</p>
+<p>This is a form of <em>collective action</em>, as implemented by someone who thinks of
+unions and organized labour as something that software could do better. The
+usual lens for critique of the GPL is that GPL'd software cannot be used in
+non-GPL systems (which is increasingly true, as the Free Software Foundation
+catches up with the "as a Service" model of software deliver) <em>by developers</em>,
+but I think there's a more interesting angle on it as an attempt to apply the
+collective bargaining power of programmers as a class to extracting a
+concession from managerial -- business and government -- interests, instead. In
+that reading, the GPL demands that managerial interests in software avoid
+behaviours that would be bad for programmers (framed as "users", as above) as a
+condition of benefitting from the labour of those programmers.</p>
+<p>Sadly, Stallman is not a labour historian or a union organizer. He's a public
+speaker and a programmer. By attempting to reinvent collective action from
+first principles, and by treating collective action as a special case of
+software development, the GPL acts to divide programmers from non-programming
+computer users, and to weaken the collective position of programmers vis-à-vis
+managerial interests. The rise of "merit"-based open source licenses, such as
+the MIT license (which I use heavily, but advisedly), and the increasing
+pervasiveness of the Github Resume, are both simple consequences of this
+mistake.</p>
+<p>I'm pro-union. The only thing worse than having two competing powerful
+interests in the room is having only one powerful interest in the room. The GPL
+should be part of any historical case study for the unionization of
+programmers, since it captures so much of what we do wrong.</p>
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diff --git a/.html/dev/index.html b/.html/dev/index.html
index e37184e..f242c8e 100644
--- a/.html/dev/index.html
+++ b/.html/dev/index.html
@@ -85,6 +85,8 @@
 					
 						<li><a href="stop-building-synchronous-web-containers">Stop Building Synchronous Web Containers</a></li>
 					
+						<li><a href="gnu-collective-action-license">The GPL As Collective Action</a></li>
+					
 						<li><a href="webapps">Webapps From The Ground Up</a></li>
 					
 						<li><a href="why-scm">Why we use SCM systems</a></li>
author	Owen Jacobson <owen.jacobson@grimoire.ca>	2015-10-21 01:55:22 -0400
committer	Owen Jacobson <owen.jacobson@grimoire.ca>	2015-10-21 01:55:55 -0400
commit	9c490bfcba8b9ab5e0de719c436bb0aff240c066 (patch)
tree	703e2e6b0d003aba03cb51d0997ab010a0fc497f /.html/dev
parent	a53514a4bf5f870c24af11fa6948306b865b44e4 (diff)