[WSIS CS-Plenary] PCT and WGIG

[Milton Mueller]

>>> avri at acm.org 1/16/2005 12:15:10 PM >>>
>If not, then it seems that people can be part of the free software 
>movement without belonging to FSF or to the FOSS caucus. And it 
>seems that they can have ideas on free software and the movement >that
have not been vetted with you.

Of course that is true! In fact, the reason we got the "free" vs. "open
source" distinction was precisely because around 1996-98 many people
became uncomfortable with the rigidity and ideological nature of the
FSF's leadership and adherents, and wanted to differentiate themselves
from it, while still believing that free software was a good thing. 

In 1996 Linus Torvald shook the FS community by admitting publicly that
he was a fan of Microsoft's Powerpoint software. Torvalds and his
followers had a more pragmatic attitude. As one biographer put it,
Linus's attitude was, "why shun worthy proprietary programs just to make
a point? Being a hacker wasn't about suffering, it was about getting the
job done." (Sam Williams)

Now, there is a legitimate debate to be had about the relative merits
of a principled, political commitment to free software versus a more
pragmatic, utilitarian commitment to it. One could persuasively argue
that without the ideological commitment, we would never have had a free
software movement at all. One could also counter that the scope and
influence of the movement has increased tremendously once it broke out
of the more ideological bounds. 

>For my part, having no desire to comment on the morality of either
> the FSF or of Maoists, I consider myself a fellow traveller of the
free 
>software movement.

Fellow traveller, eh - You see, we can't escape from the communist
metaphor! Your comment, while intended to be humorous, points to the
need for me to clarify my analogy to a Maoist faction. In making that
comparison I was not asserting that FSF adherents are literally Maoists
or communists, nor did I wish to associate them with the massive human
crimes of the "Great Leap Forward" and the "Cultural Revolution." The
comparison has to do with a characteristic political style and a certain
type of behavior in coalitions, wherein the agenda of a large and
diverse coalition is continually distracted and captured by the
well-defined and unshakeable ideology of a small cohesive group, whose
ideas are rigidly and persistently advanced regardless of its acceptance
or effect on the involved community of actors. A better comparison, in
fact, would have been to the Spartacist League, which was technically
Trotskyist rather than Maoist. (If any of you were ever in an antiwar
coalition involving them, you will know what I mean.) In a heterogeneous
civil society forum, where there is no other common ideology, such
factions can have a very bad effect unless one knows how to deal with
them.

The point is that a civil society plenary list has to be based on
discourse, and discourse implies an exchange of ideas, a willingness to
explore and listen to different ideas, not a one-way propagation of a
pre-set ideology and an "us-versus them" attitude. 

--MM