On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 6:40 PM, Christian Siefkes
<christian@siefkes.net> wrote:
>> > Would you work with the Ku Klux Klan if it could help
foster your goals?
>> > Where do you draw the
line?
>
> good question, I would draw the line with explicitely
'anti-p2p' forces
> such as racism, genderism, etc
..
Yes, that sounds reasonable. Peer production requires
treating others as
your peers, as equals, and anybody with racist,
homophobic, sexist,
anti-semitic views won't be able to do that, hence
their participation is
likely do to more bad than
good.
Anti-abortion is about denying women's right over their own
bodies (while,
of course, men's rights over their bodies are never put in
doubt), hence it
is equally 'anti-p2p'.
well, the last thing is a bit more problematic for me, I see this
as an ethical opinion; for example, I have worked and communicated with
catholic distributists, who are very egalitarian (support distributing
proprety, catholic worker movement, live in collectives without property etc
..) but find abortion objectionable because of their egalitarianism .. of
course, I disagree with this, but I find it has little practical
importance in the cooperation
> a question for you: if you are working on a piece of free
software, and you
> discover your co-developer is KKK, would you stop
working with her?
>
> these are by no means easy questions,
FLOSS is full of libertarians, whose
> values I object to
...
I know. Eric Raymond's pro-gun standpoint and some of his
possible
more-or-less racists sayings haven't stopped me from quoting his
insights
about free software.
they are also majorly wrong in the bazaar/cathedral metaphor
<g>; the cathedrals were very participatory and distributed efforts
involving the whole population ..
Some time ago I discovered that the author of a
little
piece of free software I'm using has shockingly right-wing
views:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/enemies/ . That didn't
stop me from using
his software, nor from contributing a little patch
back to him, of course.
So I don't think people having personal views
contrary to my own is a
problem as long as it doesn't hinder cooperation
in a project. But on the
other hand I would think it very wrong to invite
people with such
standpoints precisely *because of* their standpoints --
which is what
anybody who talks about "building an alliance with the Tea
Party" is
proposing to do.
I agree, I would oppose any formal cooperation with tea party
organisations, they are a very dangerous, fascism-inducing political force;
but a few people call themselves that way and are pro-open source
libertarians; they should disown the label instead of claiming that they are
the true TP'ers and all the others are fake.
And, of course, if (say) an openly racist person's
participation in a
project would cause black people to leave to product,
or discourage them
from joining it, since they could feel no longer
welcome, then it would be
the racist who would have to leave so as to
correct the situation. I hope we
agree on that?
yes
> what do you think of nader's alliance with ron paul, around
the 3
> priorities of ending the war, ending the war on drugs and 3
??
"and 3"? Ending wars, and ending the war on drugs are fine
goals, and it
seems to me that Ron Paul is by far not the worst of the
Tea Party--near
candidates currently running. Nevertheless I suppose that
such alliances
will ultimately do more bad than good, since they will
increase acceptance
for causes that are anti-emancipatory and
'anti-p2p'.
ron paul also has quite terrible positions on civil rights and
the like; I'm not sure if nader is correct is doing such an alliance, though I
respect Nader a lot; I think ows has a better position, by eschewing formal
political alliances altogether, and seeking broad commonality on a few key
goals
at least for the time being ... if time, circumstances and
maturation require much more radical steps, even such commonality may become
strained
Michel
It is only the identification of a
Them that makes it possible for us to
live with the epidemic of Aids in
Africa or the death of thousands of
children each day from curable
diseases. The existence of capitalism is
conceivable only on the basis of
the dulling of our feelings ... that
enables us to erect private morality
into a wall to keep out the pain of
the world.... Communism is the
movement of intensity against the dulling of
feeling that makes the
horrors of capitalism possible.
--
John Holloway, Change the World Without Taking
Power
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