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Stefan Merten | 1 Jun 2006 09:25
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[ox-en] Re: GNU/Linux distributions and commerce


Hi Florian and all!

2 months (64 days) ago Florian v Samson wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 26, 2006 at 11:19:36PM +0200, Stefan Merten wrote:
>> What I find more interesting here is that capitalist corporations
>> helped GNU/Linux to flourish but they were
>> 
>> * not able to make useful profit from it at least for a good part of
>> the market share
>> 
>> * the supply with distributions didn't stop even when capitalist
>> corporations withdrew from the market
> 
> 2 * NACK: 
> - RedHat is profitable for years now
> - None of the 3 major commercial distributors has withdrawn (RedHat/Fedora, 
> SuSE Novell, Mandriva/Ex-Mandrake). There have been consolidation processes 
> taking place (e.g. Mandriva merging/buying Connectiva), but no withdrawals.

May be I have been not precise enough here. My first point were that
in the longer run the corporations were not able to make useful profit
*from the consumer market* - which I still think is a good part of all
distributions used (to prevent the term "sold" which is misleading
here). This is where they were not able to make a useful profit so
they stopped trying it. This doesn't contradict that they are
profitable in other areas such as the corporate market.

My second point were about withdrawal from the *(consumer) market*.
I.e.: They don't sell the consumer distribution any more. It's
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Stefan Merten | 1 Jun 2006 09:55
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Re: [ox-en] Re: GNU/Linux distributions and commerce


Hi Franz!

2 months (64 days) ago Franz Nahrada wrote:
> your two diagnoses of the relation between communities and distributions
> could not be farther apart.....it is confusing and shows how little we
> really know.

May be only some misunderstanding.

> I also tend to deny the simplistic worldview that "software that has
> nothing to do with firms is simply better".

Me too. Anyone who holds that position? I could prove the opposite
even with one of my own Free Software projects ;-) .

> But if Oekonux shall lead us somewhere we must ask about the relation of
> both parts and the different ways communities sustain themselves,
> maintaining their fundamental independence from commercial interests, yet
> keeping the process alive that fuels general interest into FLOSS.

Franz, you are completely misguided here. The interest in FLOSS as
something useful is *not* fueled by that warm feeling in the stomach
that Doubly Free Software is independent from commercial interests.
Computer people are interested in solutions which help them doing
their work - not in helping some revolution by using Free Software.

For instance my first contact with Free Software was the `gcc` - a C
compiler (and only a C compiler at this time). There were a
proprietary C compiler in that SCO system but it was buggy (producing
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cyfarwydd | 2 Jun 2006 17:06
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Two Kinds of Palace Was Re: [ox-en] Re: Business opportuities based on Free Software

Sun, 28 May 2006 20:19:58 +0000 Christoph Reuss wrote:

> Indeed, this illustrates some of the problems arising from monarchistic
> leadership.  Alright so Linus joked about being a "benevolent dictator",
> but sometimes dictatorships become rather non-funny, especially if the
> citizens are made to believe it's a democracy...  (any similarities with
> Diebold machines and Patriot Act tricks would be merely accidental ;-}  )
> ...and what if Wales is run over by a bus tomorrow?

With respect to neglect and reasonableness, maybe the validity of a
civilians actions should be first set against the hypothetical
'bald-headed man at the back of the Clapham Omnibus' [1] --

With respect to sovereignty, I think the concept of Estoppel should be
considered too [2] -- cf. case law : Dillwyn v Llwellyn (1862) et al.

With respect to complicity of actions, i hold the DPP for Northern
Ireland v Maxwell [1978] 1 WLR 1350 as my rule of thumb.

   "Software is like sex...it's better when it's free" -- Linus Torvalds

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_man_on_the_Clapham_omnibus

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel

[3] http://law.anu.edu.au/criminet/tcmplicty.html

Two Kinds of Palace
-------------------
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Michael Bouwens | 1 Jun 2006 07:46
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Re: [ox-en] Re: Business opportuities based on Free Software

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Dear Christian: I'm sending the draft separately to your personal email.

  The blog and the P2P News carry mostly different content, but there is  some overlap. P2P News is a
'consolidated' newsweekly, organized around  certain topics, so it is less current, as publication may
await a  special issue on a topic. Also the newsletter are conceived as emergent  wholes, where the
newsletter as a totality makes sense.

  A blog is more ad hoc publication, if something strikes my fancy at the  moment, but I may sometimes republish
news items in the blog, or the  other way around,

  Michel Bauwens

Christian <christian@...> wrote:  Hi Michael,

> All the information about the wikipedia governance process is available
> for those who want to know about it, as has been demonstrated by the
> links sent to this mailing list. Most people are fine with it because
> the wikipedia has demonstrated that it works, for most of the things,
> most of the time. Skewed processes can be tackled. The next issue of  P2P
> News, published next weekend, will cover a number of these issues  such
> as: 1) white male bias 2) monarchic leadership; 3) the  semi-protection
> clause; 4) problems between editors and domain experts.
>
>   If anyone wants an advance draft, let me know,

I'm interested in reading a draft.
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Stefan Merten | 2 Jun 2006 08:50
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Type of communities (was: [ox-en] Multi-local societies and Global Villages)


Hi Michel, Franz, all!

Last week (12 days ago) Michael Bouwens wrote:
>   Here's the explanation on the concept of Multi-local Societies:
>   
>   By Ezio Manzini, http://sustainable-everyday.net/manzini/?p=9  
> 
>   "Cosmopolitan localism, intended as the result of a particular
> condition characterised by the balance between being localised
> (rooted  in a place and in the community related to that place), and
> open to  global flows of ideas, information, people, things and
> money. This is  quite a delicate balance as, at any time, one of the
> two sides can  prevail over the other leading to an anti-historical
> closure or, on the  opposite side, it can lead to a destructive
> openness of the local  social fabric and of its peculiar features.
> 
>   Creative communities, cooperative networks and cosmopolitan
> localism are, as it has been said, the building blocks for a new
> vision: the vision of a sustainable society that can be defined as a
> multi-local society. I.e. a network of interconnected communities
> and  places, at the same time, open and localised.   
> 
>   Small is not small and local is not local  
> 
>   In the framework of the multi-local society the dominant ideas  of
> `global' and `local', and the ones of `large' and
> `small' are  challenged. In fact, for its nature the
> multi-local society is an  highly connected world. And, in this kind
> of world, the small is not  small: it is instead (or it can be
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Michael Bouwens | 1 Jun 2006 08:00
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Re: [ox-en] collecting our body of knowledge

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Dear Franz:

  I think that I have made substantial progress to such a 'freepedia'. As  an example, here's a review of the
open models. I could do the same  under the heading participatory/peer/commons. The P2P Encyclopedia is 
already quite a fount of documentation:

  From my point of view, I would be very happy if people from Oekonux  could contribute, making this better. It
is by all means a freepedia,  an open access and open content encyclopedia, which everybody can join, 
especially people in the Oekonux mode.

  Contributors could co-brand the entries under the Oekonux label, and we  could create a separate topical
'Free Modes Concepts', which could me  mirrored on the Oekonux site. (I don't know myself how this would 
technically work though). Another possibility is to add a 'Oekonux  Perspective' subheading to the
existing entries, where the precise  relationship of the concept, within the Oekonux framework, could be  explained.

  Here's what I'm looking for:

  - one or more  maintainers for such a Free Modes Concepts page

   - someone checking Wikipedia for existing articles on such topics, to which we could refer

   - someone working on interlinking and cross-referals with already existing Oekonux material

   - topic experts ameliorating existing topics

  Michel
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Michael Bouwens | 3 Jun 2006 13:41
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Re: Type of communities (was: [ox-en] Multi-local societies and Global Villages)

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Hi Stefan,

  Thanks for your interesting remarks.

  Here just some personal testimony: I have always been a non-local person, always more interested in the
global, not knowing and not caring to know my neighbours. I'm not proud of this, but this is 'how I am in a
natural state'). I've tried intentional communities (2 or 3 of them) in my youth, they all failed. I think
they were to 'collectivist' for our contemporary psyche. The ones that persisted (without me), where
those with the most structure and authority. What creates the most links, I agree with you, is the common
goal, but there, the relation is subordinated to the goal, and when the goals change, usually the
relationships dissolve. What I discovered in the East, in Thailand, where I live, is the power of the
extended family, how naturally it makes people more balanced and happy, and how poor life in the West seems
now that I know this. What the net brings, is a facilation of th
 ese goal-based communities, and more possibility for flexible involvement, for
 regulating more precisely, according to your own wishes, how far or not you want to go at any given moment.

  Michel

Stefan Merten <smerten@...> wrote:
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Hi Michel, Franz, all!

Last week (12 days ago) Michael Bouwens wrote:
> Here's the explanation on the concept of Multi-local Societies:
> 
> By Ezio Manzini, http://sustainable-everyday.net/manzini/?p=9
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magius | 4 Jun 2006 16:56
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Re: Type of communities (was: [ox-en] Multi-local societies and Global Villages)

2006/6/3, Michael Bouwens <michelsub2003@...>:

> What I discovered in the East, in Thailand, where I live, is the power of the
> extended family, how naturally it makes people more balanced and happy, and
> how poor life in the West seems now that I know this.

Can you describe more extensively what is the thailandese extended
family? Is it something similar to the concept of "clan" or to the
pre-modern european rural family?
_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt@...
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Michael Bouwens | 5 Jun 2006 05:42
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Re: Type of communities (was: [ox-en] Multi-local societies and Global Villages)

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I don't think it is clan-based (like it is in China), but in the village structure, the 3 generations would
live together.

  For example, it is said that with the 97-98 crisis, which was extremely severe with more than one million
people losing their job in the capital, they just went back to the countryside, which absorbed the shock.

  The main problem with the extended family is that the parents are often moving to bangkok for work, leaving
their children behind with the remainder of the extended family, usually the grand parents or some aunts
or uncle.

  Within the family, there is great solidarity, but almost none outside, the outside world is distrusted
(with the exception of the royal family and the monkhood, though that must be qualified as well). Example:
when my wife moved to Belgium, she gave her car to a cousin (didn't sell it). When I arrived here, I lived 18
months without paying rent in a aunt's house).

  There's much more to say about this fascinating subject ...

  Michel

magius <gmagius@...> wrote:
  2006/6/3, Michael Bouwens :

> What I discovered in the East, in Thailand, where I live, is the power of the
> extended family, how naturally it makes people more balanced and happy, and
> how poor life in the West seems now that I know this.

Can you describe more extensively what is the thailandese extended
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Stefan Merten | 7 Jun 2006 08:07
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Re: [ox-en] "open source model permits elitism"


Hi Michel and all!

I hope it's not too hard to recall your line of thought here. It's
difficult to keep this with text-above-full-quote-below quoting.

2 months (69 days) ago Michael Bouwens wrote:
>   I agree with Stefan's comments about failures. Even the rate of
> failed  entreprises is extremely high, something of the order of 50%
> in the  first year already ...
>   
>   Stefan, you seem to agree with the assessment that successfull
> open  source projects emulate the mgt. of the corporations they're
> competing  with.

Nope. Neither do I think they emulate the management of corporations
nor do I think Free Software projects compete with them. IMHO both is
read into Free Software projects by market adepts.

> Are you really sure about this? Could you
> specify? Aren't  voluntary hierarchies and peer governance modes
> quite distinctive from  corporate governance models?

Absolutely.

IMHO the point is that on the one hand it's a necessity to build and
maintain structure in any non-trivial project. IMHO this is an
"eternal" necessity which exists beyond a specific type of society.
Such structure contradicts freedom in the sense of no boundaries and
furthers freedom in the sense of the possibility to rely and build on
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