This thought came to me in the shower today. Open source checks most of the boxes. It is a collaborative, worker owned (develloper-owned) project, that tries to flatten hierarchy. Especially if you look at something like Debian ), which really tries to have a bottom-up structure.
Of course, there are exceptions, considering there are a lot of corporate open-source projects, that are not democratically maintained and clearly only serve the interest of the company, who created it (like chromium for example).
So I am mainly talking about community-oriented FOSS projects here.
And if you were to agree with my statement, would you say that developing FOSS software is advancing the goals of the anarchist / communist project, because it is laying the groundwork infrastructure needed for a new kind of economy and society?
Thought this could be an interesting discussion!
Only problem with communism is that humans are unable to practice it without turning to fascistic practices. As an idea it is beautiful. “To each according to their needs.”
Free software works though?? Also if you want some real world examples of anarchist-like principles being applied in praxis, without fascism, look up Rojava or the Zapatista-Movement.
Are the developers needs met really though?
In some cases yes, in others no. I mean it would satisfy some needs of creativity, community and obviously specific software needs. Sometimes, people can also earn money from donations. But, mostly there's not enough monetary gain to satisfy the needs of food and housing.