Collaboration in the virtual world.

There are two things that always make me feel good to be a Human. The first is seeing an ambulance flying down a city street at seventy kilometers an hour in a sixty zone, and watching every car pull in to the left lane to let it past, to possibly save the life of another person, a stranger. It gives me the feeling that, hey, maybe we homo sapiens aren't all completely selfish arseholes, and, yeah, maybe this society could work. Perhaps if everyone though the same way about life in general, and our global society and eco system, as they do about ambulances, perhaps then we could really have a golden age on our hands. Then again, some of those drivers are probably just trying not to get fines for obstructing an ambulance.

The second thing that always makes me feel warm inside is the Open-Source Movement. And for exactly the same reason. The people who participate in it are acting in the most selfless way possible, by slaving for hours, and then giving the produce of their work, be it software (most often), or music, art or information, to the rest of the world. Then saying "here's how I did it, here's my recipe, why don't you have a go, see if you can make it better." And not asking for anything in return.

Especially in the Software world, this is coming to represent a new way of escaping the strangle hold that commercial companies a have over consumer. Microsoft is being eaten by Linux, Mozilla's Firefox and Thunderbird, and Sun's OpenOffice.org. Adobe's multi-thousand dollar visual production suite is slowly, but steadily being overtaken by a number of open source alternatives, like The Gimp, Inkscape and Scribus. And many expensive professional 3D programs, sound editors, and even games are being slowly replaced by cheaper, sometimes safer, and often more easy to use programs like Blender3D, LMMS, and FreeCiv.

What is open-source?

Open-Source basically means that the source of the final product, code for software, musical score, artistic techniques, or plans and instructions for physical things, is released to the public. This means that anyone can take that source, and edit it, add to it, remove bits from it, to improve it, or just make it suit them.

Often, Open-Source software comes with a kind of agreement, such as the GNU Public License, that allows the user to disperse the product as they will, as long as the original authors are credited for their part, and that any further uses or modifications of the product mus also be given away under the same agreement. This creates an ever-expanding mass of creativity, which is accessible to anyone for free, and is easy to improve and expand further, if need be.

What the hell does this have to so with slavery?

To tell the truth, I don't know exactly, as my theories are still forming. Basically it goes like this. Capitalism, and all the lack of creativity, theft, starvation, and human rights abuses it brings, is basically flawed because of one fact: Rich control the means of production, and as such can charge as much as they like for it, and buy up more of the mean of production. This is especially scary when you look at empires like that of News Corporation. News Corp owns nearly every newspaper in australia, national papers in five countries, 3 book publishing firms, 4 magazines, the Fox film and television studios, the Fox empire of free-to-air, cable, and satellite stations as well as SkyTV. When you realise the the Murdoch family controls nearly all of this, and when you consider Murdoch's right-wing political agenda, which is clearly prevalent in nearly all News Corp media, well, it scares me shitless. The same thing goes for every profession, to some extent. Large firms have the money and power to restrict other peoples creativity and right to free-speech.

One of the main reasons that companies like News Corp do so well, and have the power to restrict or promote the things we see and hear, is that they have control of the hugely expensive equipment used to produce it. Now think: would you ever fork out the $1,600 per computer for Adobe Creative Suite, which you need to produce a magazine for opus? Or the multi-thousand dollar programs used to produce Newspapers, films, and audio? For film makers: will you ever get the break you need, considering you will never have enough money to buy professional software, and no serious studios like your film? Architects: will you ever make it on your own without a CAD program? I don't think so. Which musician can afford Cubase? Only the lucky, rich, or compromised ones. And if you write for Opus, you probably can't even afford a decent word processor. So you're stuffed. You will never hear the real truth, and you will never get to have your say. You are, and will continue to be a slave to the whims of corporate media, or to The Man, big business who doesn't give a fuck about your ideas; just the money.

So what can be done about it? What do you need? You need software to produce you art, or have your say. No, not even that, you need the means of production it self, so that you can ALWAYS have the best, and can hence achieve to your full potential. And it's not gonna work from top down either, if you gain control of the means of production for yourself others are going to lose out.

There's a pretty simple answer really: community. And that's basically what the open source movement is, an anarchistic¹, sharing, open global commons, in which anyone can participate, and from which anyone can reap the rewards. And that's not some fucking capitalist mantra, "you reap what you sow," it doesn't work like that. This time, it's "we reap what we sow." And it doesn't get much more fair than that. Actually, it does. Open source is also about "you reap what we sow," as this is a true gift-culture, and anyone can benefit from the efforts of those who put in, but of course, the more who sow, the more there is to reap.

And so far, I haven't managed to find one ethical, moral or even financial argument that holds up against the idea, not that many haven't tried (those with a vested interest 99% of the time).

So, how can you benefit?

If you have a computer with a 'net connection, you can start right away. The best place to start is probably sourceforge.net. SourceForge is a place for open-source projects to get off the ground, and out into the community. And there's basically anything you can thing of on there. The other best way is to write "open source SOMETHING" in to a search engine (ie. "open source word processor" or "open source image editor") and follow what ever links come up. If there's something that you need that's not there, chances are it will be soon.

Some basic things to get you started

Firefox

Web browser

getfirefox.com

Thunderbird

Email client

getthunderbird.com

Open Office

Microsoft office replacement (this article was written in OO)

www.openoffice.org

the Gimp

Image editing

www.gimp.org

Gaim

instant messaging, over every protocol (MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, IRC etc.)

gaim.sourceforge.net/

ClamAV

Anti-virus

http://www.clamav.net/

CoolPlayer

music player (windows)

coolplayer.sourceforge.net

Phex

file sharing

phex.kouk.de

Blender

3D images and animation

blender3d.com

and for the dedicated/nerdy

Linux

the start of it all, the Open-source operating system. The only way to truly escape corporate software.

www.distrowatch.org

How can you help?

There are many, many ways that you can help. So many, in fact, that it's probably hard to find an excuse not to. If you're a programmer, it's pretty obvious. Help out with programming on what ever program suits you, or release your own under and open-source licence. For the artistic, ask a project if they need some design or artwork, or sounds made for the program. For everyone else, suggest improvements on message boards, help find bugs, or simply promote Open-source programs in any way that you can (like this article). In the open-source community it's definitely a matter of the more the merrier.

Ned Haughton