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# The GPL As Collective Action
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 [programmers argue
about law](https://xkcd.com/1494/) (which can _obviously_ be reduced to a rules
system, which is a programming problem),
[consent](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2e5a7k/could_the_blockchain_be_used_to_prove_consensual/)
(which is _obviously_ about non-repudiatable proofs, which are a programming
problem), or [art](https://github.com/google/deepdream) (which is _obviously_
reducible to simple but large automata). One key symptom of this social pattern
is a disregard for outside expertise and outside bodies of knowledge.
I believe this habit may have bitten Stallman.
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 _intent_,
as derived from
[Stallman’s commentaries](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html)
on the GPL and on the social systems around software, is that people who _use_
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.
This is a form of _collective action_, 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) _by developers_,
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.
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.
I’m pro-organized-labour, and largely 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.
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