The Relationship Between FOSS and Democracy 239
An anonymous reader writes "Free software is about freedom. So it shouldn't be any surprise that the ideals behind the free software movement have spread to the place where freedom is most affected: government. The old definition of e-democracy is, basically, 'using computers in politics and governance.' So a politician sending out a batch e-mail is e-democracy. The new movement is about removing the power from politicians and making governance collaborative. The analogy to FOSS is remarkable: think of the current governments as the old guard computing companies, and the collaborative governance movement as the geeks with crazy notions of a different way of organizing things. FOSS looked like an impossible pipe-dream when it started. Tell that to the Apache group today."
E-democracy? (Score:2)
The "metagovernment" troll gets a story? (Score:3)
What's next, front page coverage of Michael "Your mom's face" Kristlepeet?
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Democracy:
Power of the Majority (i.e. white or German) to squash and exterminate the minority (i.e. black, Japanese, or jew). Is anyone thinks this "remove power from laws" is a good idea, then they truly don't understand what they are endorsing. Tyranny of the majority destroys human rights; it does not protect them.
See Athens. See what happened to Socrates (sentenced to death simply because the majority did not like him).
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The majority can also use the free market to enforce tyranny: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Citizens'_Council [wikipedia.org]
Re:The "metagovernment" troll gets a story? (Score:4, Insightful)
The alternative, our status quo, is to surrender all power to the corporate and political aristocracies. If there's sufficient money to keep the powerful in place, then those wielding those funds form the laws out of whole cloth.
In what way is this better?
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Ten percent of the population currently owns ninety percent of America. Revoking corporate charter will do fuck-all at this point, the ultra-rich will still own everything. They already won, and you are suggesting disarmament?
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Ten percent of the population currently owns ninety percent of America. Revoking corporate charter will do fuck-all at this point, the ultra-rich will still own everything. They already won, and you are suggesting disarmament?
How about the people simply seizing control of the means of production and nationalizing everything? That's somewhat more practical than engaging in individualistic martyr fantasies.
Re:Democracy is a concept.... (Score:2)
Democracy is a concept of governance by "We The People."
Democracy can never be tyranny. Democracy enfranchises and protects all citizens equally, by the disenfranchisement and defense against all forms of institutional corporate, political, racial, religious demagoguery, dogma, genocide. Democracy empowers the welfare of "We The People." Democracy governs the unthinking dogmatic institutions of business, politics, religion... in order to prevent the usurpation of governing power from "We The People."
We Th
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Was it really "the people" who voted to kill him? Oh, sure, it was SOME of the people. Not women, they couldn't vote. Not poor people, only land owners in Greece could vote. Not slaves, I mean, obviously, right? And another point, a small point: that happened around twenty five hundred years ago. We've matured as a species just a teensy bit since then, don't you think? Okay, I will admit that democracies, like any other group or individual human endeavor, can go horribly wrong and lead to oppression. But yo
Wiktionary or Oxford? (Score:2)
tyranny
noun (plural tyrannies)
According to the Oxford's definition (and common English usage) a democracy can, in fact, be tyrannical. Unless you put so much weight on derivations that you want to claim all homosexuals are happy.
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"remove power from laws" is a good idea, then they truly don't understand what they are endorsing. "
Does the law work now with the ability to buy and sell it like a commodity and oh lets not forget the bail out? The law is mostly a fiction today... Money buys laws and politicians which makes the whole concept farcical, those with the most money get to ignore the law and avoid taxes, the law has limited reach against powerful people in a high tech age.
http://dailybail.com/home/there-are-no-words-to-describ [dailybail.com]
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It's usually misattributed to Benjamin Franklin, although the earliest verifiable use seems to be in Usenet. See here. [wikiquote.org]
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I prefer Jonah Goldberg's description of Democracy. It is the belief that a majority (by a margin of just one vote) can vote to piss in the corn flakes of the minority. And if you are a believer in 'Democracy' and end up on the losing side all you can do is make sure the votes were properly counted, then ya gotta drink the piss. Because if you wouldn't drink the piss you don't really believe in Democracy.
Which was why the Founders here in the US thought Democracy was the absolute worst possible form of g
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Which was why the Founders here in the US thought Democracy was the absolute worst possible form of government, even counting Monarchy, and made sure to establish for us a Constitutional Republic with the Rule of Law vs Democracy's Rule of Men
So why bother having elections and votes then?
And why try to impose them on other countries like Afhanistan or Iraq if they're not a good idea?
I'm confused, not being an American and therefore an expert on the magical "Constitution".
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Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote.
- Marvin Simkin, "Individual Rights", Los Angeles Times, 12 January 1992:[8]
So freedom is a lamb yelling "Help! Help! I'm being oppressed! Come see the violence inherent in the system!" as it is eaten by two wolves?
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Trolling is a form of communication designed primarily to elicit an angry response. Trolls do not believe in what they say, they only say it to piss you off. I don't care if I piss you off, I really think the metagovernment guy is a troll, he puts links to his site into almost every discussion.
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Oh no. You are actually polite and apologetic? Now I feel like a dick, and might in fact have to do penance by checking out your site. I've always been afraid that it is some kind of haven for "No government is good government" libertarian free market fanatics. You don't have TOO many "No government is good government" libertarian free market fanatics, do you? Because I can handle a few, it is when they start to form large colonies that they become truly annoying. Do you have any other kinds of anarchists t
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How can you even begin to find a synthesis that works for everyone if you don't talk ideology? Ideologies lead to policies, I mean, if you don't have a model of how things work in your head (which is all an ideology is) you will be creating policies basically at random. So, to come up with a synthesis that works, you have to talk about what you are synthesizing. I use ideological labels as a kind of shorthand. When I say "anarcho-syndicalist," for instance, I mean someone who believes in use-stewardship sty
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Oh. So it's not really about Government government, it's some kind of communications/decision making software? Fuck me, I've been trolled.
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Right. The appropriate term is "cyberdemocracy".
It all started with Washington yelling "First!" at the start of his presidency.
Who's going to clean toilets and guard prisoners? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are we going to use Twitter and Facebook to arrange a schedule when we're going to all take turns guarding the prisoners, patching the roads, cleaning the sewers, and all that stuff that government does through that old-fashioned bureaucracy? I mean, we're "making governance collaborative," overthrowing the old-guy system of doing things, right? So from now on, we'll just send out a tweet when someone robs a bank, and handle the police work on it *collaboratively*.
Surely everyone is willing to do some actual *WORK*, right, instead of just lazily shooting your digital mouth off on a blackberry or iPad keyboard? Surely we all realize that *REAL* governance takes actual time and effort, no?
Wait, what is that? ...is that crickets I hear?
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Surely everyone is willing to do some actual *WORK*, right, instead of just lazily shooting your digital mouth off on a blackberry or iPad keyboard?
Right.. because we don't want it to be easy to participate in democracy...
It's precisely those folks sitting at home shooting off their mouths that makes democracy work. The ability for *anyone* to participate in the process is what makes the system great. Sure, there will be crackpots. There will be trolls. There will be people exploiting the system. But what
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It's precisely those folks sitting at home shooting off their mouths that makes democracy work. The ability for *anyone* to participate in the process is what makes the system great.
No.
The ability for anyone to participate is what makes it fail. It leads to results based on sound-bites and emotions instead of reality and serious consideration of the issues.
The perfect example of this is the Oregon initiative process. Anybody can get an initiative on the ballot to do almost anything (legal and constitutional, and sometimes that's not a limit either). Just get enough people to sign a petition, it gets on the ballot.
Then the people who can make the most warm-fuzzy happy feelings about
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No.
Your post proves it.
Without this forum your voice might as well be silenced. It's a perfect microcosm of the democratic process here. The readers vote on what they think is insightful or a troll or interesting. If an idea resonates with the people then it will be amplified by the teeming millions. Sure, if you can motivate people, incite people, then your voice is amplified. Others start listening. Others start perfecting the idea. Now some ideas are flawed, but the mere fact that it resonates with h
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This.
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The parent post's analogy between FOSS and government is especially apt if one substitutes "clean toilets" with "write documentation" and "guarding the prisoners" with "usability testing".
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Don't be such a party pooper, it'll work! I think we should do it! Oh, except I'm going to pay someone $1 to perform my 10 minutes of guard duty every year. I've got a great idea too, why don't like a few thousand of us pay $1 to one guy to take all of our turns and then he can just do that all year and we don't have to find a ton of people to fill in for out 10 minutes. We should really think about setting up an organization to handle paying him too so that they can make sure he actually signs in for ou
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The "point" to me sounded like a bunch of bullshit cyberspeak about how the internet is going to turn government into a big drum circle where we all join hands and sing songs of peace and love.
It's the same shit we've been hearing since the mid-90's. And yet government today still seems the same bunch of douchebags, doing the same evil shit that it was before--only now politicians send out tweets instead of flyers.
Re:Who's going to clean toilets and guard prisoner (Score:4, Funny)
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I vote that Skye should be chastised for smoking way more than her share of the weed this week.
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* Denied. Non-notable.
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No, the point is FOSS will help us become an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We'll take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting. By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more...
eerily similar to how Debian has done it for decades, with some minor differences.
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Well you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you.
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I'm not particularly an advocate of what the article is suggesting, but essentially it's direct democracy rather than representative. You clearly didn't read the article too thoroughly.
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Yeah. Great idea. (frowns). BTW if I sound a little bitter, it's because I just finished reading an article about a Tea Party-affiliated "Minuteman" that busted into a Hispanic home and shot an 8-yr-old girl just because she was brown.
I'll do 'ya 19 times (or 3000 times?) better. I just finished reading an article about Islamic-affiliated hijackers that crashed a couple of airplanes into the World Trade Center towers, killing more than 3000 people just because ... they existed. Another couple hundred died in a cornfield in Pennsylvania because they ... were on the wrong airplane at the wrong time.
Another article, this time an Islamic-affiliated suicide bomber who got on a crowded bus and killed women and children just for riding the bu
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As for the anti-Christian stuff, I wouldn't be able to criticize them (or Muslims) if they didn't do hateful things.
That wooshing sound is the point flying right over your head. THEY didn't do hateful things. A few nutjobs that you are painting them all with did that. Your rant about Christians is as relevant to Christians as if you ranted at the easter bunny because your pet rabbit peed on the floor.
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The "point" to me sounded like a bunch of bullshit cyberspeak about how the internet is going to turn government into a big drum circle where we all join hands and sing songs of peace and love.
I don't think you're reading it right. Consensus governance is a valid technique and has nothing to do with hippie love fests (except that yes, it is more peaceful than authoritarian rule by threat of violence). Try reading the linked article again.
It's the same shit we've been hearing since the mid-90's. And yet government today still seems the same bunch of douchebags, doing the same evil shit that it was before--only now politicians send out tweets instead of flyers.
That is exactly what the Slashdot story says: e-democracy is about politicians sending tweets (etc.). Collaborative governance is a new formation that is in its infancy. Give it a few years.
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The web links point to some vanity site run by a bunch of idealists who appear not yet disillusioned by the inevitable flood of douchbaggery that flocks to any government enterprise, or the arrival of difficult people who quibble endlessly over spelling.
If they think vested interests have too much of a hold on government now, just wait till the system they envision were in place. By definition, it would consist of NOTHING BUT vested interest groups.
At best those issues we vote on, and the issues our repres
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Re:Who's going to clean toilets and guard prisoner (Score:5, Interesting)
The "point" to me sounded like a bunch of bullshit cyberspeak about how the internet is going to turn government into a big drum circle where we all join hands and sing songs of peace and love.
I'll be the first to admit that a lot of Progressive activism does suffer from its (often impractical) idealism. That said, the assertion that the Internet, with its FOSS-style approach to standards and its preference for unmediated communication, really is a democratising force.
The problem is, the powers-that-be are becoming aware of this fact, and they don't like it. I may be getting cynical in my old age, but recently all I've been seeing is how susceptible to coercion modern networks are. I've written a series of newspaper columns [imagicity.com] and blog posts on the topic. Here's the basic take-away:
Will the revolution be twittered? If Egypt is any example, it's increasingly likely that it won't. That said, Internet protocols and FOSS philosophy still hold some important ground. They can be used to organise groups and share experience/intelligence. Not all hope is lost.
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Believe it or not, without the internet and blackberries, the protests in Tunusia and Egypt would not have gained the traction it did.
Now it seems that you are referring to the situation in the USA, but that is a bit more complicated than going into the streets and throwing rocks as most people are invested into the s
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Believe it or not, without the internet and blackberries, the protests in Tunusia and Egypt would not have gained the traction it did. /quote.
That is an assertion rather than an argument. I think you'll find that people managed to organise even full-scale revolutions before the internet, places like Russia and Iran spring to mind.
Re:Who's going to clean toilets and guard prisoner (Score:4, Informative)
What I find completely amazing is this simple fact: Most well-run and successful open source projects seem to bear very little relationship to a true democracy (i.e., majority rule) in form or function.
The head of these projects is often referred to as a "benevolent dictator" - he whose word is law. The contributors cooperate (and sometimes compete, sometimes even via nasty political infighting) in what is in essence, a ruthless meritocracy-slash-technocracy, led by that 'benevolent dictator.'
1000 Joe Q Publics writing to the Linux kernel mailing list will be easily outweighed by a simple "NO" from Linus, or any single one of the other frequent kernel contributors. 1000 Joe Q Publics complaining about how some feature didn't get implemented yet will be told, "Go fuck yourself, we're not here to work for you, if you think it's that important, either write the code yourself, or wait until we decide to get to it." Last I checked, they weren't asking people to vote on which features to implement in the next version of the Linux kernel.
Openness and Democracy are often found together, and a well-run democracy requires an educated populace (which, in turn, requires information to be available to the populace so that they may be informed), but the two ideals are absolutely not identical. Opening up governance to "egalitarian collaboration" simply means that you'll see a lot more trolling, a few more Goatse bills, and god help us all if Anonymous decides to get involved in governance "for the lulz."
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What I find completely amazing is this simple fact: Most well-run and successful open source projects seem to bear very little relationship to a true democracy (i.e., majority rule) in form or function.
The head of these projects is often referred to as a "benevolent dictator" - he whose word is law. The contributors cooperate (and sometimes compete, sometimes even via nasty political infighting) in what is in essence, a ruthless meritocracy-slash-technocracy, led by that 'benevolent dictator.'
The part that you're missing is that Linux can be forked by anyone, and the fork will have just as much legal power of the code as Linus has today (except for the trademark). In fact, Linus himself even encourages forks and the competition it brings.
The point being that Linus is the boss simply because *everyone wants him to be*. If someone who can do a better job comes a long, that's great, developers can follow that guy or gal instead. But that hasn't happened, even though anyone and everyone has the powe
Government is not about freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
You cannot fork government, you are not free to change to your liking; You cannot use a different government than your neighbor does, you are not free to pick.
The form of democracy used in most countries is everything but freedom. Sure, you are free to vote on some guy that might share opinions/thoughts/ideals, based on the propaganda they put out. But after that, the person you voted on has free play till the next elections. At that point, you handed over part of your freedom.
Re:Government is not about freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, tried to fork, but where not free to fork, which is obvious by the civil war that resulted from the attempt.
In FOSS everybody is free to fork without repercussions from the trunk (given a set of rules like not claiming ownership or changing the set of rules).
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I am free to fork laws, I just can't get the changes merged upstream without going through an approval process, just like any other project.
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The form of democracy used in most countries is everything but freedom.
Says the guy who has *clearly* never lived under a truly repressive regime...
Go tell the Iranians or the Egyptians just so gosh darn unfree your system is, and see what they have to say.
You're confusing material success with the concept of freedom.
Also you're confusing cultural norms... We are just as repressive against our dissidents as they are, its just that the venn diagram of our dissidents and theirs has approximately zero overlap. Our dissidents are those whom opted out of our legal system and pharmaceutical market and set up their own. Try being an atheist in SLC or pretty much anywhere in the south. Or for that matter its still no picnic being black, at least in "those" states
MPAA's corruption of representative democracy (Score:2)
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Sit in a recliner and watch the Internet (Score:2)
Your comment points to an obvious solution, one which is actually feasible: start another news organization
How would one pitch this news organization's stream to the cable and satellite television operators? Recall that Comcast owns NBC News (TV news), CNBC (TV news), MSNBC (TV news), Universal City Studios (MPAA member), and the cable TV monopoly in several cities including mine. Time Warner was similar (CNN, HLN, Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line) before it spun off TWC. One could put it on the Internet, but people sit in a recliner and watch cable news; they don't habitually sit in a recliner and watch the Inte
Primary popularity contests (Score:2)
Periodically, you have performance reviews (elections)
Since the introduction of mass media, these aren't performance reviews as much as popularity contests, especially at the primary level. Any candidate with a platform unfriendly to the movie studios who own the TV news media would get its campaign buried.
The new Slashdot broke something else. (Score:4, Insightful)
I know I had Politics turned off on my front page.
Did that get broken as well as the checking comments?
And in other ways... (Score:5, Insightful)
And in other ways, FOSS and democracy are opposites. The biggest aspect that pops into mind is force: nobody is forced to use FOSS against their wishes. FOSS is almost always compatible with proprietary implementations (that is, a proprietary implementation can re-implement whatever FOSS does). With democracy, there is always the tyranny of the majority: if 50% + 1 want something, everyone must go along by force. That strikes me much more like proprietary software than FOSS, where a single implementation is the only implementation (such as needing perfect MS Office compatibility).
FOSS is much more like liberty or anarchy than democracy. No one forces you to use FOSS, but you are free to do so.
Democracy is not equivalent to Majority Rule (Score:2)
From the linked article [metagovernment.org]:
Collaborative governance is not directly comparable to traditional direct democracy, which is usually a majority rule system used on only a few major issues. By comparison, collaborative governance is a consensus system intended to be used on all issues affecting a community, with the implicit understanding that anyone not participating on a particular issue consents to allow others to decide the issue.
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By comparison, collaborative governance is a consensus system intended to be used on all issues affecting a community, with the implicit understanding that anyone not participating on a particular issue consents to allow others to decide the issue.
So three of my neighbours get together at two o'clock one morning and decide to steal my stuff and rape my dog, and it's all legal because I didn't participate in deciding the issue.
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Direct democracy is *exactly* what this metagovernment thing is. Consensus will never be attained; instead we will have majority rule among those choosing to participate on a singular item. To believe consensus is achievable among groups with directly opposed interests is nonsense idealism.
The metagovernment concept literally is direct democracy, except i
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From the summary: "decisions made by a majority under that system would place that majority's interests so far above a dissenting individual's interest that the individual would be actively oppressed, just like the oppression by tyrants and despots"
Examples from America, both past and present:
- Enslavement/Racial Segregation - the majority (anglo-saxons/whites) imposing their will upon a minority (african-americans/b
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With democracy, there is always the tyranny of the majority: if 50% + 1 want something, everyone must go along by force.
Absolutely no need to make that arbitrary cutoff 50%. Plenty of things in "the system" right now require 2/3 majority, or even consensus such as certain criminal jury trials.
For a quick education, look at the relationship between the legislative branch and the executive branch as regards vetos. Or the strange relationship inside and outside the supreme court w/ regards to constitutionality of laws.
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Good to know that the US is the only country in the world.
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Or ... get this, they can come up with 2 alternate solutions that is more appropriate to a larger number of people!
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the 50+1% just say 'we've got the votes so STFU'.
FOSS U Goverment != as big as you'd think (Score:2)
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I'm pretty sure you mean the intersection, not the union. Your notion of union is actually more the political one than the set theory one.
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I agree (Score:2)
Problems with out government? Besides peeps can hold positions for a lifetime, is that that too many people have power they shouldn't.
If everyone worked for the governement (say 20 hours a week), and our basics of life (electricty, housing, healthcare, etc) where covered by that, then we'd have less crime because everyone's basics are met.
Also, don't let peeps hold the same positions for life. 1 Senate Term, 1 Congress term, etc.
Give candinates taht are running the same amount of TV time, and the same am
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Good point.
Who elected Linus Torvalds, anyway?
FREE THE KERNEL!
The e-democracy from Hell (Score:2)
Call me a pessimist, but how come my visions of e-democracy involve getting an RFID chip implanted in my butt, getting finger-printed and having my picture taken every time I travel more than a few kilometers from home, and surveillance of every financial transaction that I have ever made in my life. Cash will be banned; only electronic cards issued by the government will be valid for payments. And: "Sorry, our e-Scans of your brain show that you do not 'conform to the norm' and must be executed. But don
Foss government? no thanks (Score:2)
Only a few governments who have large commercial backing will ever get out of beta. Most of the rest will languish due to petty squabbles between project leaders and the voices of the community will lately be ignored. When the community members aren't blown off they will be told to submit a path. Or quit bitching.
There will be fragmentation, personality cults and holy wars all the time.
Actually, that sounds about like how the world at large works now, anyway.
Think it through (Score:2)
Currently, FOSS projects are not governed by collaborative governance.
They suffer from the same flaws as other representative democracies.
Paid for by Big Enterprise? (Score:3)
A lot of Open Source is bankrolled by big corporations. IBM and Novell, for example, have put a lot of investement into FOSS.
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Hey Apache Group! (Score:2)
"FOSS looked like an impossible pipe-dream when it started. Did you know that?"
Wow, they took it quite well.
FOSS and the three branches of government (Score:2)
I could see elements of FOSS working in the congressional setting, if you could get the lawyers to agree. After all, making law is somewhat like coding, and could be made a lot more like it if the legal community would accept the formulation of standard legal clauses that could be automatically reasoned about, a la automata and compilers.
OTOH, driving ambulances and paving roads is more like what Redhat and kin do, analogically. T
Obligatory link (Score:2)
Democracy is not a form of government, but is instead a more universal idea about how decisions should be made.
If you look at the actual implementations of the movement-without-a-name that circulates at places like Crisis Camp and City Camp and whatever Camp, it is not about dumping one government in favor of another, but instead about creating little pockets of opportunity for transparent, opt-in and inclusive decision making to create policy. No revolution! Just little tweaks, here and there. Better over
You mean, FOSS invented participative democracy ? (Score:2)
quickly send an email to the Athenians... oh, wait, those have been dead for a few thousand years... and they died thinking THEY invented it, poor souls.
Yep, software and politics (Score:2)
a match made in heaven. both are obtuse things dominated by assholes who think very highly of themselves and never had to live with the crap they're making.
I'd be just happy with a little transparency (Score:2)
Call it e-government or whatever, but I want to see which public entities are paying for what, and meeting with whom.
Without transparency, any e-gov initiative is DOA... a "collaborative" movement with no transparency? Isn't that just like American Idol?
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Most everyone I can think of in the open-data, e-governance community agrees with you. Passionately. Take a look at this set of policy recommendations:
http://opengovernmentinitiative.org/ [opengovern...iative.org]
Similar idea, executive juries. (Score:2)
The public election system is suboptimal and should be eliminated. Firstly it self-selects power hungry individuals who have more incentive in their political careers than public good, this drives them to such stupidities as pursuing dumb actions just to "look busy" including security theaters. Overspending to look good then passing the bill to the next major, etc. And there are, of course, the lobbies.
I propose a system of random selection instead of popular election. Randomly select a group of able citize
Remember ... (Score:2)
...In Soviet Russia, social network unfriends you!
Seriously, the political climate could be deduced by examining who's image disappeared from May Day parade shots at the Kremlin
Definition problem... (Score:2)
FOSS != Democracy, Collaboration, etc. and are not mutually exclusive. A government that worked like open-source software would be an absolute disaster, and I don't think I need to say why considering the large number of comments that explain it pretty well.
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Obvious flamebait, but I'll bite.
"They" don't use the GPL, some use the GPL in order to try to guarantee freedom for the end users.
The GPL only affects developers of software, not end users. If you don't like the GPL. then don't use it and write the stuff yourself.
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If FOSS is about freedom why do they use the GPL?
Dictatorships often call themselves "Democratic Republic of". In the same way, advocates of the GPL like to talk about "Freedom" and the "Free Open Source Movement" when there is a perfectly good Open Source Software movement that is independent of a specific license or philosophy.
The FOSS movement is not about freedom but rather a specific philosophy or agenda pushed by the GNU foundation.
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Because the GPL means you have to share the freedoms you receive with others.
BSD-style licenses allow you to take those freedoms away, and others to take the gift you grant them and keep it to themselves. If that's your bag, fine, no-one forced you to give your sources away to anyone who would profit from them, just as no-one forces you to choose GPL code to save time on your implementation and reciprocate in exchange.
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Because the GPL means you have to share the freedoms you receive with others.
BSD-style licenses allow you to take those freedoms away
GPL explicitly takes freedoms away. BSD gives you *more* freedom. BSD allows you to interact with a lot more people who don't share your ideals as it gives you more freedom and places few restrictions, GPL (even more with V3) on the other hand forces any collaborator to conform to a much more restrictive set of ideals.
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If FOSS is about freedom why do they use the GPL?
Because it gives you the freedom to do just about anything you want, except take away the same level of freedom from others. This way total freedom is maximized.
I am frankly surprised someone has heard of the GPL and doesn't know this. If you did know this and just don't like it because you feel that you would gain something from placing restrictions on what others may do with your code that the GPL wouldn't allow, well, you have the freedom to release your code under a different license.
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And... The reasons people may choose one of the GPL licenses are explained in the actual text of the licenses which are conveniently available for anyone to read and evaluate here [gnu.org] and here [gnu.org].
The question "If FOSS is about freedom why do the use the GPL" seems to imply "but why don't they do what *I* want, instead?", to which the answer is, "you don't get to choose because you didn't do the work."
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Total freedom maximized by the GPL? Bullshit. You need to go read the definition of freedom, then you can tell me where forcing someone to do something is a part of freedom.
Maybe you can brush up on the definition of "force" sometime before suggesting anything to me.
You're not entitled to use someone else's work. If you want to use someone else's work and it's available under the GPL, you can decide whether you can live with the GPL. That's hardly forcing you to do anything. But if you do use the work licensed under the GPL, and decide to distribute it, you cannot then prevent others from doing the same.
Expecting you to take responsibility for the choices you make, su
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Because information wants to be free!
Is anyone else tired of the way that gets mindlessly repeated, but almost no one ever quotes it in context? The full quote is "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other".
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For 'it' to stand on its own, the meaning and intention should not be altered by examining the context in which 'it' was made. Refusing to acknowledge the context results in a level of stupidity I would not like to see managing political issues.
Perhaps someone is suffering from deliberate ignorance? Context and environment can alter the effect in the way facts are used. Now say "Thank you, harlows_monkeys"
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Representative democracies change the way issues are presented.
In the United States, one issue that is extremely popular and controversial is abortion. Even though it is in fact a non-issue. Hardly anyone advocates abortions-for-everyone, and hardly anyone advocates totalitarian-control-of-our-bodies. And yet we have this huge divisive issue. Why? Because it serves politicians to make it into an issue.
Without a politician-based system, these huge non-issues fade away, and people can focus on what they reall
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Speak for yourself. Here in my area few care all that much about the "big" elections - we only get to choose between fascists, sell-outs and loonies - but local issues up to state level get people on the streets and into the polling stations.
Besides, most forms of e-democracy offer not just direct voting but also delegation of votes, where you assign your vote to someone - a person, an ad-hoc group or a "proper" party - to cast it for you. The great thing is: You can delegate your vote wholesale to one enti
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> ..consensus will be determined by who has the most endurance in the argument.
More likely it will end up being determined exactly like it does on Wikipedia. By who ends up with the power to end the argument. In Wikipedia's case by locking edits. Because everyone isn't equal, even on Wikipedia some animals are more equal than others. This is reality and no matter how hard starry eyed utopians dream it doesn't change that somebody always ends up in charge.