Re: <nettime> for benjamin mako hill

["Michael Truscello" <mj2trusc@artsmail.uwaterloo.ca>]

While I admire Hardt and Negri's Multitude, it must be noted that they do not seem
to understand Open Source Software.

For example, they reference the Open Source movement on page 301 (the passage you
quoted); but the footnote (#105) is to Richard Stallman's Free Software, Free
Society. They do not seem to understand the distinction between Free and Open
Source Software.

More problematically, they say Open Source involves the modification of software
"without copyright." Well, that's obviously and comically untrue. They also use
Eric Raymond as an exemplar of the "open-source movement" they are referencing
(p.339); but Raymond's libertarian vision of OSS would seem to fly in the face of
Hardt and Negri's previous 338 pages of complaints about capitalist exploitation.

There is a relationship between FOSS and multitude. But I don't think Hardt 
and Negri have articulated it properly.




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