Rethinking free and open source and its role in the movement against capitalism - “Copyfarleft and Copyjustright”
https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/copyfarleft-and-copyjustright
This is an interesting paper and something like this should be explored. Although, I would shift the anti-capitalist analysis to the labor theory of property and shift some of the critique of property to employment contracts.
I think this would be a difficult sell, in part because not only would you need to write ironclad terms, you’ve need a whole new organization to enforce it. I don’t think the Free Software Foundation would endorse it.
I could see a similar thing working with art and literature though - Creative Commons already has a non-commercial license, so creating a new category of restricted artistic license doesn’t seem too far off from what they’ve already endorsed.
The advantage would be that there would be a clear business model for funding the work and any license enforcement, and with a clear source of revenue, we could use various public goods funding mechanisms like quadratic funding to ensure upstream projects are funded.
I agree that the FSF wouldn’t endorse it. We would have to convince developers that this approach makes sense and they need to adopt it to work towards a free and open world. @socialism
Is there a clear business model? It seems like the goal is to make it free for collectives and non-profit use, and then collect fees from for-profit companies. The CC-NC-SA has an obvious business case because not everyone has the capability to set up and use the software, but it’s popularity can create a secondary market for people to pay for other people to host it for them -> leading to revenue. Basically the Freeware model with the addition of the source being open. With art it creates a carve-out for copyright that allows free sharing, but once the art is used in a commercial context, the artist should get a cut of the revenue.
But if there’s a secondary market of collectives providing that service without the need to pay, wouldn’t they out-compete a privately owned service that pays for the software? Why would a privately owned service fund a software company that doesn’t want them to exist? Likewise, why would a corporation use an artist’s work that was shared under this license?
Non-profits with workers must also have labor control.
The article’s version doesn’t account for some use cases.
Non-market systems can operate within the commons and we only need to charge at points where value leaves.
Extensions I’ve considered:
- Allow proprietary works as long as the commons is appropriately compensated
- Restrict use for creating proprietary works.
- Require collectivizing property also
Distribute licensing funds to projects using quadratic funding
