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The Limits of Free SoftwareAsa WinstanleyPage 1 ¦ Page 2 ¦ Page 3 ¦ Printer-friendly version Asa Winstanley is an activist and freelance writer. His main areas of interest are the effects of IT on society, and the crossover between free software movement and wider activism. He is currently a full time youth worker with his church in north London. IntroductionThe success of the free software movement is a potential proof of the validity of anarchist arguments in favour of a self-organising society, free of exploitation, coercion and hierarchy. Furthermore, I believe that it demonstrates that complex technological systems are possible when they have no leader, central government or managers [1]. In addition, the movement has created a vast array of useful software tools available at no cost to activists and communities, and has raised public awareness of issues such as openness, freedom of information, public accountability and co-operative creation of tools and standards. However, in this article I am more interested with areas in which I think the movement is at odds with the political theory and practice of anarchism. The constrictions on the world-view of the free software community are often very real, as we will see in what follows. Marxists and the leftAlthough the anti-capitalist movement in general has at least a basic awareness of free software, the more traditional left seems to be largely ignorant of it [2]. There is, however, a small German group called Oekonux who seek to understand the phenomenon using Marxist analysis. They look forward to a "GPL society" and see free software as a "germ" in capitalist society; part of "an objective historical process" that will lead to "the generalisation of the principles of free software to the whole of the productive social progress [sic]". Thus: true communism via the rules of free software [3]. Although some of this group's analysis is interesting and makes some valid points, its central thesis of a "GPL society" is essentially vacuous. People who have computers and the internet can share free software precisely because it costs practically nothing to do so. The same can not be said of food, shelter or heating. Even if computers and the internet were anywhere near being equally spread around the world one could still not defy the laws of physics with nothing more than a Marxist historical analysis. Of course, the left is not a homogeneous mass; some seem to have a more realistic view. For example, in an article from the New Left Review: "[although] the free exchange of software has led some commentators to compare the online gift economy with the ceremony of potlatch, in which people bestow extravagant presents, or even sacrifice goods, to raise their prestige, it fundamentally differs in that the copying and distribution of software is almost cost-free -- at least if one excludes the large initial outlay for a computer and networking facilities" [4]. Freedom for who?Free software is often said to be a great equaliser. Everyone has the same right to use, study and modify it, due to the freely available source code and the legal provisions in free software licenses such as the GNU GPL. This is a fine concept in theory. When we look at the world in a wider context, however, we start to see the same old problems of inequality and domination. Software freedoms are, by definition, restricted to those who have the physical facilities to make use of them: an electricity supply and a computer. Furthermore, an internet connection is required to communicate and to share. Computers are luxuries if seen in a global context. Looking at global figures of access to basic ICT facilities, the scale of the disparity is surprising. There are several good studies looking at global telecommunication and computer access figures, but I will use the latest UN Human Development Report as my main statistics base (incidentally this report gives some of the more optimistic figures I have seen) [5]. In 2001 there were only 169 telephone mainlines for every 1000 people around the world. This is a rise from 98 lines per 1000 people in 1990. A 1999 investigation by a BBC Online journalist put it this way: "more than 80% of people in the world have never heard a dial tone, let alone sent an email or downloaded information from the... web" [6]. In 1995 South Africa's President (then Deputy President) Thabo Mbeki said: "The reality is that there are more telephone lines in Manhattan, New York, than in sub-Saharan Africa" [7]. According to Black this was an understatement: "the situation is even worse in Africa [than in Asia]. With 739 million people, there are only 14 million phone lines. That's fewer than in Manhattan or Tokyo. Eighty percent of those lines are in only six countries" [8]. The share of world population with regular access to the internet stood in 2001 at 8% [9]. Other sources give slightly different figures [10]. Numbers of computers are similarly low at 9% [11]. Not without reason has Noam Chomsky called the internet "an elite operation", despite all its democratising effects [12]. This assessment, made in 1996, still stands. Even if access to electricity, computers and the internet were in place, there are the more fundamental problems of illiteracy, the Anglo-centric nature of the web and lack of basic computer skills. Black sums it up: "[the internet] may be the wave of the future but age-old problems still apply". In the report, Black and others looked at case studies such as "Benin... [where] more than 60% of the population is illiterate. The other 40% are similarly out of luck. Four-fifths of websites are in English, a language understood by only one in 10 people on the planet" [13]. FootnotesReminder: all online references open in the second browser window. 1. See Asa Winstanley, The Free Software Movement: Anarchism in Action, December 2003. return 2. John Levin, Re: Stalls at Marxism 2003, message to the FSF Europe, UK email list, 17 May 2003. return 3. Raoul Victor, Free Software and Market Relations. return 4. Julian Stallabrass, Digital Commons, New Left Review 15, May-June 2002. return 5. United Nations Development Project (UNDP), Human Development Report 2003. return 6. Jane Black, Information rich, Information Poor: Losing ground bit by bit return 7. Reuters, Third World Wonders About Information Highway, 28 February 1995. return 8. Black, "Losing ground bit by bit". 9. UNDP, Human Development Report 2003, p277 for this and previous figures. The figure given is 79.6 "internet users" per 1000 people globally. It is unclear whether "internet users" refers to those who use it regularly or those who have ever used it. For the purpose of this essay I will be more optimistic and assume the former. return 10. See, for example, Subbiah Arunachalam, Reaching the unreached: How can we use ICTs to empower the rural poor?, 24 August 2002. He puts the figure for those who have benefited from the "fourth information revolution" at 5% globally. Larry Irving, former US assistant secretary of commerce (in Black, "Losing ground bit by bit") put the figure at 2% in 1999. On the other hand, some are more optimistic, if only in vague terms. For example, the ITU (the UN group behind the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)) recently argued that gaps in available data suggest that the situation may not be as bleak as usually presented (see BBC News Online, Digital divide figures 'flawed', 10 December, 2003. (Note also that Richard Stallman heavily criticised the WSIS for its suppression of dissent, calling it "more of a trade show and conference than a real summit meeting" (see: Stallman, World Summit on the Information Society, undated.)). For another optimistic view of internet use in the global south, see Jean-Michel Cornu How people use the Internet today in Africa, 26 April 2002. return 11. UNDP, "Human Development Report 2003", p236. return 12. Andrew Marr interviews Noam Chomsky for BBC Radio, "The Big Idea", February 1996. Transcript online: http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/interviews/9602-big-idea.html return 13. Black, "Losing ground bit by bit". return | |