Source Control - Freedom through Sharing The Open Factory - an Open Hardware factory in an Irish Ecovillage.

[Patrick Anderson]

Michel Bauwens wrote:
> is this really what you are proposing Patrick??
>
> i.e. "causing competition between workers to approach
> maximum and wages to approach zero"

Michel,

Do you agree this is already what we see in Free Software:
that wages are approaching zero (much work done gratis)?

[Bryan Bishop]

On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 7:37 PM, Patrick Anderson wrote:
> Do you agree this is already what we see in Free Software:
> that wages are approaching zero (much work done gratis)?

The wages aren't approaching zero; rather, programmers subsidize their
own time with their own money. Some is still paying.

- Bryan
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[Atrus]

As you said Bryan, some is still paying. If you need a project done, and you don't have the skills for it, you must pay someone else, or convince someone to give their time. In addition to that, there is open source software that pays.

Start up costs are also a lot lower. The only real cost is your time, there is no specialized equipment needed, that costs money. This is not the same for DiyBio, RepRap or other projects. It's more affordable to program in your spare time. As a child, programming was the only avenue that I had, because I had no money. I just had to go to the library, and read a book and type on a computer.

There still needs to be a flow of money with more physical projects. You need labor to build it, labor to maintain it, and constant material to feed it. A single open sourced machine will not "put maximum competition and minimum wages", because there are a billion different fields that will pick up the displaced labor.

Tim Butram
http://www.worldsproject.org

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[Devin Balkind]

I know dozens of people who get paid good money to configure and deploy free/libre/opensource software.  The more powerful the tools, the more value a laborer can create, the higher the wage they can demand.  Am I missing something?

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[Michel Bauwens]

it's a really complex picture, combining

1) volunteer labor

2)  precarious unpaid labor

3) low-paid labour

4) a labour aristocracy

in a context where, 1) capital owns software companies, not users or producers 2) the free software is mostly useful to producers of software, i.e. coders, not users who lack the knowledge to improve the software.

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[John Griessen]

On 07/18/2011 09:06 PM, Atrus wrote:
> A single open sourced machine will not "put maximum competition and minimum wages",
> because there are a billion different fields
> that will pick up the displaced labor.

Yes, it will take lots of time to see a change. but then the rules will be different also.
Writing about economics takes creativity since there's nothing provable -- it's always
a target that moved already. Normal business is about satisfying a current need
as fast as possible before it evaporates and you're left "out" in musical chairs
because you didn't have a replacement product to sell ready when one goes obsolete.

Open Hardware developers are not afraid of losing any one magnificent idea.
They get more every time they sleep and dream. So, they naturally have replacement products
ready for when some go obsolete.

They can still get caught by batch size though, and that's where personal 3DP comes in.
It's not a macroeconomic theory -- it's liberating makers from large
batch size requirements and inventory tax. Ordinary folks are not any more likely to
3D print than to do woodworking or auto tuning/racing/restorations as hobby.

John

[Devin Balkind]

Open source CMSs allow people who don't code to earn a living building websites, so in that case, free software benefits the 'users' more than it benefits the coders, especially the coders who used to get paid to reinvent the CMS over and over again.

I think the trend in open source projects is that the skill level of developers/coers continues to increase while the skills level of deployers/users continues to decrease.  You'll earn the most money by operating in between - as someone who spend most of their time deploying systems but also spends time their time developing the code so they understand the project's capabilities and trajectory.

[Patrick Anderson]

Devin Balkind wrote:
> the more value a laborer can create,
> the higher the wage they can demand.

Yes, I agree. Sorry for my wording.

By "wages approach zero" I meant
there is so much work being done
without tokens changing hands.

Not paid in money, but paid instead with product.

They usually do the work because they want the
result for themselves or maybe the are showing off...

I'm talking about the 'artisans' I know of on the
internet that create so much beauty without pay.

[try http://FreeGamer.BlogSpot.com for examples]

When the users are allowed at-cost access to the
sources of production (without paying more than
the real costs of that access) they will start tinkering
and after a bit can fix and build all they need ...
when allowed to cooperate.

This is true for software as much as it is
true for aquaculture.

When the users own the sources of production,
they can be paid with the product itself.

In that scenario, there is no sale of the product,
and so there is also no profit and no reason to
use money at all!?

I'm just saying many would be willing to work for
a co-owned Farm for a wage of food and shelter
never receiving another Federal Reserve Note.

[Samuel Rose]

On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 12:31 AM, Devin Balkind
<de...@sarapisfoundation.org> wrote:
> Open source CMSs allow people who don't code to earn a living building
> websites, so in that case, free software benefits the 'users' more than it
> benefits the coders, especially the coders who used to get paid to reinvent
> the CMS over and over again.
>

Even in the case of CMS's (like Drupal and Wordpress for instance) you
have teams of people who program, maintain and configure the base
applications. Millions of dollars and thousands of hours go into the
CMS that makes it possible for a non-programmer to build a website.

> I think the trend in open source projects is that the skill level of
> developers/coers continues to increase while the skills level of
> deployers/users continues to decrease.  You'll earn the most money by
> operating in between - as someone who spend most of their time deploying
> systems but also spends time their time developing the code so they
> understand the project's capabilities and trajectory.
>

I can agree that this could be a current trend. However, I think it is
untenable (programmers do more and more, users learn less and less),
and that we're still faced with an urgent need for a significant
amount of people to obtain literacies of participatory media, abstract
concepts of programming (people don't have to become programmers, but
they will benefit from understanding how programs and computers work
in an abstract way), literacies of cooperation and collaboration,
commons concepts, knowledge about food and energy systems, etc.

From my perspective, access to tools and information is not enough of
catalyze change. Schemes of wage and labor also generally spin their
wheels in the mud of reality. People have to see how it applies to
their daily lives, and it's gonna take more than just a few of us at
the fringe.

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[Devin Balkind]

Patrick, I agree with what you're saying but think that 'at cost access' is easier said than done.  I'd imagine "cost" will become harder to quantify as 'market rates' for material and labor inputs become more obscure and less based in the conventional marketplace.

Sam, I agree that this situation looks "untenable."  Each of us should cultivate a generalized knowledge of all the systems we use, but we should also celebrate elegant systems that fulfill our needs and allow us to use our favorite skills.  In other words - and I'm not sure this will make a lot of sense - I'd like to code with watercolors. 

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