Marx

Remember the good old Marxist dialectics of commodities? When a good becomes a commodity, an exchange value is added to the pure use value that the good was originally created to be, and all hell breaks loose. Capital is accumulated. Labor and materials are exploited, and the good is alienated from its original purpose as it is exploited in the market. In many ways this is a good thing, and Marx never forgot the “civilizing qualities” of capitalism over any other mode of production. But the contradiction between use value and exchange value still remains unresolved. The best we can do is deal with it, and in many areas we are successfully doing so. I’m afraid that in the most crucial area in the information age, software, we are struggling.

Even as we can celebrate the liberation of our software as free software users, we must nevertheless take a critical look at the use values we are creating, and how we can do better. I think the solution is to commercialize free software more, not less.

Marx was and still is right, and software is very much a commodity that has tremendous value in modern information capitalism. The contradiction between use value and exchange value is correspondingly huge.

Use value before software

I’m not going to postulate a “state of nature” like Locke or Hobbes did, but i do know for a fact that software was not always a commodity. When UNIVAC and Digital and IBM built their enormously expensive mainframes in the 1950s that only a few companies and research facilities were able to acquire, software was the actual outcome that users wanted. The activity that the computer was purchased for was programming. What an airline or a government wanted was the machine. No talk about software. The IBM customer bought the raw machinery and wrote the software that would do the single task that they needed it to do, like complex calculations or keeping customer databases. The use value was in the hardware, the software was the result of the user’s work. Software as an independent entity did not exist.

Emergence of software as a commodity

Hardware became cheaper and smaller, and more users were able to purchase computers. All universities and every moderately sized business had one. No longer would users be happy with UNIVACs or IBM model so-and-so’s, but we suddenly had portable, general purpose systems like Unix that ran on a wide variety of machines. Operating systems and applications became different entities. Unix was relatively free because of AT&T’s ban on entering the software business, and we soon had two modes of software production: proprietary Unix and free university Unix. Proprietary software was born.

Use value was no longer in the hardware: it was cheap and replaceable. Use value was in the software: this was what actually enabled to do the stuff you wanted to do.

Enter the IBM PC and IBM’s failure to do anything with it. It became a standard and a myriad of clones emerged, producing “IBM compatible” PC machines from off-the-shelf components. None of those companies were powerful enough to maintain a vertical system of hardware, operating system and applications, like IBM and the biggies used to. It was economically much more feasible to get the software from third parties, specialized software companies such as Microsoft and the Unix vendors. Behold the software commodity as an independent entity.

Free software was around all this time of course. I’m not sure why we did not use it all along. Maybe we were unable to make it run on cheap PC’s, maybe we were too proud to acknowledge them. I don’t know.

The commodity reached its perfection. Use value was in the hands of companies producing proprietary software. They would, under terms of a license that they dictate, allow you to reach your goals in limited ways, and express yourself in ways that they deemed appropriate. Their End User License Agreements would allow you to write stuff, make calculations, draw and edit images, and such things, in all the ways that they (not you) could imagine you might want to do for the fee that you pay. You could do more if you paid more, sometimes, if there were many others that wanted to the same thing and it became economically interesting to the company to provide you with the possibility.

The creator of the software owned you.

The free software movement

Not everyone was happy with that, and we got rebels such as the heroes of the Free Software Foundation. I’m not going to preach to the choir and repeat the rise and success of free software, but I’m going to say that the rebellion was all about a world-class hacker such as Richard Stallman being unable to fix the driver software for his brand new Xerox printer because it was proprietary. The use value was greatly diminished.

Free software is all about making software useful again. Software is only useful when you can do what your needs are, not someone else’s. No software vendor is ingenious enough to predict what you might want to do. Free software communities are: they just do what you tell them to do. We’re talking usefulness, use values again.

So now that we have philosophically and economically fixed everything with the free software ideology and open source development models, and we have wonderful systems like Linux-based GNU systems and all the awesome apps that run on them, we’re home free, right? I’m not sure.

Why business is good

Let us see how we have needed companies that exploit our free software commons. Let us see how they have actually added not only capital for themselves, but actual use value for all of us.

In the late 1980s, before the Internet or the Linux project existed, a few guys realized that the GNU C compiler, the GDB debugger and Emacs made a pretty damn good set of developer tools, and decided to sell them to developers and support them. They listened to customers and fixed bugs, added features, and customized the tools for individual companies and users. The GNU project was not interested in doing any of this, so the users were better off paying Cygnus to do it for them. Cygnus was adding real use value to the GNU tools. Soon the company noticed that the GNU project was really slow in integrating their improvements to the official compiler tree, so they were left with no choice other than forking it. Eventually, the FSF realized that Cygnus’ version was far superior to them, and adopted it as official. Cygnus pretty much became the maintainers of the GNU C compiler.

The GNOME project was created in 1997 to create a free desktop for GNU-based systems. It succeeded because Red Hat hired developers to work on it. Red Hat got a nice desktop for themselves, and the GNU project got a free desktop. Red Hat made sure the potential use value was created.

In 2010, we are complaining when Canonical, Red Hat and Novell are leading the evolution of desktop systems, and IBM, Oracle, and others are in charge of the kernel. Why do we complain? What we are witnessing is the reconciliation of use value and exchange value. Everybody wins when commercial free software succeeds.

A couple of questions where conclusions should be

Smart companies will have to adopt free software and standardize. They will then have to compete in some genuine way that makes them special. Offering a stable operating system is not a very good business plan anymore: anyone can take GNU/Linux and offer that. Offering an awesome desktop experience is not going to work for much longer: companies like Red Hat, Novell and Canonical are working to make that point pretty much moot as well.

Looking into the future, we must consider end-users and the use values they are after even more carefully. Think about ultralight computers and mobile devices. Why do we complain if Nokia controls a device such as the N900? I have no idea. Maybe the hardware in the device is important again, and we, the free software movement, have made the software stack pretty much worthless in terms of exchange value? If so, we have more time to concentrate on more important things and place all this in to the basic category of “infrastructure” along with electricity and railroads.

I would like to think so.

The projected GPL 3.0 will allow companies to reuse and relicense GPL code under proprietary terms, which “should have a very positive effect on the usability of free software desktops and increase Ubuntu’s market share,” says Shuttleworth.

Vocal criticism about the new development effort has risen in parts of the Ubuntu community. “This just doesn’t seem, uh, very free to me at all,” says mc44, the leading jester on #ubuntu-offtopic. “lolk,” added usability expert aubade.

Shuttleworth is not worried about the criticism. “Naturally, we are open to all input on this matter, just like we always are, but I put progress and user-friendliness first and foremost. If a refined GPL is what it takes, we will do it.” No discussion has been opened officially however. “Ubuntu is not a democracy,” reminds CEO Matt Asay. “This is a good thing. Look at Apple’s licensing, and then look at how shiny their desktop is.” Asay, a former Mac user, has recently started using an Ubuntu PC after joining Canonical. “Linux is just too hard for the average user. We are on a mission to change that.”

Well, it isn’t really quite that simple, but we do now have a process through which anyone can express their interest in contributing through operator work. Previously our recruitment toolkit has been more primitive and consisted of blackmail, bribery and coercion – in other words, when there was pressure to grow the operator team, we simply begged people to join.

So if you’re active on our IRC channels and you think your channel has too few operators, and if you’ve been aching to help, you should consider applying for membership! You might get your chance if

• You are great at resolving conflicts
• You are very patient. Superhuman nerve control is a basic IRC operator feature
• You can take criticism
• You are happy when helping and advising others
• In addition to the Code of Conduct and our IRC Guidelines, you are happy to adhere to some additional guidelines :)

In general, please do not consider becoming an operator because it could be “fun”. It is not, it’s hard work. However, it is often quite rewarding, and you get to operate with a great team of people. You don’t need to be an IRC guru, but you do need to know enough to be able to learn more.

Please be aware that *many* applicants will not become operators for various reasons. This will not necessarily be because we think you would make a bad operator. Only a limited number of operators are ever needed, some timezones are better covered already than others, and so on.

If you feel that you could be a good addition to the IRC Team, please head on to Launchpad and apply to the team corresponding to the channels you want to help in, and create a Wiki page where you explain why you want to join and why you would be a good operator. Think of the wiki page as your resume. Gather testimonials from other people who know you are believe you qualify. Think of those as your references.

Before you do any of the above, be sure to study the official requirements and application process, to ensure everything is well with your application and it will be considered whenever new operators are needed.

So, what has been going on outside the spotlight?

Wiki reorganization

One of the janitorial jobs we’ve done is the reorganization of our IRC related wiki pages. Wikis by nature evolve organically, pages being created by many people over time, and they end up being largely unorganized. So we moved all pages to an old fashioned, boring hierarchy under a common IRC/ name space, and the result is something like this:

IRC/Bots
IRC/Cloaks
IRC/Guidelines
…
IRC/IrcTeam/
IRC/IrcTeam/Scope
…
IRC/IrcCouncil
IRC/IRCCouncil/MeetingAgenda
…

You get the idea. All old pages redirect to the new pages, so we can hope we did not break any of your old links and bookmarks. If something is broken, you can report it, or even better, fix it! It is a wiki after all :)

We have updated several core documents, most notably the operator guidelines and the description of the IRC Council itself. We also created a calendar that will nag us periodically to review all wiki pages, one at a time, to make sure they don’t become too out of date.

Operator teams on Launchpad

Ubuntu’s IRC universe has become very, very large and keeps growing, and so has the need for operators. We can’t possibly know all the potentially awesome individuals who would make great operators, so there’s a need to define a better process to nominate operators than simply giving access to friends that we know will do a good job.

Terence did a terrific job at converting the access lists on our channels into Launchpad team memberships. This makes managing them much easier for everyone. It also makes it possible for people to offer help easier: they will be able to apply for team memberships as a way to announce their willingness to serve as an operator. We will soon have this new process in effect, and it is documented on the wiki already.

IRC Council access in channels

The Council should now have access to all core channels for easy maintenance. Additionally, we strongly recommend adding the UbuntuIrcCouncil and the freenode staff cloaks into your LoCo channel’s access list, so that they may intervene in case of serious disruptions on your channel while your operators are asleep or attending a release party. This is documented in the wiki page for channel creation. When creating channels, make extra sure to have a good read of the document, to ensure your channels fit nicely in the #ubuntu-* name space.

How you can help

Is IRC not working well for you? Do you have a great improvement on your mind that will make it work even better? The IRC Team is easy to contact on #ubuntu-irc, and via e-mail. Most importantly, have fun and help to keep our IRC channels friendly and useful! :)

Which brings me to one simple question. Why can’t we, with our powerful computers and full-blown GNOME desktops have any of these nice things? We run the same stuff: evolution-data-server, D-bus, mission-control and the Telepathy connectors. Yet, we have an address book that doesn’t know whether or not our friends are online. Nor can we send IM and email from the same application based on this presence information.

Nothing has happened since I last pondered this question in November 2008. Maybe I should start running Maemo on my desktop? Does the N900 support high resolution external displays? Clearly it is superior.